219. How to Make a Friend & Find a Date with Logan Ury

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Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.

Today is going to be super exciting because we are talking about dating.

I know.

I know.

The whole world of dating.

There are so many pod squatters who are in the dating world

and have felt a little left out from all of our domestic lesbian conversations.

So we are going to wrap them all in today.

And thank God we have somebody who knows something about dating because none of us do.

But also, I feel like it's important to say that this, all of the expertise and research and stories we're going to talk about today aren't just only about dating.

It's about how you can

bring into your life significant others, whether those people are romantic partners or friends.

It's about getting yourself out there to find the people that will bring good things to your life.

That's why I loved this particular person because I feel like all of her work, it was helpful for me in terms of dating friends, finding new people and bringing them into our lives, getting to know anybody better.

Her name is Logan Urey, and she is a behavioral scientist, turned dating coach, and the author of the best-selling dating book, How to Not Die Alone, the surprising science that will help you find love.

She works as Hinge's director of relationship science.

Okay, so Hinge is one of these new fancy dating apps.

We called them bars in my day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Conducting research on modern dating.

She runs an online community through her weekly newsletter, Logan's Love Letter.

She studied psychology at Harvard and ran Google's behavioral science team, the Irrational Lab.

She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Scott.

Welcome, Logan.

Yay.

Thanks for having me here.

It's surreal to hear your voices directed at me.

Usually it's just like me in my car or me doing the dishes.

So this is such a great experience.

Well, thanks for listening.

I didn't know that you were a regular listener of the pod.

That's awesome.

Absolutely.

Pod squad.

Oh,

I love it.

And a really fun thing that we're going to do because some people listening might be saying, what the hell do you people know about dating?

And those people would be right.

But after

this conversation today,

Craig and Logan and I are going to have another conversation for the real.

what's up in the wild

in the wild west of people who are actually on the dating scene so we'll get to ask the real questions and sister can you tell the pod squad who craig is for those of for those who might not oh my god i'm so sorry craig melton is alice's godfather my brother-in-law Glennon Abby's kids father and Glennon's former husband.

Right.

And our co-parent.

And our co-parent, right.

The kid's dad.

And his dating life is so important to me because I,

whoever comes to our family, I mean, it's a really big, it's a really big moment for me when this happens.

So

do you

add like your little pieces to his profile?

I feel like he'd be like, it's plus two.

Yes, that's right.

You're also present.

Yeah.

Also present.

I have a lot of big feelings about it.

And because of that, I'm not allowed on the podcast.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

I was like, it's just going to be me.

You don't bring what you're looking for, Glennon, to that conversation.

I know, but I have good ideas, but that's fine.

I've recused myself from that conversation.

But this one is with Logan.

So Sissy, get us started.

Okay.

So, Logan, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about your love story with Scott to start us off, because I think what it's so beautiful about that is it shows that it.

Sometimes this shows up in ways in our lives that we were not planning or quote unquote, like searching for.

And I love that you have a lot of significant others that help you through life.

So can you tell us that story?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So Scott and I originally met in college.

I was having lunch in the dining hall with my boyfriend at the time when we were both 19.

And we don't really remember the lunch, but we did become Facebook friends at that time.

So that kind of is our first date that we remember that date in, I guess, 2007.

And then seven years later, we were both working at Google and he came up to me by the shuttle and was like, oh, you know, did did you used to date so-and-so and I said yes and so I sort of remembered him and then after that I actually saw him on tinder but I swiped left on him because he looked really broy and wasn't smiling in his pictures backwards hat and I totally judged him and then I ended up having this alumni lunch at Google where I invited people who went to my college and people who worked there.

And he came and I was talking about how I wanted to learn this coding language called R.

And he was like, I just dropped out of a PhD program in that.

I can teach it to you.

I'll tutor you.

So we sort of had this like flirty tutoring relationship for a year.

But at this time, I had met this guy at Burning Man and I was head over heels for him.

And in what I can now identify as definitely an anxious avoidant loop where I was chasing after this guy, he was pulling away.

It was so exciting to me.

Everything in my life became, how can I convince this guy to date me?

And I was so focused on getting him to want me when in retrospect, this guy was not a good fit for me at all.

But because he didn't want me, I was like, oh, he must be better than me.

And therefore, I should try to get him to like me.

And I ended up seeing a dating coach because I was so unhappy.

And she really helped me identify what I wanted and how I wanted somebody to make me feel.

And when I put this list together, I was like, The guy from Burning Man has none of these qualities.

He's actually not very nice.

But this guy at work, he has all of these qualities.

He makes me feel appreciated, desired.

He makes me laugh.

We're a team.

And so I determined that I was going to turn him into my boyfriend.

And so I let him know, hey, I don't have plans on Friday night.

You should ask me out.

And yeah, so we were able to turn, you know, this seven years of vaguely knowing each other on Facebook, one year of tutoring into this relationship.

And so now we've been together for eight years.

And I like to tell people this story because If you had asked me what I wanted in a partner, I probably wouldn't have said five foot eight vegan engineer.

But you know what?

This is the person who makes me happier than anybody else.

The person who I love to be at the party with and I love to leave the party and talk about everybody else at the party with.

And he's so funny.

He's so deep.

He's just such an interesting person.

And I feel like, you know what, I did swipe left on my husband on Tinder, but I really had this love story with him where I stopped thinking about who I should be with.

And I really started focusing on how does this person make me feel?

And he was the person who made me feel better than anyone I'd ever been with.

Ah, I love that story so much.

It is a perfect entree

into

your work around the myths about the spark.

And I just really feel so happy that you just said that you swipe left on your husband.

And I love, I just feel like, can we could just share the gospel of fuck the spark with all of our people.

It would be really helpful.

Can you tell us those things?

Also, absolutely.

