Hinge expert shares dating advice for ambitious nerds

Sam Parr

Alright, so our friend Logan Ury, she's a behavioral scientist turned dating coach. According to the analytics on this podcast, 93% of you listeners are men, and a lot of you are young. According to the data, a lot of you are also single. So we thought it would be cool to have Logan come on to talk about dating. It's shockingly similar to building a business in that there's actually a process you can follow. You can iterate yourself there. Logan actually broke down how Sean and I met our spouses and gave a bunch of useful tips on how to meet someone. It's all backed by science, and honestly, it's pretty hilarious. So check out this episode on how to meet your future spouse. Alright, Logan is a behavioral scientist. I know you, Logan, as just my good friend, but you also had a book called *How Not to Die Alone*, and now you're on this tear where you've become a little bit of an expert when it comes to dating.

Shaan Puri

Also, with masculinity, I just think you're...

Sam Parr

A great conversationalist and a wonderful person. You're really, really smart, and you have a lot of data to back a lot of your opinions.

Shaan Puri

And you have a Netflix show? You're something high up on the research side at Hinge, is that right?

Logan Ury

Yeah, I'm the Director of Relationship Science, but sometimes people just call me the "something something something."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you can put that on your LinkedIn, Sam. I gotta tell you a story. I think I've been sitting on this story for a little while. So, I met Logan for the first time at a conference recently. She walks up to me, I reach out my hand to basically shake her hand, and she goes straight for my face and just starts fixing my eyebrows. Logan and I haven't met; she hasn't introduced herself. She's just fixing my eyebrows for me because they're all bushy and crazy. Then she's like, "Oh, my dad has crazy eyebrows." And I just go, "What?" By the way, I'm sitting down, like a dog, at the lunch table. So, I'm like a pet, and she's petting me. I just thought, the confidence that this woman must have! She must come on the show because nobody has that confidence to...

Sam Parr

Do that high, high.

Shaan Puri

Agency: an insane move.

Sam Parr

That's a high agency move.

Shaan Puri

It was, "What's the craziest thing anyone's ever done?" Logan, explain yourself.

Logan Ury

Sean, I think I did say, "Can I touch your face?" but then you didn't seem that into it. I was like, "That was a weird thing to do."

Sam Parr

Well, did you feel more intimidated than I was?

Shaan Puri

It's going to be interesting because of that.

Logan Ury

Sean, I did make an impression on you.

Shaan Puri

You did. Honestly, I never forgot. I went home, and my daughter, since then, has just been coming up to me and doing it. She's like, "You know what I'm doing?" and I was like, "Yeah, you're doing the thing that girl did." She goes, "Yeah," and this is my five-year-old. So, she's just funny.

Logan Ury

I'm couldn't be more happy about this intro.

Sam Parr

Well, I feel, Logan, that you are incredibly confident, but you're also, in a good way, a bit conniving. I don't know a better word for it. It's like you see the end goal and you're like, "I'm going to experiment with this, this, this, and this, and I'm just going to follow this process." I don't know a better word to describe it than "calculating." You try things, and I think you said you had a bunch of clients where you would teach them how to date. You mentioned that men were the easiest ones because you would say, "Look, you need to lose weight, you need to dress better, and then you need to get a haircut. I need you to go up and say these five words to this woman, and I need you to do that 50 times." They would go, "Yes, ma'am." Then you'd tell a woman the same thing, and she'd be like, "Well, you're screwed up too." You know what I mean? There was a difference in how people would react to your instruction.

Logan Ury

Well, I think that's why I love "My First Million" and truly am a fan of the show. I've listened to it for years. I think the way that the two of you see the world is that it's a game. If you know the rules, you can win it. I feel like a lot of the show is just teaching people how to play the game, and that's really the way that I like to think about the world. So many times, I'll be like, "Okay, if Sam was on my shoulder, what would he say?" Or, Sam, I'll ask you specifically for your advice on things because I think you sort of just smile your way through life and are like, "Yeah, I could figure that out." Oh, I need to get 30,000 followers on Instagram? Like, duh, just do some shirtless cold plunging videos. Oh wait, that's our other friend! But that's how subtweet.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we're talking about South Hill Blue, but that's how you live. I think that's interesting. Also, we looked at our analytics the other day. **93% of our listeners are men**, and the majority of them are young men. They look at dating like it's this impossible thing, but they view engineering or building businesses as very systematic and process-oriented. It's kind of the same thing, though.

Logan Ury

Totally! Yes, and this is why I'm so excited to talk to the MFM audience. I really feel like I can help them with dating because the way I think about it is that dating is a skill. We're born knowing how to love; we have these natural instincts, but nobody teaches you how to date. Dating is actually pretty new in the span of human history. Think about how people used to get married. Maybe your parcel of land touched somebody else's parcel of land, so your dads would marry you off to combine resources, or it was about economic institutions. But now, starting around the eighteen hundreds, people began dating on their own and creating these partnerships. We don't know how to date; we don't know how to pick a partner for ourselves. I think a lot of people are failing at it, and that's why I'm here—to really help people understand that dating is a skill and you can get better at it.

Sam Parr

Alright, so I've built a few companies that have made a few million dollars a year, and I've built two companies that have made tens of millions of dollars a year. I have a little bit of experience launching, building, and creating new things. I actually don't come up with a lot of original ideas. Instead, what I'm really good at—what my skill set is—is researching different ideas, identifying gaps in the market, and reverse engineering companies. I didn't invent this, by the way. We had this guy, Brad Jacobs, on the podcast. He started four or five different publicly traded companies, each worth tens of billions of dollars. He is actually the one from whom I learned how to do this. With the team at HubSpot, we put together all of my research tactics, frameworks, and techniques on spotting different opportunities in the market, reverse engineering companies, and figuring out exactly where opportunities are. This is in contrast to just coming up with a random, silly idea and throwing it against the wall, hoping that it sticks. So, if you want to see my framework, you can check it out. The link is below in the YouTube description.

Shaan Puri

So, give us like... I don't know, start with something here. What's the first interesting thing that you think is less understood or misunderstood?

Logan Ury

Great! Yes, I've been thinking about your audience. Really, there are a lot of maximizers—people who might feel like they want to find the perfect partner. They keep searching and searching until they find that person. I, too, am a maximizer. It would take me months to even buy an espresso machine! So, that's even worse when it comes to people finding a partner. But the mistake that a lot of people make, especially the MFM maximizer audience, is that they search for too long. What happens is they think, "Okay, I want to find a partner who's the hotness of this girl, the ambition of this girl, and the family background of this girl." They just keep searching until they find that person. What they don't understand is that there's diminishing returns over time. There's this concept called the **secretary problem**. Have you heard of it?

Sam Parr

I'm using it right now to search for an apartment.

Logan Ury

Perfect. Okay, so this comes from a line of mathematical inquiry called **optimal stop theory**, which is about how long you should search and when you should stop. Imagine that you're hiring a secretary and there are a hundred candidates. You have to go through them one at a time. After each one, you have to say yes or no, and you can't go back. So, at what point should you stop? What they say is you should go through the first **thirty-seven** people and identify the single best candidate among those 37. That person now becomes your benchmark. The next time you find someone as good or better than that person, hire them. The idea is you don't want to search too long because then all the good candidates might be in the past. But you also don't want to search too short because you don't know the pool. So, **37%** is approximately the right amount of time. Now, how do you apply that to dating? Imagine, hypothetically, you're going to date from ages **18 to 40**. What is this **37%** mark? It's about **26.1 years old**. By the time you're 26, you have already met about a third of the people, and you have your benchmark person. The next time you find someone you like as much or more than them, marry that person. This is such important advice for people because I think that individuals have their benchmark and then meet someone they like as much. They might say, "Well, if they're great, I can find someone even better." Then they get to be **40, 41, 42**, and all their friends are on their second or third kid while they're still trying to, you know, go to Vegas for the weekend, and no one is available. I think that maximizers do really well in a lot of areas of life, but when it comes to dating, they can actually get left behind in their search for perfection.