Yes.

for 47 year olds swipe left means no thank you yes swipe left not interested swipe right let's see if we're a match got it exactly you've got it

yeah so you know there's a chapter in my book called the spark but it's sort of taken on a life of its own and kind of become this motto and the origin behind that is that i would be coaching people and they'd come back from a date and say she's great we had a good conversation she's really pretty but i'm not going to see her again what are you talking about that sounds sounds like a great date.

And she would say, oh, I just didn't feel the spark.

And so the spark has become my nemesis because it's this all-encompassing word that means instant fireworks, instant chemistry, love at first sight.

And people are so focused on having this sparky moment that they actually miss a lot about what.

long-term, real, messy love is all about.

And so I have these three myths of the spark that I like to bust for people.

So the first myth of the spark is that if you don't have it, it can never grow.

And that's absolutely not true.

So it's funny talking to Abby and Glennon about this because I feel like you two really literally have the spark.

And like your love story is definitely goals for a lot of people.

And, you know, you two are very sparky.

But so we'll sort of talk about how

many people will not have the Glennon and Abby moment and what that means for them.

So only 11% of people are in that category of experiencing love at first sight with the person that they're with.

And love can absolutely grow over time.

And there's actually something called the mirror exposure effect, where the more we see something, actually the more it can grow on us.

That's why people end up dating somebody from work or dating someone in their apartment building.

And the second myth of the spark is that if you have it, it's a good thing.

That's not always true.

So I know you had Dr.

Becky on and you've talked about attachment theory.

And so one of the things here, you know, going back to my Burning Man story, is that sometimes that feeling of the spark is actually your anxious attachment being triggered and this person is avoidant.

And so what you think of as butterflies are actually warning bells, anxiety going off saying, this person isn't being clear about their intentions.

You don't know if they like you.

And so some people are just really sparky.

They give that spark to everyone.

I know sometimes I'm talking with my group of friends and they're like, oh, have you met so-and-so?

I feel like there's something between us.

And I say like, I also feel like there's something between us.

Everyone who meets that guy feels like there's something between them.

And it's not about and they're usually together.

And they're usually.

about, right?

It's about who that person is.

And so sometimes the spark is not a good thing.

And then the last myth is that if you have a spark, the relationship is viable.

That's also not true.

A lot of unhappily married couples, divorced couples, et cetera, once had the spark.

And so it's enough to get you into the relationship, but not enough to have you keep it.

And it makes me really sad thinking about people who stay in the wrong relationship because they met the quote right way.

Damn.

I just have like a follow-up really quick because I think it's really important for parents to with teenagers that are, that are experiencing that first like love, the spark.

What are some methods or tools that you can use to maybe give your kids some language around that or some help?

Yeah, I love this question.

And I was sort of reflecting on this recently, thinking about Romeo and Juliet and how we put them on a pedestal, but they were 14 and 15 year old, essentially high schoolers.

And we all know how that story ends.

So really that high school super sparky love is is not what we should be aspiring to so what i would say to a parent is that first relationships for your kids really do matter and that you can think about it as a garden and you're planting different seeds and the seeds that you plant when they're young do blossom later in life.

And so if they start with some of these toxic relationships, those are patterns they're going to have to fight later.

And how can you from the beginning help them have healthy relationships?

So one thing I would say to them is the person who you choose should choose you back.

And it's about two people choosing each other, as opposed to this idea and rom-coms of the chase and you have a crush, and then you convince them to be with you.

What's much more beautiful is when two people say, There's something in you that I really admire and want to get to know more.

And we choose to get to know each other and reframing it from the chase and then getting what you want to really two people looking in each other's eyes, being curious and saying, Let's go on this path together.

Cool.

I love that so much because it's such a disservice.

And I love your second myth about like the spark is a good thing because it's usually presented as,

well, if you do have the spark, lucky ducky.

And if you don't, don't worry.

We can make that work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's a lesser like a consolation prize.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a consolation prize.

Like, well, not everyone gets the spark.

You probably have other things in your life.

But I was reading

Angela Chen's Ace book, and she was talking about how there was this study where

a bunch of men either walked across a sturdy bridge or a swaying bridge.

And then this, like, quote unquote, pretty woman walked up and gave all of them her phone number.

And the men on the swaying bridge were the ones more likely to call the woman because they interpreted their physical fear, that anxiety, they mistook it for attraction.

And it's just like,

are you on a rickety ass bridge, people?

Like, that's such a great question.

You don't want to live your life on a rickety ass bridge.

Yeah, this is called misattribution of arousal, where you think, oh, I'm attracted to her, but actually, your adrenaline is just really pumping because you're on this rickety bridge.

And so you give that feeling to that person.

And so there's so many ways to apply that, especially to high school relationships, where it's like, are you actually excited about that person?

Or are you excited that they're, you know, the homecoming king or the captain of the soccer team.

And when I, when I think back to so many relationships I had when I was younger, I didn't actually enjoy being around that person.

I just liked the idea of that person.

And I would go to bed at night.

And as I'm falling asleep, being like, what am I doing?

This doesn't feel good.

But like on paper, they were great.

And the sooner that we can teach kids this idea of dating someone for who they bring out in you and not who they are on paper, that's just such a gift that we could give them.

And also the like, you'll just know, what the fuck does that mean?

I don't know what that means.

And like that

further

cements this idea that there will be some physiological or sent from heaven feeling that you will know, as opposed to like, well, how do they make you feel?

How do you feel?

Do you feel good?

I just think that it's really important, especially for the queer folks listening who were struggling with their queer identity as a young kid.

You get into certain relationships in high school because on paper, this is what you're supposed to do.

But then you're like, I don't even like this person.

You start kissing them and you're like, I don't even like kissing them, but on paper.

So I just think that that,

you called it the misattribution of what?

Arousal.

Misattribution of arousal is what Amanda was talking about with the rickety bridge.

And just, you can use it almost as a metaphor to just think about like, do I like them or do I like the idea of them?

If it's just the idea of them, go and find yourself someone you actually like being around.

And Logan, you said that you were talking about that burning man dude, which is forever now our word for like people that really are shitty and we shouldn't be following.

He's a burning man dude.

Okay.

Literally, yeah.

Sparky.

Sparky is sparky.

Yeah.

Is it like,

is it about self-worth?

Because that chase is always really about, is that person better than me?

Do they know something I don't know?

And then, so is sometimes the spark actual like

anxiety that comes from low self-worth.

Absolutely.

Yes.

I think when you look at attachment theory and you look at people like me, like many of us who are anxiously attached, there's this feeling of, I don't know if I'm good enough.

If you choose me, I will think that I'm good enough.

So I really want you to choose me.

And I'm constantly looking for you to affirm me that I'm good enough, that you're not going to leave.

And instead, the ideal would be that I say, I'm great.

I'm sitting here and I'm great with you and I'm great without you.

And I'm great if you leave.

And I may choose to leave.

And your opinion of me doesn't really impact my self-worth.

And I tell this to my coaching clients all the time where I'm like, you went on a one-hour date with a guy who kind of sucks, but now you feel bad about yourself.

Stop outsourcing your self-worth to people who don't deserve it and who don't even know you.

Yeah.

It's good.

Man, I needed you.

And you can look at, think about your formative times.

Like if you grew up in a house where it was withholding because, well, if you do X, then I'll be proud of you.

If you do Y, then you'll have my affection.

Then of course you're going to be running around with that mother tongue of what it feels like to be loved and be like, ooh, he sort of likes me, but not 100%.

So that must be the real deal.

Right.

I think if we can take people and teach them that just because somebody isn't interested in you doesn't make them better than you, they just might not be the right fit.

That would solve a lot of heartbreak.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

Or they might be stupid.

Those people are stupid.

Stupid.

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Okay, so this is one of the big patterns is the chase and confusing anxiety with attraction.

What are some other patterns that you see?

I know we're going to get into this with Craig too, but what are some of the patterns that you see that people most commonly are just doing the same shit over and over and it's not working for them?

Yeah.

So I love a good framework.

And I was talking to so many different clients from around the world from all these different walks of life, but started noticing that they had many things in common.

And so I categorized this into something called the three dating tendencies.

And so these are three different types of daters.

And what they all all have in common is that they have unrealistic expectations, but of different things.

And also as you're listening, maybe think about which one you are.

And people can take the quiz on my website to find out what they are.

So the first one is the romanticizer.

And this one is the person who has unrealistic expectations of relationships.

Okay, I have an Abby hand.

For sure, man.

So they love love.

They believe in the rom-coms, the fairy tale, love at first sight.

And there's really a sense of when I meet the person, everything is going to be easy and effortless.

The second one is the maximizer.

And this is a person who has unrealistic expectations of their partner.

So they always feel like, okay, well, she's great, but could I find someone who's as hot as her, but slightly funnier?

Somebody who's as funny as she is, but more ambitious.

And it's all about the search for them.

And there's a feeling of, if I just keep looking, eventually I'll find the perfect person.

And then the third type is the hesitator.

And this is the person who has unrealistic expectations of themselves.

And so they feel like I'm not worthy of love yet.

I'm not 100% ready to date.

If somebody meets me now, they won't love me because I need to get a more impressive job or clean my apartment.

And so there's always a, I'll be ready to date when, dot, dot, dot.

And they're just not putting themselves out there.

Glenn and sister, where would you categorize each of yourselves?

I know what you guys are, but I don't have one.

I mean, I truly didn't date.

I mean, I don't, i feel like you might be a little bit of a maximizer do you think sissy sissy yeah i feel like you both are believe it or not i think i'm a messed up hybrid of hesitator and maximizer

i think i present as if it's a maximizer but i got a little closeted hesitator

i'll wait until i'm a catch oh that's sweet i was thinking that abby was a romanticizer amando was a maximizer and then glenn and i wasn't sure because i do feel like you have a romantic side of you.

But you know what?

The truth is, I don't know how much time you actually spent dating.

I think that's an issue.

You may not know you're dating, Persona.

What do you think you are?

Well, I think that you're right about not knowing.

I've never dated in my life.

I was always just attached to myself to somebody who I thought I should be with based on like.

high school socioeconomics,

social stratus, you know, situations.

And then, because I never felt really attracted to anybody, which we then later figured out why.

And then when I met Abby, it was like kind of this sparky situation.

So there was not a lot of decision making.

It was just like a knowing.

I think there could be some romanticizer there in terms of like, this should be my story.

Craig and I should work out.

Like, this is supposed to feel this way without checking in on how it actually feels for you.

Kind of going back to that, like, here's my idea of the prom date.

And then you just married the prom date.

Whoa.

Okay.

So then that would be romanticizer.

That's what I think, but you, you very well might might be a hybrid.

Okay, cool.

You're so.

Oh, my God.

She's romanticizing my romanticizer.

What a seven you are, Abby.

She is a seven and a romanticizer and all of the above.

I do love categories.

Yeah.

So here's my problem.

In order to know your tendency and in order to know your patterns, you know, you just do the same thing over and over and then you get so frustrated and then you abandon it altogether because it's not worked for so long.

How do you get honest with yourself

about what your patterns are?

Because there's always 20 things that you could blame it on.

That person was wrong.

For sure.

How do you actually do the analysis of yourself to be like, no, this is what you do, Amanda?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think it's really fitting for this conversation.

I imagine that a lot of the pod squad is dating after 40, dating after divorce, dating with kids.

And it's sort of a feeling of like, hey, it hasn't worked out yet.

Like, what do I do?