Sam Parr

I think Sean, she was at my house one time recently. She was talking to Sarah and she was talking about maximizers. Then she said, "But Sarah, you are a settler" or something like that.

Logan Ury

A satisficer... satisficer, yeah.

Sam Parr

She's like, "You are just okay with like, okay-ness." I, as we can see, Sam.

Logan Ury

Sam and I are both obsessed with Sarah. She is wonderful, so it's not an insult at all. Actually, the research shows that between maximizers and satisficers, satisficers are often happier. It's not that they settle or have a low bar; it's that when they find something that meets their standards, they just buy it, accept it, or move in, whatever the matter is. Maximizers, on the other hand, take longer to make a decision, and once they do, they often question it. Satisficers know what they want, and when they find it, they're happy with it. So, I think Sarah really is a happy satisficer.

Shaan Puri

See, this makes so much sense to me. When I was younger, I started a company with my two best friends. On one hand is my buddy Trevor, and Trevor was like me—now I know the word, he was a maximizer. We would always try new food and new restaurants. Every time we went out to eat, we wanted to try a new place. Every time we tried a new place, we would also try a new dish at that place. The reality is that when you do that, you have a lot of unsatisfying lunches because you try a bunch of stuff that you don't actually like. You're just kind of hunting for that satisfying feeling of finding something great once in a while. Our other buddy would just eat Qdoba all the time. Qdoba is like aggressively mediocre. One day, he said, "Yeah, I'll never try as many foods as you, but I'll be happier every day for lunch." It kind of stuck with me. It's like, oh wow, there really are two different approaches to life. I'm not sure which one's better objectively, but there's definitely a better for me and a better for him. You know what I mean?

Logan Ury

Yeah, so research from Adam Grant, the Wharton professor, finds that **satisficers** are happier and that they make just as good of decisions. You might think, especially someone who listens to this podcast, "No, no, no! I'm going to make the better decision by searching for longer." That's not what the research shows.

Shaan Puri

But let me ask you a question. Okay, so the secretary thing makes sense to me because hiring a secretary is not like life or death stakes. However, hiring the wrong person is probably one of the hardest decisions to untangle yourself from. This approach you have, where you're like, "You should get to 26.1 years old and then marry the next best person you meet," sounds cool. Did you do that? Does anybody actually do that?

Logan Ury

That sounds insane! Tell me about it.

Sam Parr

So, I did. Yep, I mean, I did that. You totally should've too. What year did you meet?

Shaan Puri

With us intentionally, you might have happened to meet somebody when you were 26. You weren't like, "I've gone through 37% of the dating pool. I have a benchmark. Alright, I'm gonna see if anybody's better than Rebecca." That wasn't the way you thought about it.

Sam Parr

What was your number of 37% though?

Shaan Puri

Dude, I went on... I probably went on, I don't know, 20 terrible dates. You know what I mean? Like, 20 terrible dates and two girlfriends in that process. Then, when I met my wife, I was like, "Oh wow, she is not just as good as the benchmark." I wasn't even thinking like that. I was just like, "Wow, she's amazing!" I just went from, "Oh, she's amazing! I want to be with her," and then that was it. It was like a simple caveman thought: "Me like this." You know? That's how I was thinking. I wasn't like... I wasn't mathematicking my way there.

Logan Ury

So, I'll respond to that. People definitely get tripped up in what you just asked about, which is like, "Wait, I'm way past 26.1. Have I ruined it?" It sounds very mathematical, but it's meant to be a metaphor. The idea is that you likely have already met someone who would have been a great partner. Next time you find someone you like as much, commit to that person. Don't keep searching. The 18 to 40 age range is the equivalent of the secretary problem. This is very hypothetical; no one knows how long they'll be single for. The point is that when you've met a bunch of people, you've sort of gotten a sense of your attractiveness in the market, what the people are like, and where you live. When you find someone great, commit to them. I'm very happy to talk about this with both of you because both of you are married with kids. There was a version of you that could have said, "I'm going to wait until I'm at peak fitness and peak wealth, and then find the best possible person I could find."

Logan Ury

But instead, you found people when you were a bit younger, before you reached the level of success you're at today. That person has been on the journey with you. I think people really underestimate the opportunity cost of not committing to someone when they're younger. When you have this partner that's witnessing your life, where you're raising each other, and where you really know them from a younger age, I think there's something so precious about that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's definitely true. Now, the thing you just described, it's like I have a batch of friends in my head. I could... yeah, I'm not gonna name them, but I can.

Sam Parr

Are you... what would the batch be? Wealthy single guys?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but basically, they're still looking. It's like that you found a lot, but you're still not committing, right? So they're becoming 37, 41, 44, and they're just not committing. It's sort of like, I don't know, I think they need to think more like the secretary.

Sam Parr

Peter Pans, they're Peter Pans.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Mhm. A little bit commitment-phobic, a little bit like a maximizer—like, is there something better out there? They might even be in a relationship, but they're neither all the way in nor all the way out. Okay, so I've definitely seen that. On the other hand, there's a group of people who, I feel like, might get to 26 and they have not actually gone through 37% of the dating pool because they're just not putting up numbers. There are very low volume interactions with the other sex. I think there are a bunch of studies about this right now, showing how, you know, a certain percentage of men under the age of 30 haven't even asked anyone out. They're just sort of not dating at all or haven't dated in years. So, what about that side of the barbell? The problem? What's your kind of take, or what have you learned for that group of people?

Logan Ury

Yeah, that's a great segue if we want to talk about what's happening with modern men, which is a topic that I'm pursuing and that I'm really passionate about. It just reminds me, Sean, of this story where I was doing a Valentine's Day segment for Good Morning America. I was talking to one of the participants, and I asked him, "How many dates do you go on?" This was a really good-looking guy, and he said, "Well, at night, I think I could either edit videos, which will help me achieve my career goals for YouTube, or I can go on a date that might be bad. So, I choose editing the videos." I was like, "I am terrified about society!" This guy, who should be out there killing it, is thinking, "Well, my YouTube views are more of a sure thing." Anyway, I think we have a lot of issues that we need to talk about. What we're seeing in the data is that young men are falling behind. There's this report from the UK called the "Lost Boys Report." It shows that among men in the UK aged 16 to 24, one in seven are NEET, which stands for Not in Education, Employment, or Training. This number went up 40% during the pandemic for men, compared to only 7% for women. Across all of these metrics—enrolling in college, graduating from college, earning money—young men are really falling behind. This is an issue for people in this age group, and if you project it out to ten years from now, it's going to be an even bigger issue. Women are into hypergamous mating, which means they want to find someone who's equal to or at a higher level of status and financial success than them. For most of human history, that's worked out well because the guys had the resources, and the women married them. But now, as women are out-earning men and being more educated than men, there just literally isn't this pool of men for them to date. So, there's this mating crisis where women are asking, "Where's the guy on my level?" and they just aren't there. Right now, 60% of college enrollment is women, and soon it's going to be two-thirds. What that means is that when it's two-thirds women, half of those women won't have an equivalent guy with a college degree. You really have an issue where women want a certain type of guy, and that guy doesn't exist. I'm already seeing this with many of my friends—attractive, confident, successful women in their late thirties and early forties—they're just not dating. There just aren't guys available to them. I live in the Bay Area, and you know who's available to them? Polyamorous guys who are like, "Yeah, you can have a third of me." So, this woman has to decide, "Do I want zero of a guy, or do I want a third of a good guy?" I truly think that this is part of the reason why we're seeing the rise of poly relationships: there just aren't enough great guys. We have this crisis, and we're already seeing the impact of it. The marriage rate is nearing an all-time low in the U.S., and the fertility rate has dropped 20% in twenty years. So, truly, if fewer people are getting together—fewer marriages, fewer babies—this is actually a crisis for humanity.