And when I work with people in a coaching capacity, a lot of it is looking back at their past and doing a relationship audit.

So who is somebody that you dated?

How did you meet them?

How did they make you feel?

What side of you did they bring out?

Why did it end?

What are the parts of that relationship you'd want to move forward?

What are the parts of that relationship you want to leave in the past?

And as we go through, different patterns start to emerge.

And so some of that is talking about the maximizer where it's like, okay, you're always the one that ends it.

And it's because you think that you could do better.

And so really identifying what are your patterns, what's been holding you back, and then making an intentional choice to doing something different in the future.

So I might work with somebody in their 70s and you might think, okay, by my 70s, certainly I've figured it out by then.

No, there's no guarantee that with age, you figure it out.

What really makes people change is

taking a pause, doing an inventory, saying, yeah, I always leave first or I always wait for years to end things, even though I know things aren't working.

And I'm going to make a conscious choice to do do something different in the future.

And it's in that pausing and in that choosing that we really grow.

I love the backwards inventory.

And then I think we're taught as kids that the way you figure out who your person is, is you make a list of like all the things that person will be.

And now when I hear you talking, what I resonate with is

instead of having it based on identity of this other person,

having your list based on how you want to feel

in a relationship.

Is that the difference that we're looking at?

I want somebody who's five foot 10 and who is a, you know, go-getter and who is whatever.

We meet those people, they make us feel like shit.

So is it better to start with a list of how I want to feel when I'm with a person?

Then we know how to analyze it.

Yeah, that's a really succinct way of saying one of the major things that I advise people to do in dating.

So people often date with the checklist.

When you date with a checklist, it's resume qualities.

What's their job?

How much money do they make?

What's their religion?

What's their family like?

It's very much like things that could be written on a piece of paper.

And so what I advise people is throw out that checklist.

And instead, I have something called the post date eight.

And these are eight questions that you ask yourself after a date.

And similar to the science behind gratitude journals, which is that if you have to write down five things at the end of the day that you're grateful for, you're training your brain to look for things that you're grateful for.

So that's how the the post-88 works.

You know, you have to answer these questions at the end of the date.

And so, you train yourself to look for these things.

And the questions are things like, what side of me did this person bring out?

Do I feel more energized or de-energized at the end of the date?

Did we laugh together?

Is there something about them that I'm curious about?

And if you can actually train your brain towards the correct type of checklist, the checklist that talks about your dynamic as a couple and not just who they are on paper, you're much more likely to make a good decision for yourself.

I love that.

Yes.

So good.

I love those questions.

It's an embodied way.

Yes.

It's an embodied way of dating.

Embodied way.

Embodied mint, Logan.

And that is how do I feel, not what this person is or how they see me, but how do I actually feel?

That's a good way to go into dating and not what I did.

Do you ever have this experience where somebody's like, hey, you have to meet this person, you have similar professional interests.

And then you meet up with them and you leave and you're like, I just kind of feel like shit right now.

I don't really know what happened.

And then maybe you don't really think about it.

And then you meet up with them again or you do them a favor.

And every time this happens, it's like, how can we actually train people to pause and say, I don't want to see that person again because they make me feel bad about myself and there's something going on here that doesn't work.

And it really is a muscle that we have to learn to flex, but just to see, how do I feel in the presence of this person?

And it might have nothing to do with them.

Maybe they remind me of a person who rejected me in college and they trigger something in me.

And that doesn't mean that they're a bad person.

It means that we are a bad match and really helping people understand that, not just in dating, but like if you do a job interview and when you're interviewing for a job, you just get bad vibes, don't take that job.

Really paying attention to how do people make you feel and then choosing the places and spaces that really make you feel good.

Yeah, Dr.

Marissa Franco told us to, after

we're dating friends, if we're talking about friendship, to always pay attention to how we feel afterwards, which is exactly what you're saying.

Yeah.

And like, we don't have to make it so complicated, right?

It's like good or bad.

Yeah.

Like, that's why I'm friends with Marissa, because she makes me feel good.

Oh, of course you are.

Of course you are.

Okay.

Sorry, Sissy.

Go ahead.

So can we talk about just how the hell

grownups?

meet each other in real life because you talk about your event decision matrix.

And I feel like that is something whether you're dating or not, I'm starting to think about that for everything.

Like

every invitation, what do I want to do?

And not to meet people.

I mean, to meet people, not to meet, you know.

So the idea is

maximizer, maximizer.

All of your dates should happen on a rickety bridge or at a horror movie.

That's right.

I get that, that adrenaline up.

Okay.

So the idea here is that a lot of people, when they're dating later, they feel

like they're so busy and they know they should be going to events, but which event should they prioritize?

And then they end up going to none at all.

So this is a way to plot different events to figure out which one to go to.

So every time you get an invitation, you plot it across these two dimensions.

So one is, what's the likelihood that I'm going to enjoy this event, high to low?

And then what's the likelihood that I'm going to interact with somebody at this event?

Is it a high likelihood of interaction?

So you want to find events that are in this upper right-hand corner of I'm going to like it and I'm going to interact with people.

So kind of going off of the horror movie thing.

So, maybe you love horror movies and there's a horror movie marathon, high likelihood that you'll enjoy it, but people don't really talk at a movie marathon.

So, that's low.

Or maybe it's a CrossFit class.

People talk, but maybe you don't like CrossFit.

So, low likelihood of enjoying it, but high likelihood of interaction.

And when events really fall in that corner, you really want to prioritize those events.

And this can make such a difference to people.

So, for example, I had this client who

was not finding success on the app.

She just wasn't meeting people she liked.

liked.

She just felt like after years of this not working, there was something wrong with her.

But we use this event decision matrix and she ended up going to this event, which was a book club for Tanahasi Coates' book.

And when she went to this event, she got the number of six different guys.

And so it went from feeling like I'm not lovable to this wasn't working for me.

And when I put myself in the right place where I could really be my full expressive self, people were drawn to me.

And so the point of this is high likelihood of interaction.

Of course, you want to meet people.

High likelihood of you enjoying it is even if you don't meet someone, it wasn't a waste of time.

And it's probably going to bring out that full vibrant part of yourself.

And you like the people there because you respect the reason they're there.

Yes.

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Right.

You have a baseline thing in common.

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Okay, so you meet someone, you're at an event, your

friend over there gets the seven numbers.

If we're talking about, you know, 40 plus years old,

we've got really busy lives.

Back when I was dating, everything was dinner.

It was like, can you go to dinner?

Can you go to dinner?

But that's very

inefficient from a time perspective.

And if you sit down and you know in the first five minutes that sucks so are there alternatives that you can do that are better for knowing yeah so quickly one thing that's really cool that came out of the pandemic is the definition of a date changed So prior to the pandemic, a date was, as you said, sort of, you know, to drink minimum, go for dinner.

There was a very strict definition.

But during the pandemic, people still wanted to find love, but people just weren't doing that.

And so we're actually seeing through our research at Hinge a much broader definition of what a date is.

And so for some people, it's a video date.

And especially thinking about people who are single parents, over a third of them would rather have a first date that's a video date because it's hard to find child care.

They don't have tons of time.

And this is almost 50% for LGBTQ plus parents.

There's really a feeling of, I just want to do a video date with you first to see if we're a good fit before I, you know, get that babysitter or call mom and have her come over.

There's also a sense of way more people are doing sober dates.

So this also came out of the pandemic where people are just feeling like, turns out drinking makes me feel bad and I have anxiety the next day.

And actually Gen Z is really leading the charge here where there's just like, I want to meet you, not you after two cocktails.

And so we're seeing a huge rise in sober dating.

And actually some research we did last summer found that 75% of people would actually do something other than getting a drink for the first date.

And so I've been really excited to see how people are showing up differently in this sober and sober curious world.

And what are they doing?

Like, are they going roller skating?

Like, what

they could.

I mean, sometimes it's just like, hey, let's meet up for Boba and go for a walk.

Sometimes it's, let's go to a comedy show and then afterwards debrief the comedy and talk about our favorite comedians.

Sometimes they go for a picnic.

It doesn't have to be this whole long day affair where you're like, I wish we had just gotten drinks.

The point is that you don't need that liquid courage to meet someone.

You can actually focus more on thinking about who am I?

What do I want?

How do I want to show up?

Listen to a pump-up playlist.

You don't need to drink on a date to connect with somebody.

Especially if they're starting with like a Zoom date.

Yeah, and that works for friends too.

We started doing breakfasts and coffee.

Why does everything has to be after eight o'clock?

No, we're tired.

We can get together and eat a whole bunch of caramels.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everything goes back to Goodwill Hunting on this podcast for some reason.

I think there's a misconception that you need that sense of drinking to connect.

And in fact, if you think about what's at the root of connection, a lot of times it's play.

Like, you know what I want to do?

I want to go and have banter with somebody.

I want to tease them.

I want to make fun of the people next to us in line for being entitled.

I want to feel like you and I are in a private world and we're having this experience together.

We don't need alcohol to do that.

And it's parallel play.

There's often nothing worse than for intimacy or getting to know each other than sitting across from each other, staring in each other's eyeballs like you're both on trial.

It actually freezes.

That's why we need the booze, right?

It's scary.

I don't know if you know the research on this, but the same part of our brain that...

we use to make eye contact is also the part of the brain that processes language.

And so, you know, when you're talking to your kids and you want to have a deep conversation, you might go on a long drive because not making eye contact actually makes it easier to open up and to listen.

And so going away from these coffee dates, drink dates, where I'm sitting across from you, I'm in interview mode and moving towards these side-by-side dates where I can actually open up and listen.

That's really a trick that people can use.

And even, you know what, if you are going to the bar, sit next to each other, sit side by side.

It takes the pressure off and it's easier to connect and easier to connect with how you feel.

Because you're not, it's easier to be more in touch with like how you're an individual person on this date and you're also checking in with yourself.

I'm not looking at you to see how you're judging me.

I'm looking inwards to see how I feel.

To see how I'm judging you.

Just joking.

Just joking.

I know that.

Yeah.

And I love that too, of your focusing on what brings you joy, because not only is that going to bring, you know, the highest version of yourself up, it's also like, if you didn't like that person, no harm, no foul.

I've just done something that I actually enjoy doing.

And you were present.

Yeah.

So make a list of things in your city you want to do.

And the next time you're going on a date and they suggest a bar, say, hey, actually, I really want to check out this cool adult playground.

And would you be interested in trying that out?

Or there's this like weird, quirky slide that has mosaics on it.

And I really want to go there.

And so think about dating as a chance to explore your city and explore yourself.

And the more that you can make dating into exploration versus desperation or obligation, the more fun you'll have and the more you'll bring that energy to your dates.

Real quick, what's an adult playground?

I don't know why I said that.

It was just something a friend of mine told me about this a long time ago.

Sometimes it's like a workout setting.

Sometimes I just didn't know if I was out of time.

She's like, no, I don't know.

I don't know what to do.

None of y'all told me about the adult playground.

I know, I know, Abby.

We should find you one.

But let's go back to what Glennon said.

Yeah, go roller skating.

Go do something you're bad at.

Show that you're willing to have fun and be playful.

And, you know, so many of the people that I talk to are so serious about dating.

Like, I'm this age and I have to find my partner and I'm running out of time.

And it's like, you're bringing that energy to the date.

date and people don't want to be with that.

They don't want to interview for role of your spouse.

What they want to do is be with someone that they have fun with.