Sam Parr

Did you see? How do you guys remember "Six Four Blue Eyes, Trust Fund"? Remember that song?

Logan Ury

Six five.

Sam Parr

Yeah, five. It's somewhat.

Shaan Puri

Like inflation, what are you doing here?

Sam Parr

And someone did the math and they were like, "This is like 20 men in New York City."

Shaan Puri

Like, yeah.

Sam Parr

You know, if you do the analysis of like total need, you have to have a trust fund. You need to be single, you need to be in your twenties, and you need to be at least six five. You know, whatever, work in finance. It was like 20 people. Is there a thing? I think I read somewhere. I think I talked to my friend Amanda, who ran The League, and then my friend Dawoon, who had a dating app called OkCupid. She was telling me about how...

Shaan Puri

Oh, she... yeah.

Logan Ury

She had Coffee Meets Bagel. Sorry, Coffee Meets Bagel.

Sam Parr

Meets Bagel, and she was telling me how... I think you told me to set Hinge. You have a lot of this data that, like, it's basically just a few women who all get likes. It doesn't matter if you're like a 2 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. It's like kind of a binary system for men, which is like, "Yeah, I would love to go out with you for..."

Shaan Puri

Is that what I would mean? Yeah, like it could... it could.

Sam Parr

Be take.

Shaan Puri

You on a ride?

Sam Parr

I would love to hang out with you. For women or for men, it was like 5% or something that dominated. It was like a winners-take-all market. What's the data behind that?

Logan Ury

Yeah, so one stat I can tell you is that a lot of women set their height filter at six feet or taller. Only 14% of the men in the U.S. are six feet or taller. So, you have women coming up to me at dinner parties, holding up their phones, saying, "I'm unhinged! Where's my husband? Where is he?" And I'm like, "Yeah, he can't even get into your app because he's five nine, and you're filtering him out." It's like your app is a club, and your filters are a bouncer filtering him out. I do think that apps have perpetuated this thing where, because you can set filters, which maybe you think about for thirty seconds—you're like, "Yeah, six feet is good"—and then you don't even realize the implications of that. Now, when you multiply that across millions of people who are using apps, then yes, a disproportionate amount of attention goes to these guys over six feet, and then the other guys are sitting there waiting to hear back from someone.

Sam Parr

I used to set my filter to like a really tall woman because I wanted to increase my odds. You know, like, have you ever seen Sean? Have you ever seen the back end of what making...?

Shaan Puri

A basketball.

Sam Parr

Have you ever seen the back end of a woman's ad?

Shaan Puri

You were like, "I'll go fishing over here." Yes, there's not a lot of people over here.

Sam Parr

Yeah, like there's not a lot of people who set their default to 5'10" for a woman. Have you ever seen the bat? Like, have you ever seen a woman? I, you know, I haven't dated in over ten years, but have you ever seen like Tinder? Every person she clicks on is a yes.

Shaan Puri

Oh, like when they swipe right, it's a match. But for guys, you're like swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe... no match.

Sam Parr

It's basically a match 100% of the time, Logan, isn't it?

Logan Ury

No, it totally depends on who the woman is. Also, that's not exactly how the algorithm works because they don't only show you people who have already said yes to you. So it wouldn't be like that. But I think, certainly for certain women, they get so many more people interested in them than they could ever go through. Then I would swipe.

Shaan Puri

Yes, on literally everyone, I would do a whole hybrid. Okay, Sam, we know.

Logan Ury

Sam, we know you know hot women. We get it.

Shaan Puri

Put your status as, "Listen, if you're saying me, I'm interested."

Sam Parr

Yes, and I would get no "yeses"—like none.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, dude. When I was on a dating app, it was brutal. I was so old that it was back in the day when you had to handwrite messages to each person. There was no swiping. I mean, I was on OkCupid.

Logan Ury

Right, yeah. So, carrier.

Shaan Puri

Let's play a game.

Logan Ury

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

If I'm... let's start with, I'm a guy on the dating app. Then we're going to do, I'm a girl on the dating app. What are the simple things I should be doing differently to increase my odds of success? And you're the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, so if anyone should know, it's you.

Logan Ury

Great! Yeah, I'm actually going to answer that by saying what everyone should be doing. Then I have specific guy things.

Shaan Puri

Okay.

Logan Ury

So, let's just talk really quickly about a great profile. Your profile is far and beyond the thing that matters the most because it's like you're buying a billboard on the 101 in the Bay Area. What are you going to put on that expensive billboard? You want to have a really good first photo that clearly shows your face—no filters, no sunglasses. You should invest in a good photo. It doesn't have to be a professional photo, but people want to see what you look like. Honestly, the quality of male profiles is so low that if you just follow these instructions, you're going to...

Shaan Puri

Guys, are you talking like it's... like you're dressed up? Is it casual, doll?

Logan Ury

It doesn't have to be dressed up, but it's important to have good lighting. Maybe have a friend take it in portrait mode. It should not be grainy or anything like that.

Shaan Puri

Have you ever just asked a friend to take a photo of you with good lighting? I have never done that in my life. So, like, that is...

Sam Parr

A pool of pictures... Dude, I'd rather go to the dentist than ask a friend to take a picture of me.

Logan Ury

That's so funny! So, okay, at some point, your mom takes a good picture of you and you upload it. Then you want one picture of you with your friends because we need to see that you have a social life. It could be friends or family. Do you know this meme from a long time ago of like 10 white guys at a baseball game, and each of them is popping their head out a little bit more? Yeah, it's like you don't want a photo where you all look the same, but we should be able to see, like, "This is what your life is like." Then, one of you doing an activity that you like. Maybe you're into hiking or cooking. I know this probably seems so awkward for guys, like, "How am I gonna get these photos?" But it really does matter. I heard this story about when this woman saw this guy's app profile and it was like all Burning Man pictures. She said, "I'm not into Burning Man at all," and then she swiped left. A few years later, she met him, and she really liked him. Now they're married, and when they talked about it, he said, "Oh yeah, I only went to Burning Man once. I didn't like it, but those were the only photos I had."

Shaan Puri

Right.

Logan Ury

So, he didn't realize that.

Shaan Puri

It was really sending him back. Do you guys?

Logan Ury

Do a thought in crisis.

Shaan Puri

Do you guys do calling? All the challenges just pop up like, "Hey guys, listen, we know you got nothing. Okay, just come here on Saturday morning. You're gonna get your picture for hands." Like, do you guys do that? Is there a thing like that?

Logan Ury

The next My First Million event, you should have a photographer there who's taking app profile photos. Forget Winston.

Shaan Puri

Great idea! That's a great idea: a singles booth.

Sam Parr

Get out.

Shaan Puri

of here

Sam Parr

Photos... How many photos do you have of you and your children versus your wife and your children? Because I know at my house, Sarah is always the one taking the pictures. I would not, in a million years, pull out my phone and say, "Here, let me capture this for you."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, she asks all the time for me, like, "Hey, take this picture."

Sam Parr

Oh...

Logan Ury

God, that's so funny! That's like my main feedback from my husband: "You don't take enough pictures of..."

Sam Parr

Me with my daughter... It's so funny. Sarah's like, "I have no photos of me and our baby. Can you please start taking some?"

Logan Ury

More photos.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, seriously.

Sam Parr

Man, just don't do it.

Shaan Puri

So you're saying profile matters the most? Get a good hero shot, which is you. You can see your face, good lighting, and a great activity picture. Just make sure it's you and your friends, but not you and five identical friends.

Logan Ury

Perfect, like you.

Shaan Puri

Gotta have some diversity here. You want to stand out in that picture. Are we talking about, you know, what's that theory where it's like you want to be the hottest out of your group? If somebody, you know, like, "Oh yeah, are you conniving like that?" Can we go Machiavellian and just...?

Logan Ury

There is a funny theory in behavioral science, which is that people don't make decisions in a vacuum. They make decisions through comparison.

Shaan Puri

Right, so if...

Logan Ury

You have a friend who looks like you but is slightly less attractive. Then that'll make you look even more attractive, right?

Shaan Puri

Right.

Logan Ury

I wouldn't say I've tried that in the wild, but there is some data to back that up.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so call the girl. We even told him, "You're the ugly friend, dude. You just gotta go." It was like, "Dude, either I'm at the bottom or I'm going to the middle." And guess what? **Chaos is a ladder, baby!** You're going to the bottom. I'm in the middle now.

Logan Ury

And then on Hinge, there are these prompts that you fill out, which are icebreakers. I really feel like this is a chance for a lot of guys to shine because so many of the profiles I look at are just pretty weak here. You want to have a mixture of **humor** and **vulnerability**. You can be funny, you can be sarcastic, you can give your hot takes, but then also have somewhere you show that you have a heart and you're not just silly. Hinge now has this AI profile feedback tool, which will say something like, "Go deeper, say a little bit more." So you can really think about what are the three things that you want to get across on your profile. Maybe the fact that you're family-oriented, that you love the Warriors, and that you're really into cooking. Well, make sure through your profile pictures and your prompts that you're getting that across.

Sam Parr

What else can a guy do to stand out in these ads?

Logan Ury

Yeah, so then the next thing is that, especially for people who aren't getting a lot of matches, your profile is the number one thing. You should send comments with your likes because it really helps you stand out. So if you're a guy who's like, "I'm just not getting that many matches," and you're thinking, "I'm just going to go for quantity," and send a bunch of likes, well, it's much better to send a thoughtful comment with that because you're more likely to stand out. Another insider tip that I've heard is that guys are often lazy and they only comment on like the first picture or the first prompt on a girl's profile. So if you actually scroll down and comment on something lower, you have a higher chance of being more original because fewer people have ever commented on that.

Shaan Puri

And how do you comment without being just like totally thirsty or just lame? So what's a good comment versus a bad comment there?

Logan Ury

Okay, so there's this line from Chris Rock, which is: "If a girl's name is Eve, don't walk up to her and say, 'Hi, I'm Adam.' She's heard that a million times." So instead of comedy, you might think like the best joke is the third punchline you come up with because the first or second, other people can come up with it. For example, if a person has a picture of themselves skiing and says, "Where was this taken?" Don't say, "I think it's Whistler." It's like, "Cool, you and everyone else." But if you can write back something witty, like, "Okay, I'm going to challenge you to a black diamond," or whatever people who ski say, then it's a much better way of getting into a conversation. So really, you're trying to show your value here. You're trying to show your level of wit and humor. You don't have to overthink it, but just think about what is a way to get into a conversation with someone, especially something that not every other guy has already said.

Sam Parr

It seems so much easier if I look at the math of you saying, like, what was the stat? How many women have been approached in real life, or how many men approached? What was it like? Most men now...

Shaan Puri

Zero. Yeah, in real life.

Sam Parr

So then, wouldn't it be just so much easier? I met my wife in a real-life setting. Even back then, when this was less common but still common, it just seemed so much easier to meet people by kind of pretending that you're confident. Like, even just saying "hi" to them... it was so much easier that way. Shouldn't we just teach guys to do that?

Logan Ury

I think this is a big issue in modern dating. Almost everyone I talk to says, "I want to meet someone the old-fashioned way. I'm romantic; I don't want to meet someone on an app." But then, if you ask them if they're meeting people in real life, they basically say no. Last summer, there were run clubs where everyone was meeting, but I haven't met a single couple that met through the run club. I think we're having this issue with Gen Z, where they don't necessarily want to be on apps; they want to meet people in real life, but they don't have the social skills to do it. There's this huge problem with the younger daters that I talk to: they lack rejection resilience. This goes down a whole pathway of parenting. They had helicopter parents and snowplow parents who kind of plowed the way for them. They never had to deal with issues. They had colleges that bent to their every will, and if their dog had an ear infection, they didn't have to turn in a paper. You have these workplaces where they can take a sick day for any random reason. Then, you want the person to go up to someone at a coffee shop and be able to deal with rejection? They don't have the skills to do that. So yes, if everyone listened to this and got really good at approaching women, making them feel both comfortable and flattered, and had a good opening line—like, "Bring on the babies!"—that would be great. But people are lacking the social skills right now to do that. I think in a post-Me Too era, there is this fine line between confident and creepy that people have not figured out yet.

Sam Parr

How did you meet your wife, Sean? In real life or through an app?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, in real life, she was best friends growing up with my cousin. So, through like a... kind of like I was there to do something for my cousin, she was there to do something for my cousin. We kind of bumped into each other that way. I thought that was a much easier thing because I didn't have to approach her with a pickup line. It's like I had an hour where we were hanging out, and I just had to try to make her laugh. So, alright, if I could just get her to laugh three times in this hour, that’s going to be pretty good. Alright, that’s my goal. I was just trying to be as entertaining and, you know, fun as possible for an hour.

Logan Ury

So, there's this concept called the **power of weak ties**, which is the idea that you're much more likely to get a job from an acquaintance than from one of your close friends. This is because your close friends have such overlapping lives with you that they know the same opportunities you know. However, an acquaintance—like someone you met at a wedding a few years ago and are still Instagram friends with—might know something that you don't. The same thing is true with dating. For example, Sam, you didn't meet your wife through your sibling's best friend; it was your cousin. One thing that people listening to this can do is **expand their network**. Leave your house, go out, make new friends, meet people, volunteer, or join boards of organizations. The more friends and acquaintances you have, the wider your network becomes. This increases the chance that you will have a weak tie who will eventually introduce you to your spouse. One of the reasons I was so excited for this conversation is that I love teaching people the strategies that Sam used to meet Sarah, which I can happily summarize. Or, Sam, if you want to summarize, we can do that too.

Shaan Puri

I think you should do it. I want to hear your take on this.

Logan Ury

Okay, this is my like Sam super fandom. One thing that Sam did that I really like, because I think it shows vulnerability but is also very masculine, is that Sam asked, "How can I be the most attractive mate possible?" He decided to make himself more interesting. So, Sam really planted a lot of seeds and worked on being more interesting. He was like, "Wow, when I talk about my interest in denim and then I'm going to a denim meet, women seem to be into that." He was genuinely passionate about it, but he also knew how to talk about it. He was also like, "Well, I'm not making that much money right now, but I want to show that I have a growth mindset and that I'm very ambitious. Potentially, I'll be successful long term." Sam also likes to test out his stories. He thought, "How do I know what the best story is? How do I know what the funniest story is?" So, he practiced over time to get better at it. I think that if somebody is a super fan of both of you, they might think, "Oh, these guys are just so smooth. I bet it was so easy for them." But you were intentional, Sam, about being the best possible, most attractive mate, and then you snagged a baddie.