And the way that you can hack that is by having a date, like playing ping pong or roller skating, doing something where it's inherently fun and silly.

And it helps you kind of get out of that interview mindset.

So good.

I also love that for friends too.

That feels totally arbitrary.

Also, let's go get dinner.

And then so we all have to get babysitters.

Why don't we do things we need to and want to do anyway, like go on a walk or go, I mean, all this weekend, I went to Home Depot with my friend.

That was our hangout.

So Aaron has the best time, honestly, shopping for toilet seats with your friend.

Like, why aren't we all doing that?

It was really fun.

So good.

We should be able to do it.

Yeah, we will be after this.

I would love to know a little research in terms of, you know, being in my 40s.

And I'm sure a lot of folks who are listening are of that similar age.

What is the statistic around people who are on on dating websites versus those who are still avoiding them like the plague and just trying to do it naturally?

Yeah.

So the best research on this comes from Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford.

He's a sociologist.

So he does this annual survey called How Couples Meet.

And so since 2017, couples are most likely to meet online.

And that's across all ages.

And that's actually way more likely to be true for queer couples than anyone else, which makes sense because, you know, thinking about it, it's like a lot of lesbian bars are going away, a lot of gay bars are going away.

When you go to a party, you don't know who's interested in you.

And so, dating apps are particularly good for people in what's called thin dating communities.

So, you know, over 50 dating in rural areas, dating as a queer person.

And so, yes, most people who meet now are meeting online.

And so, that's overtaken meeting at work, meeting at bars or restaurants, or meeting through friends.

Okay, so now we're on the date.

How do we

not do the kind of rote, what do you do for work?

Where did you go to school?

Like the things that will actually bring out

what each other actually is

in the conversation.

Yeah, so this is something I've thought about a lot because I have these dating coaching clients.

I fall in love with them.

They have such beautiful souls.

They're such amazing people, but then dating isn't working out for them.

But I don't have the chance to listen in on their date.

So I don't know what they're doing.

But during the pandemic, I did this project where actually I was going on dates with people.

And so we would do a Zoom date and I would have my camera off.

They would be meeting and I would be sending questions through the Zoom chat for them to ask me.

You were serinoing them.

You were serinoing the hell out of them.

And it was so fun because a big takeaway that I have is that actually most first dates are really boring and people are just sharing facts about them.

Where did you go to school?

How many siblings do you have?

Honestly, who cares?

We'll talk about your siblings one day but that's not what i want to know and we exchange facts instead of telling stories stories are the memory filing system of the human brain that's what we remember i don't know where glennon was born but i can tell you a lot of stories that she's told on the podcast about her experiences and i think that's why people love you and this show because you're telling stories and you're opening up and so it's almost like We Can Do Hard Things is a storytelling podcast.

And that's what people should be doing on dates because when you lower your walls, when you're vulnerable, when you let somebody in, you're relatable.

People feel like they can connect to you.

You make them feel like in their imperfect selves, they're also okay.

And that's really where love and connection happens.

Ah, so should people, when they go on a date, they should be like, these are my three best stories.

I will find a way to tell these three on this, on this date, because stories that like light you up and that you reveal a lot about yourself.

You just find a way to tell it.

I used to train people to do that in my dating class some people pushed back and found that it was a little

corporate for them it didn't necessarily resonate with them but it is actually how i feel which is i had this client who was showing up on dates he was just talking about work people weren't connecting with him and i'm like tell me a quirky story about you and he told the story about how when he was in college to make money he ran an ice cream truck, but people kept coming up to him and asking for all these weird things.

And he found out that the person who'd run it the year before was actually a drug dealer and they were expecting a different type of ice cream.

And I was like, yes, you just made me laugh.

You just showed me all these different sides of you.

I know that you put yourself through college.

I know you have a sense of humor.

I saw you light up.

Tell that story on a date.

And so really helping people know what are the things about you that make you shine.

Maybe you talk about how much you love your nephew and how when he was born, you understood what unconditional love was.

Talk about the things in your life that light you up.

And that's what will draw people to you.

Don't spend your date complaining about the waiter or the menu or your boss.

You know what?

Talk about what you want, not what you don't.

And it's like switching from the date as being an autobiography to the date being a memoir.

Right.

Stories that reveal who you are as opposed to like listing facts.

Totally.

Well, and I think that sometimes it feels like, oh, a first date, I just don't want to do anything totally crazy.

So I'm going to to keep it as mealy as possible.

You know, no one will be taken aback by this question or this story.

But can you talk about the fruit on the bottom, yoga?

Where it's like, actually, if you're trying to be unobjectionable, you are failing.

There's this mistake that people do, which is, I want the maximum number of people to like me.

So I don't want to be offensive.

I want to be something for everyone.

And I think as we get older and as we mature, we realize that that's not really what life is about.

Don't be for everyone.

Make some enemies.

Stand up for who you are.

And what that means in dating is that you don't need 10 out of 10 people to like you.

You need one person to really like you.

And the way that you make that happen is by showing who you really are.

And so I had this client who was so funny, so quirky, so interesting, but her dates were just finding her not memorable and they weren't following up.

And so I told her that she was fruit on the bottom yogurt, that these guys were going dates with her and they were taking a scoop from the top and saying, she's vanilla.

I'm not interested in this.

But I needed her to help bring that fruit to the top so that on a date, they actually saw who she was.

And so, if you're listening to this and you feel like you might be fruit on the bottom yogurt, let's work on that.

What are your hot takes?

How do you feel about your parents aging?

What's been happening for you as your friends have kids and move away?

What's something in your life that's different than what you thought it would be?

Tell me who you are, and I'm going to be interested in you.

And instead of rejecting you for your complexities, you're going to make me feel more comfortable sharing my complexities.

And I think that goes both ways, right?