Sam Parr

Well, I want to say, first of all, I have three things to say. The first one is **thank you**. The second one is that I realized that **effort goes a long way**. The best way to be attractive to a woman is to work on myself and bring her along in my life, which hopefully is full of interesting things. Even if it's something as nerdy as denim, the best thing about being a man when it comes to attracting a woman is that if you're passionate about anything, it doesn't matter how lame it is—that's kind of attractive. The third thing is that if you're going to say all these positive things, you have to say the line that I used to meet her.

Logan Ury

No, I don't want to bring it up.

Sam Parr

So, you're acting like I'm...

Shaan Puri

Like Craig, cut to a HubSpot commercial.

Sam Parr

Okay, so Sean, do...

Logan Ury

You know what this line is?

Shaan Puri

This line, I can't believe he's voluntarily saying this right now.

Logan Ury

I thought we were going to skip over this.

Sam Parr

No, I don't mind saying it. So basically, my wife Sarah walked in. We were at a happy hour, and I was with my friend Lily. I said, "Lily, that woman looks fantastic! I'm not leaving until she talks to me." As I was saying that, she came up to me, and I didn't know what to say in time. So I asked, "Excuse me, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil?" She looked at her friend and said, "I don't know." I replied, "I don't pay $500 to have a lentil on my face!" For those of us today, I'm talking about a chickpea on my face. She gasped, and I added, "Classic hummus joke, am I right?" Then I said, "Hi, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you." It absolutely helped!

Logan Ury

Oh my God, we need a warning label that says, "Do not tread this at all."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, just say, "Hit the skip button," then move forward thirty seconds if you just never want to change the way you look at Sam again. Sam, why did you say that, by the way? Had you said that before? Why would that be the first thing to come to mind? I don't...

Logan Ury

Remember reading that in the game.

Sam Parr

What an absurd line! I don't know, it just came to me.

Shaan Puri

Where did you read that? Where did that even come from?

Sam Parr

I don't remember how a friend told me that joke. I don't remember, but I thought it would have worked. Here's another one.

Logan Ury

One homosexual.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm a freak. I had just finished a cross-country motorcycle trip literally the day before, and I had all these pictures. This was in February 2014. I had all these pictures on Facebook of my cross-country motorcycle trip. So instead of asking for her phone number, I was like, "Here, let me friend you on Facebook and we'll talk there." I front-loaded my photos with all these pictures where I looked cool, and that also helped. So I did try all those things you said were true, and also, I'm still a filthy, filthy animal. I say things like I said, and it also worked.

Logan Ury

Let me give the postgame analysis a bit. I wouldn't recommend that line because I think it could definitely be misinterpreted. But at least you had the guts to say something.

Sam Parr

I think it would be interpreted perfectly okay.

Logan Ury

It's true. I mean, Sarah knew what she was signing up for. I feel like you're consistent, but I think this feels like a very "of the moment" thing. If you just sit at home waiting for the perfect line, then you'll never approach someone. Sam did not have the perfect line, but he just said something, and it made an impression. I feel like what you said about effort is exactly right. In a lot of the research I've been doing this year about how men and women are becoming increasingly polarized, right? Women are way more liberal than men right now in how they voted. People used to vote across racial lines, and now they're actually voting across gender lines for the first time in history. Men in the U.S. are more religious; they're more likely to go to church than women. We're just seeing that men and women are really being polarized. So how do we actually get people to connect and create these couples, have babies, etc.? One thing through my research is that men think, "Oh, women expect me to be perfect. I have to be tall, financially successful, all these things." What the women are saying is, "We just want you to put some effort in. Just remember my coffee order, know the name of my best friend at work." I feel like effort is just underappreciated. As I said, if you have a good profile that's a seven out of ten, you're still way ahead of a lot of the guys out there. When it comes to the basic things that men can do, here's a list of a few of them. A lot of women say to me, "I go on dates that are zero questions." They ask the guy tons of questions, and the guys didn't ask them a single question. When I talk to guys, I ask, "Hey, how did this happen?" They say, "Well, she asked me a question. If she wanted to answer it, she should've just answered it already." I was like, "No, ask her the question back. Make her feel interesting." I think that's a huge tip: make people feel interesting.

Sam Parr

Have you guys seen *Love on the Spectrum*? All the autistic kids, they all say the same thing at first, and it's the greatest line ever. I guess they're taught in a dating school or something. They say, "So, what are your interests?" and they all say that. It's the best line ever! It's just such a good line.

Logan Ury

Obsessed with *Love on the Spectrum*.

Sam Parr

So, what are your interests? If I said that to someone, or someone said that to me, I'd be like, "How much time you got? I can go all day."

Logan Ury

So, I think this goes back to the Dale Carnegie stuff: **be interested, not interesting**. People think, "I have to have the best stories. I have to have the Facebook photos of my motorcycle trip." No, you know what people actually want to do? They want to talk about themselves. Ask them questions and seem very interested in them. This will make the other person like you. There's all this research that shows in conversations where one person is talking a lot and the other person is asking questions, the first person thinks, "Wow, that other person's a great conversationalist." What that actually means is they made me feel interesting and important. So, I think that there's so much that men can do just by asking questions, asking follow-up questions, and really being interested in somebody. Remembering stuff is key. If a girl says on a date, "I have a big project that's due on Tuesday," then text her Monday night or Tuesday morning and say, "How did that go?" These little things go a long way.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think what I'm hearing is, you know, in this podcast we talk about certain businesses where you go into a space and it's just like there's a sleepy incumbent. You know, there may be everybody in that space still operating on pen and paper. They don't do any marketing, and it just feels like, "Oh man, you're shooting fish in a barrel." If you just go and you just try, you just do the basics, you will clean up in that area. It basically sounds like dating is like this. I think in most of my single friends, the way they talk about dating is almost like it's this impossible game. But hey, I'm still putting up, I'm still fighting the good fight. And then I hear what you're talking about, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Actually, nobody tries in a way that matters. So, you know, my same friends who are talking about it like it's an impossible game, if I bet if I ask them, "Hey, when's the last time you updated your profile? Let me just see your profile real quick. How much effort did you put into this?" And it's like, "Yo, this is your landing page. This is what everybody is seeing. This is how they're making their decisions." And you put fourteen minutes of work into it when you're signing up, just speeding through to get on the app, and then you never really touched it again. Well, that's the problem, right? You're just not investing the effort in the simple things that are gonna make a difference. Everything you said, like even if you just throw out any of the specifics, like it's not about the good lighting or it's not about the photo with friends or whatever. It's literally like try on the things that matter. Sounds like, you know, the biggest takeaway is that most people are either not trying or they're trying on the things that don't matter. They're spending a lot of time swiping, but that's not the thing that's gonna help you actually find somebody.

Logan Ury

Yes, Sean, I love your ability to really summarize and bring out the most important points. I think "Try on the Things That Matter" is an incredible headline for this discussion. Because yes, if you are taller, will you have an advantage on the app? A percentage of that is a bias that is baked into these filters. But if you just give up because you're not over six feet tall, then that's a choice that you're making. Why not have a better profile? Why not have a friend take pictures of you, even if it's, you know, more embarrassing or painful than going to the dentist? Why not send comments with likes? If you really are serious about finding someone, then there are just basic things that you can do that will set you ahead of most other men.

Shaan Puri

Right, and you only need one, which is my favorite thing about a lot of the best things in life. Like, you know, business success. I failed for nine years, and then I had one success, and all of a sudden I was a millionaire. It's like, "Oh, you only needed one." I didn't need all of these to work; I needed one to work. The same thing applies to dating. You only need one to work, really, to make it work.