Because in your head, you might be thinking, oh, I don't know about this person and they're not really doing it for me.

You can take the risk.

You go in and like try to get that fruit up and say, well, if they don't like me because I asked this, then they don't like me because I'm the kind of person who asked this.

Like on my first date with my husband, we sat down.

I didn't, I had never met him before.

We sat down.

And the first question he asked me was, tell me about your divorce.

I know you're divorced.

Tell me about your divorce.

And I was like, well, that's bold as shit.

And I might have been totally turned off by that, but I was actually fascinated because I was like, you're the kind of person who's just going straight in.

And so I liked that, whereas someone else might have been.

totally turned off by it.

I love it.

But it's what drew me to him.

Right.

And they're going to find out who you are anyway.

Why not lead with that and then have them decide, is this the person for me?

And one story I did want to share with the pod squad was a few months ago, I sent out an email to Logan's love letter saying, do you worry you're undatable?

Is there something about yourself that you fear makes you not worthy of love, that makes you hesitate from dating, that you are waiting for the moment where you have to reveal this and the person's going to run away?

And hundreds of people wrote back with so many different stories.

Some of them were, I've never been in a relationship before.

Some of them were, I've been in so many relationships.

Some of it was chronic illness, being a survivor of sexual assault.

There were so many different reasons why people thought that they were undatable.

And the key message that I tried to share with them is that actually, this doesn't make you undatable.

This makes you who you are.

And really, the key is to own your narrative and to go on the date and be like, you know what?

I had cancer in my 20s and it was really hard, but here's how I got through it.

It taught me the importance of community.

It taught me to be a more empathetic person who's more caring about the world.

And now I live that way.

Or, you know what?

I don't talk to my parents, and it's really sad.

And I wish I had a different relationship with them.

But now I work hard on my chosen family and I want to meet someone and build a family with them.

And when you don't ask for permission, but you really let somebody into your world, that's when you make them feel safe.

And that's who somebody wants to spend time with.

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I want to ask a question about men and women dating, which is weird, but

imagine that.

Yeah, yeah.

I just finished this book that I thought was so brilliant called Monsters.

And the woman who wrote it was telling the story about Joni Mitchell and about how she was always described as difficult or whatever in general.

But on her first dates, she would always sit down and play her music for the men, for the men.

And I just can't stop thinking about why that is so countercultural.

And I think it's because women tend to think, I will be more datable if I'm a good audience for a man, as opposed to I will be more datable if I am like showing who I am.

And I'm like, is this guy a good audience for me?

Does he respect my music?

Whatever.

I have.

talked to a lot of friends who feel the phenomenon of I go on a date, the dude talks for 60 minutes and then he says i just like you so much

and she hasn't said shit

there's nothing to like all she's done is listen to him but yeah but is that something you hear over and over oh yeah is it absolutely is it real actually i was listening to your podcast maggie smith right the post yeah yeah okay so there was such a poignant part in your episode where you talked about Sure, women can go and have a career and that's nice and all, but inevitably the man's career matters more.

And it's really about them and that at the end of the day, like traveling for your job and forsaking your duties as a mother is not really acceptable.

And I have been thinking about that a lot, just our baked in idea of sort of who gets to be on stage and who gets to be the audience.

And I do hear about this a lot, and not always just across gender lines, but I like to call these daters ZQ, zero questions.

They go on a date, they monologue, and they don't really ask about the other person.

And sometimes I say, hey, why didn't you ask?

And they're like, well, if she wanted to talk, she should have just answered the question herself.

And I'm like, that's not really how conversation works.

And, you know, can you get better at asking questions?

But yeah, I think that there's a lot there.

And it reminds me of how I spent my time in high school, which is watching boys play video games and playing poker.

Yep.

And I was like, that is not fun.

I don't care about video games and I don't care about poker.

And in my adult life, having a husband that I love and a community that I love, I don't spend a lot of time being in the audience.

And I think kind of going back to Abby's question around what you want to teach your kids, I think teaching them not to be overly cheesy, but, you know, be in the stadium, be in the game.

Nobody is telling you that you have to be in the audience and really be in a relationship where both of you take turns taking up space.

Yeah, you're both on the field.

Nobody's watching the other person.

Maybe it's enough just to note that as a red flag.

Like, this person wants an audience, not a partner.

Yeah.

And when you speak, do they seem interested in you or are they just waiting for their turn to talk?

Yeah.

Lots of folks could ask themselves that question.

Okay, you just talked about red flags.

Do you have any red flags that you have seen consistently over the research of like, not a lot we can do with that?

Or green flags of like run towards that sturdy bridge?

Yeah.

So some red flags and green flags are personal to you.

So going back to what I said about doing your inventory, maybe a red flag for you is that you tend to be anxiously attached and you chase after people who are avoidant.

So your red flags would be somebody who's hot and cold, somebody who seems interested sometimes, but not other times, somebody who's unreliable.

And when you notice that, you can say, I feel myself being drawn to you.

You are the Burning Man dude that I want to chase after, but I'm going to make a different choice this time.

And so for that person, it's identifying somebody who's, you know, a fuckboy, who's avoidant, attached and saying, nope, I'm going to look for somebody who's secure.

For other people, it might be that the red flags are something like somebody who doesn't really listen to them or somebody who takes up a lot of space.

And so it's really understanding what are my patterns and how do I make a different choice.

For green flags, we can talk about how do you find somebody who's securely attached?

And this seems simple, but it's very hard in practice.

So do somebody's...

actions match their words.

It's really easy to say, oh, you're born in July.

I'm born in July.

We should show, throw a birthday party together.

And they're promising the future to you.

But when push comes to shove, do they actually show up?

And so green flags are, are they reliable?

Do their actions match their words?

How do they make you feel?

Do they make you feel good about yourself?

Do you feel that you're drawn to them?

And really, it's about having integrity and being a person of high character and moving away from who that person is on paper to really who the two of you are together and what side of you they bring out.

I have some friends now that are dating.

And whenever I'm about to meet them and their new people, I'm always just holding my breath and like praying, like, please let them be the same.

Please let them be the same.

Because you know how there's like this moment where you can be like, are they showing up in this space the same way they show up in this space when they're just with me?

And you know, in the moment, you know, like, are they taking up the same amount of space?

Are they being as funny as they are?

Are they being as ridiculous or silly or shy as they usually are?

And I feel like I wish we could do that to ourselves.

I wish we could monitor.

am I acting with this person the way I act with the people who I'm closest to, like my friends or whatever?

And because that's always it.

I'm like, oh, I give them three months because they're not, you can only keep up the act for so long before you do it for a while.

My advice around this is invite your friends to meet your new partner.

But instead of saying, what did you think of her?

What did you think of him?

Say, what did you think of me around them?

And they are not experts in this other person, but they are experts in you.

And they will give you that feedback.

You know, you seemed a little aloof.

You seemed like you were holding back.

You didn't seem like the Glennon or Abby or Amanda who I know.

And so, really, using your friends as that litmus test, but more about how you show up around this person, that's really where you can find some of these things for yourself.

Oh, that's so good.

And it comes down to like at the root of all of this,

to me, it feels like what is most important?

Because if we have given people the idea that the most important thing is that you are partnered,

then we will trade being who we are

for partnership.

The suggestion underlying all of this is that ironically, since you're a dating expert, like maybe the most important thing is that we're living in authenticity to who we are.

and that we're supported, but maybe it's not the most important thing to forego who we are for a partner, which means the lesson is we don't act on the first date, we don't act on the second, we don't ask on the third because we're not trading the one for the other, which I think is so interesting because you have kind of created this life where

romantic partner isn't the only thing.

Don't you live on a commune?

Yeah,

I can talk all about that.

Yeah.

Which is fascinating because that's a way of life that you've established that also means when people have a lot of people in their lives that they're depending upon, it means they're not having to trade their authenticity for one.

Yeah, I would love to share that story because I really hope that it can inspire people to live in an alternate way and to take some pressure off of their relationship.

So essentially, during the beginning of the pandemic, my husband had had some ankle pain and he had gone through some PT and things weren't getting better.

And he was like, I think I really need to get an MRI.

And I was like, absolutely not.

We're in a global pandemic and I don't want you in a medical facility.

But luckily, he ignored me and he went.

And he found out that he had osteosarcoma, which is a really rare form of bone cancer.

And fewer than 800 Americans get it a year.

And he had a type called multifocal osteosarcoma.

So in a few different spots, and the

survival rate for that is 30%.

And so it's beginning of the pandemic.

The world is shutting down.

We're alone in our apartment.

And he starts going through this.

And so we had this whirlwind situation where we found out that he needed to get an amputation on a Monday.

We were engaged, but we weren't married.

So our friends threw us a last minute wedding on the Sunday.

And the day before that Saturday, we had a foot roast, which was my husband's really into comedy and he wanted all of his friends to come and roast him and make fun of cancer, make fun of amputation, talk about getting cold foot before the wedding.

And so we had this crazy weekend, foot roast, wedding, amputation.

And

he had to have multiple other surgeries, 18 rounds of chemo.

It was so dramatic.

And I was coming home every night alone to our apartment, eating pizza, numbing myself out.

And I was like, I can't do this by myself.

And so at the same time, our friends had started this commune where it was about 15 friends living together.

And when I went there for dinner one night, I was like, these people are killing the pandemic.

These people are having a great time.

They cook together every night.

They hang out by the fire pit, the hot tub.

They're in a pod.

And this is really what life is about.

And so very luckily, there was an opening in the commune, a first floor apartment accessible for my husband.

And we moved in.

And I like to think about it as the lights came on.

I had been living in the dark.

I've been coming home alone to this apartment.

And suddenly I was surrounded by all these people.

And so I had these 15 friends that were cooking dinner for me, visiting Scott in the hospital, making me laugh, really taking the pressure off.

And I was like, this is how people are supposed to live.

We're not supposed to live alone in concrete rectangles, asking for everything from our partner.

We're supposed to live in community where we support each other.

And so there's this concept called other significant others.

And it's basically saying there should be people in your life that play particular roles.

So if Amanda wants to talk about a book she read, maybe she's more likely to call you, Glennon, than to talk to her husband about it.

Or I'm sure there's certain things about being an athlete that Abby calls her former teammates about instead of talking to you, Glennon.

And so there's all these different things where it's like, what is a role in your life that your partner is maybe not the best suited to play?

And have another person in your life that plays that role.

And so we're part of a community.

We're integrated.

We're taking the pressure off of our relationship and we actually have more deep connections with people.

I really think that's how we're supposed to live.

Logan, you are freaking wonderful.

Damn.

Can you let us know if there's any openings?

Yes.

Come Come stay in the RV.

It's so fun.

God.

Wow.

My mind is.

Fantastic.

We hope you'll be a friend of our pod and come back and back and back.

And I just want to ask you one thing.

You're about to talk to Craig.

And I just,

I just,

tell me what to say.

Thoughts and ideas, which is why I'm not going to be there.

And he's just the best.

He's just the best human.

And whoever he chooses, he does eventually want to have a partner.

So whoever he chooses will be like my sister wife.

So, I just want you to keep that in your mind and just really

do a good job over there trying to get

lady that I get to hang out with forever.

Okay, you're amazing.

I just hope to talk to you many, many more times.

And Pod Squad, come back tomorrow to hear Logan talk to Craig about getting me the right sister wife.

Bye.

Oh, Lord, have mercy.

No pressure.

If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us.

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We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.