Sam Parr

But it definitely helps to put up numbers, though. I think like... I remember dating, and I was like, "When it rains, it pours." I remember when I was able to get one person interested in me, I would be more confident and then go after more and more. I was like, "Oh, I'm killing it!" And I'm like, "Why did I not do this earlier?" But it's hard to get over that first one. That is really hard, like the rejection of...

Logan Ury

My also knew where to stop because there's a version where you were like, "If I can get Sarah, who else can I get?" Instead, you were like, "I could get Sarah. Like, hell yeah, this is my wife!"

Shaan Puri

Logan, you have this thing called "date like a scientist." What does that mean?

Logan Ury

Yes, I definitely think that this is sort of the "My First Million" approach to dating. **Date like a scientist** just means being willing to run experiments and see what works. If the business equivalent is throwing up a landing page or running some Google ads, then that's what this is in dating. So, let's say that I'm coaching a guy and he says, "Okay, well I need a woman who has a graduate degree." Then I'll say, "Okay, daily scientist, date someone without a graduate degree." Maybe what you're actually looking for is someone who's intellectually curious, and you're using a graduate degree as a proxy for that. Let's just have you date other types of people and see what happens. I do this for women around dating guys who have a different job than they expected or who are shorter than they expected. The whole idea is that as we get older, we get clearer and clearer on what we think we want in a relationship. I have people who walk into my office and say, "Here's a spreadsheet of all the women I've dated over the last ten years, and I know exactly what I want. I want a 5'7", skinny, redhead who's Jewish and plays tennis." I'm like, "I think you're wrong. I think that's what you think you want, but let's actually test and see who actually makes you happy long term." So, **date like a scientist** is being willing to run experiments, being proven right or wrong, and actually getting clearer on who's going to make you happy long term instead of assuming that you know.

Sam Parr

Is there any science to this? A lot of my friends are Indian, and their parents had arranged marriages. Many of them are just lovely couples, and they're very happy. I've always thought life is a lot better when you have less choice. The way I went into marriage was with the mindset that this is forever. There is no such thing as divorce, you know? I come from an Irish Catholic background, and that's just what you're taught. For some reason, I think that you're happier that way. If I'm miserable, it's just like, "Yeah, that's fine. I'm going to be miserable, and hopefully, I'll make it better," versus wondering if there are other options. There's something about finality or having no other choice that I think makes me happier. Is there anything to that?

Logan Ury

Yeah, there is a lot of research on that. When you compare love marriages versus arranged marriages, love marriages usually start off happier. However, around the five-year mark, arranged marriages tend to be happier. It's exactly what you said, Sam. It's the fact that you're committed and you're in it. You don't consider failure as an option. For example, if my husband's working too much and I feel stressed out and I miss him, I'm going to commit to working out this situation with him versus giving up. There are nuances to the data, and it depends on whether or not the culture allows for divorce and things like that. But I think the key point is that when you think about things as temporary, you just don't commit to them as much. I was actually at the Dialogue Conference, and this guy mentioned that he thinks marriages should be like cell phone contracts. Every seven years, you decide to recommit or not, and there should be a conversation about it. I thought, "That's a cute thing to say," but that's not what the research supports. If you have an apartment versus owning a home, are you going to put wallpaper on the wall or get a new dishwasher? No, you're going to think, "This is temporary. I have one foot out the door." But when you own your home and you're really committed, you invest a lot in it because you think about it as a forever investment. So, when you really think about being committed, being in this, and doing whatever it takes to work, that really produces better long-term results.

Sam Parr

I'm on this **Warren Buffett** kick because he just retired, and so I'm rereading a bunch of **Warren Buffett** books. He's got this thing where he tells his managers, as well as any aspiring entrepreneurs, when they ask him, "How do I build a great company?" Because **Berkshire Hathaway** is famous for buying great companies, he said three things: 1. **Act like this business is the only business that you own.** You are not allowed to have any other business. 2. **Assume that your entire net worth is in this business.** 3. **Assume that you can't sell this business for at least the next fifty years.** If you do that, I think you'll make better decisions. It's kind of funny how what you're saying for dating and what Warren says for business, and what I think a lot of us know for business, are a lot of similar things.

Shaan Puri

I want to add one thing to that, which is that I was at...

Logan Ury

A Jewish Indian wedding this past weekend was really beautiful. Especially my friend, who's Indian; her parents live in Atlanta and they didn't have any other family there. However, they have built this beautiful community around them called Potluck. You can just see the power of the community. During the Sangeet, so many people from the Potluck community were dancing, and the children of Potluck are all friends. I think people underestimate how important it is to have a community around you. We are not meant to just be married and have this one person that fulfills all of our goals in every aspect of our lives. We need a community to support us, to talk about our partner with, to help us when one person is sick, and to assist with childcare. Watching this beautiful Indian community, who really showed up for this wedding and helped shape the bride into who she is, inspired me to invest even more in my community.

Sam Parr

What are you going to say, Sean? Were you...?

Shaan Puri

Well, I was going to ask about... Alright, so I'm just thinking about my friends who are single. I'm trying to think, if I was going to send them this episode, what question would I ask to make it most valuable for them? Alright, so here's two scenarios. **Scenario one:** You go on a date. It was good, but it wasn't like, "Wow, I met the one; that was my soulmate." You don't have that level of absolute clarity and conviction. So, what is the post-date psychology? After going on a date, how should I be thinking post-date in order to... you know, I want to give things a chance, but I also don't want to string things along if I'm settling for something that's not really what I want.

Sam Parr

Don't you have a thing on that, Logan?

Logan Ury

About Spark, that is kind of my tagline.

Sam Parr

Go ahead.

Logan Ury

Yeah, so Sean, I have this sort of tagline called **"Fuck the Spark,"** which is this idea that through ten years of coaching, I'll talk to a guy, I'll help him with a date, and he'll come over to my house afterward. I'll say, "How was it?" and he'll say, "She was great, she was beautiful, it was fun. I'm never gonna see her again." I'm like, "Are you crazy? What are you talking about?" And he's like, "I just didn't feel the spark." The spark has become my nemesis, where people expect to show up and feel this rom-com moment of butterflies and rainbows. They will give up if they don't feel that. So, I've developed these three myths of the spark. **The first myth** is: *If I don't feel it from the beginning, it can't grow.* That's absolutely not true. Only 11% of people experience love at first sight, and many people develop feelings over time. This is why people marry someone in their apartment building or marry someone at work; it grows over time. **The second myth** is: *If you feel the spark, it's a good thing.* That's also not always true. Some people are just really sparky; they give that feeling to everyone. Then you're like, "Oh my god, there's something special between me and that person." It's like, "No honey, he gives that feeling to everyone. He's very sparky," and he could also be narcissistic, and that's why it's happening. **The third myth** is: *If you have a spark, then the relationship is viable.* That's also not true. You can start really hot and heavy, and then it fades over time. So, my antidote to that is the **slow burn.** I feel like I married the slow burn, and Sam can attest to that. I don't think my husband is the most charming person you'll ever meet, but he's really smart and really funny. He takes time to warm up. By giving him more time, I found this amazing lottery pick, and I feel like I won the lottery. But if I had just been looking for the sparkiest person, we wouldn't have wound up together. So, I think if you feel zero attraction, especially for men, don't go on the second date. It's not gonna go from zero to something. But if you feel some attraction, then give that person another chance, especially if you don't go on that many dates.

Shaan Puri

And if you were... okay, so like sometimes when you study a subject a lot or you try to help a lot of people, to that individual person, their problem feels very unique, very special, and very hard. But like you've seen a hundred of these, and maybe even to the hundred, you could sit there and think, "Oh man, I feel like I could help you so much." I don't have all the time in the world, but there's almost this feeling like if I could just shake you and get you to either do one thing, understand one thing, or take on one mindset, what's the one that if you could just shake people and be like, "Alright, they've got that," and then that will have all these positive benefits? I don't know if it's different for men and women, you know, that you run into, but what's the advice you just want to shake somebody and just be like, "If you just really internalize this or did this action, it would really change your game?"

Logan Ury

We talked about "Fuck the Spark." We talked about "Date Like a Scientist." So, the last one left for this is my concept called the **Three Dating Tendencies**. People can take the quiz on my website, and it tells you which tendency you are. This really helps people have language for what's going on with them.

Shaan Puri

I just took it. By the way, do you want me to tell you my results?

Logan Ury

I assume that you're a maximizer.

Shaan Puri

I scored equally high on **hesitator** and **maximizer** tendencies.

Logan Ury

That's so funny. Okay, let me explain what all of those are.

Shaan Puri

Well, I mean, it's obviously kind of fall. Like, I'm not dating, so I just kind of had like... I

Logan Ury

Kinda put myself back into.

Shaan Puri

The mindset of, like, you know, 24-year-old me, says who you are as a **hesitator**. You don't think you're ready for dating because you're not the person you want to be yet. You hold yourself to a high standard. You want to be completely ready before you start a new project, and the same goes for dating. Your motto as a hesitator is, "I'll wait till I'm a catch." Then, who you are as a **maximizer** is that you love doing research, exploring your options, and turning over every stone until you find the right one. You make decisions carefully, and you want to be 100% certain before you make your choice. Your motto as a maximizer is, "Why settle?" Then it gives you advice on how to operate, knowing that those are your tendencies.

Logan Ury

Right, and the last one is the **romanticizer**, which men tend to score lower on. Basically, it's someone who's obsessed with the "we met" story. They say, "I want to find my soulmate; I'll know it when I see it." They're so focused on the rom-com element that they ignore a lot of great potential partners. When they actually hit a bump in the road, instead of thinking, "I'll have a work-it-out mindset and I'll work through it," they think, "Well, if it was my soulmate, then we wouldn't have issues," and they end the relationship. I think having this language is very helpful for people because I get emails from men all the time that say, "I'm a hesitator; I'm not putting myself out there." I'm like, "Great! You just need to go from zero to one. You just need to be on dates." For the **maximizer**, my advice is what I said at the beginning of the episode: understand that you can keep searching forever to find the perfect person, but you'll miss out on choosing someone great and building something together.

Sam Parr

What's going to happen in like ten years, fifteen years, or twenty years with a lot of the kids who are 25 right now and 20 years old? The fact is, it's pretty crazy that you're saying... I mean, we already know this: most women want someone who's above them or who provides. But amongst my company—and I don't know about you, Sean—the women are kicking the dudes' asses. If you take a man and a woman who are both 25, the 25-year-old woman is a better employee. For example, we had an event the other day, and the women dressed wonderfully; they looked presentable. The men, I had to pull aside and say, "Dude, you gotta dress nicer at these things. At least tuck your T-shirt in." Typically, the men ask for more money but are less good at their jobs. The men tend to be sloppier; they think it's cool not to care. There are a bunch of issues that I've noticed—themes, and this is a small sample size of dozens of employees. But what's going to happen in like twenty years? Is it just going to be a bunch of single people and fewer children? Or is it just going to be a bunch of women who are married to older men who are richer than them? I don't know... what is it going to be?

Logan Ury

Yeah, so first of all, I do my research through talking to people now and seeing patterns. I recognize that I think productions are pretty hard, but I will throw some things at the wall and see if any of them end up being true. One of them is that I do think we are going to continue to have this mating gap. As you say, women continue to thrive in terms of education and employment, and then there just aren't enough great guys for them. I'm seeing, at least among my friends, the rise of single mothers by choice. Women hit 40, and they're like, "I didn't find the guy, but I still want to be a mom." They use a sperm donor or a known donor, and they actually have kids on their own. Another thing is the rise of polyamory. A lot of these relationships involve women who are willing to have less of a great guy than a guy that they're not interested in. Another thing that we haven't talked about yet is just the rise of AI and AI companionship. I'm getting ads all the time from Replika, you know, "Get your perfect AI boyfriend. He always says the right things."

Sam Parr

Women love this, by the way. I think more than men. I believe women are liking AI boyfriends more than men are liking AI girlfriends. I did not think it was going to be that way, but I know so many women who feel like they are in love with their ChatGPT.

Logan Ury

I haven't seen the research on that yet. My hunch would just be that men are more early adopters here and, like, more desperate. But it could be the case.

Shaan Puri

Replica is more of the AI boyfriend use case than the AI girlfriend.

Logan Ury

Oh, that's very interesting.

Shaan Puri

Because, okay.

Logan Ury

Well, there.

Shaan Puri

You go and like VC Twitter, it was always like, "Oh, AI girlfriends are going to be huge." But actually, AI boyfriends have been the dominant use case so far.

Logan Ury

So, imagine that you have some combination of AI glasses with really high-definition pornography, a very realistic sex robot, and companionship from your AI boyfriend or girlfriend. Why are you going to approach someone in a coffee shop and risk rejection? Why would you want a girlfriend who bugs you to pick up your socks when this chatbot is sycophantic and tells you how great you are all the time? As the friction gets lower and lower to having a digital spouse or partner, the effort required for human relationships just feels extra hard. That is something I'm worried about. If you don't have the motivation and you're just watching Twitch, watching other people live their lives, are people just going to slowly die off because we're not actually dating and mating?

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's your prediction.

Logan Ury

I think that's just one of the issues. Other things are that women are going to have to change their expectations, and men are going to have to raise the bar on themselves. Women right now are saying, "I'm going to earn as much or more than you." I also have to do a lot of the labor around having a kid and raising a kid. I have this double burden of domestic and work responsibilities. So, no longer is a guy being a provider enough, and that's what it was for a long time. Now, you need to be emotionally intelligent. Emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating, but guys were not raised to do that. They were not told how to be emotionally intelligent. They were basically told from a young age to be successful, be a provider, and make money. Now the game has changed, and they're caught without those skills. On the other side of it, when they are vulnerable, women often react negatively, thinking, "Oh no, you seem weak. I'm turned off by that." So, I think that the genders are overlapping more. Women have to be more masculine in the workplace, while men have to be more feminine in relationships. Some of that blurring is making dating worse and relationships more confusing. I think that dating hasn't caught up with the reality that people just do not know how to act in this modern world. We need to figure out some changes so that people actually still want to be in partnership.

Sam Parr

I am so thankful that I don't have to deal with this bullshit. Oh my god, bring me back to the sixties where I worked with asbestos. I had a high... you know, my average life expectancy. I'm 66 years old and I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day because this sounds really hard.

Shaan Puri

Remember when there was that huge tsunami in Southeast Asia? I don't know if you know this, Sam, but I was there the day before it hit. We happened to leave, and then the next day we turned on the TV and our hotel was floating in the ocean. I feel a little bit like that. I'm like, "Wow, we got out of there." You know, I'm really glad I got out of there because all these shifts are sort of headwinds. None of the things you described are tailwinds that are making it easier. But you know, easy might not be the only criteria here. The way you're describing dating is that dating is a skill. It's an endeavor, just like any of your other endeavors. It's going to take some effort, some rejection, and some resilience. It's going to take you leveling up your skill if you want to be successful at it. Just like in business, you can't just go into business and say, "Cool, I will face no obstacles, no rejections. I will not get knocked down, and my skills from day one are good enough for me to win." That's just not how it goes. So if I wanted to level up my skills—and it sounds like you've mentioned a couple of them, like emotional intelligence and being a conversationalist—how to be interesting, get interested, and ask questions properly. If I just committed, after listening to this, and said, "Alright, I'm going to go level up in those," is there like a killer book that you would recommend? Or a way to actually develop that skill? What would be the fast track way to develop some of these skills, besides the obvious, which is to get practice?

Logan Ury

Yeah, so we talked about the idea of effort and that effort goes a long way. Remember, things follow up with things. Women really love that. Developing your relational skills is important. One thing that I'm really passionate about is men's groups, and I'm very curious to hear what you both think about this. As I was preparing for this episode, I thought, "Oh, I kind of feel like maybe they'll find it cringey." But I just feel like men's groups are so powerful. A year ago, my husband joined one that our good friend David Clavin started. It's about six men who meet once a month. They go around and each silently write down on some Post-it notes what's top of mind for them. Then they go around, and whoever has the things that are most present for them and really wants to take up space, they let those people talk. They give them feedback, and it's really a great place for men to be angry, for men to be sad, and for men to create this council of peers. Then they hold each other accountable. I've seen so much growth in my husband and so much growth in the other guys in this group. I think it's better than therapy because most therapists are female. Having your wife or having your female therapist tell you what to do is fine, but having a council of peers who can really relate to you and create a safe space for you to be angry and sad, I think that creates a lot more growth. I really hope that at least one person listening to this decides to create a men's group. It's not that complicated. Find a few guys who you respect, commit to meeting once a month, create a space where they feel safe to discuss what's challenging for them, and then just support each other in achieving those goals.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's great! Have you ever done one, Sam? Not like business-related, like have you ever done one that's an actual men's group? I've done a...

Sam Parr

Few... yeah, look like the one that you and I did, or you led it. That was basically this because we were all early in our relationships at the time. We were asking each other questions. But yeah, I have... and I like to make fun of it, but the reality is it's super useful and awesome. Making fun of it normalizes it and makes it cool.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've done it a few times, and it's actually like the way you described it just now is kind of perfect. It's much, much better. I haven't done therapy; I've done coaching, but you know...

Logan Ury

We can tell.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I could imagine how someone who needs that sort of thing would feel. But, you know, in therapy, it's an intense focus on self. I think one of the best things about these men's groups is that it's actually not about you. Because it's a group, you get a lot out of it even when you weren't the one talking or sharing. There's so much that's either related or just taking the focus off your own problems. Helping somebody out with their problems, all of a sudden, you feel lighter. You're like, "I didn't even do anything. I didn't even change my own situation, but I feel better." So I think that's a great idea. Okay, so men's groups is one way to get better. Was there...?

Logan Ury

Anyone more thing about that is that I don't think there are many places for men to talk about shame. I think, in general, shame is just a very challenging feeling. I heard this story...

Sam Parr

From the example of a shame thing.

Logan Ury

This was a story that someone in a different men's group told me. They had been fired from their job eight years ago, and they still carried this deep shame: "I'm not good enough. I'm useless. I was fired because I'm a bad employee." Their men's group happens to have about 40 people, and most of them are around 55 years old. When he shared that story, which was a deep trauma in his life, he heard from a bunch of other guys, "Oh yeah, that happened to me. That's going to be a footnote in your life." I just thought it was such a beautiful story because it took this thing that he felt deeply shameful about—"I can't provide for my family. I'm a problem," even though it was years ago—and he has a perfectly good job now. Having these older guys say to him, "That happens to everyone. It doesn't matter," kind of helped him just move on. So I think it's a thing where you can talk about the stuff that you sort of only admit to yourself, or maybe don't even admit to yourself. Once you get it out there, it kind of goes away versus holding it in. I think most men are just holding everything in.

Sam Parr

Is there anything someone can go read, watch, or listen to right now?

Shaan Puri

Is there anything easier you could do besides being vulnerable, sharing, and meeting people? Can I just push a button and get this result?

Sam Parr

Yeah, you need a gateway drug, you know? Starting a men's group is not exactly the gateway drug for people of our generation. Sean and I are probably both the same in this regard. We read the book *The Game*, which has so many flaws in it, but the one thing it did do was encourage me to go and talk to women. That was my gateway drug. I realized, "Oh my gosh, people will respond to me if I act nice and interested."

Logan Ury

Sure, yeah. Alain de Botton, however you say his name, has really good information out there. He has an episode of "Diary of a CEO." He's basically this British guy, a philosopher, who has studied a lot.

Sam Parr

Of that stuff.

Logan Ury

Yeah, the School of Life guy, he's amazing. I interviewed him for my book; he's really awesome. Esther Perel is one of the greatest of all time (GOATs) here, and her book *Mating in Captivity* has changed a lot of people's lives. The godmother and godfather of relationship science are John and Julie Gottman. They really set the bar for all of this information, and so much of the research that I and other people quote is really from them. They are the ones who created this "love lab." They actually tested out a lot of this stuff and defined a lot of it. Obviously, people can read my book *How to Not Die Alone*, and I also have 12 coaches who work for me. A lot of them specialize in working specifically with men. Sam, going back to what you said earlier, it's actually pretty easy for a lot of them to coach men because they are not doing some of the basic things. When they get these guys just doing the basic things that make a difference, they start seeing success so quickly.

Sam Parr

I'm actually reading one of John Gottman's books now. I think he's the man. I think.

Logan Ury

Which one?

Sam Parr

Seven things, seven principles to make a marriage work. I think that, like, yeah.

Logan Ury

Yeah, that's like the classic amazing one.

Sam Parr

To me, reading some of these books is like this: I'll tell people I'm reading them, and they'll ask, "Oh, do you have a problem with your marriage?" I'm like, "No, it's pretty great." It's just that you don't want to wait until you're sick to start exercising. It's kind of like doing maintenance or going to couples therapy. If you're like, "Oh, you guys are on the fritz," it's not that. It's like, I'm pretty fit, and I still go to the gym all the time. You want to maintain and keep things nice. Otherwise, when they do get bad, you're like...

Shaan Puri

Oh shoot! I would just have to say that one of the big edges in life right now is that people think that if you, let's say, do therapy or any kind of mental health work, it literally implies some sort of sickness. Right? Like, why would you do that? Is something wrong? Is something broken? It hasn't shifted yet to something more like **mental fitness**. You know, people who go to CrossFit, you don't accuse them of being diseased or sick. Right? It's like, no, no, no. These people actually care about maximizing what they can do physically. So similarly, I think in terms of your mindset, being as clear as you can be, being as positive as you can be, and having a positive outlook on your own life—actually taking the time to do that—is really important. The same thing goes for relationships. There's an assumption that if you're working on a relationship, it's because it's hurting or broken. I think that's just insane. There's a **relationship fitness** that’s very different from just relationship health, as in you're sort of nursing back from some problem.

Logan Ury

Sean, I'll add on to that and say I actually think we're halfway there in terms of the shift. The language that we used to use would be "mental illness." Now we say "mental health."

Shaan Puri

Right.

Logan Ury

And then I think, going towards what you said, **mental fitness** makes so much sense.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's a lot better than saying, "You're just off your rock."

Logan Ury

Right, but my friend Emily had a book that just came out about being emotionally fit. It's basically like, how can you go to the gym for your fitness? It's not like, "Oh, I worked out my arms yesterday, I'm good for life." You have to constantly work at it. That's actually the crux of what the Gottmans say. My favorite takeaway from their many years of research is this idea that relationships are not about the honeymoon or the trip to Hawaii. They're about the daily life interactions. So, they talk about this concept of a "bid." A bid could be something really small. For example, Sam walks into the room where Sarah's on her laptop and she sighs. That's a bid from Sarah for Sam to say, "Oh no, what's going on?" Sam can do one of three things: he can turn towards her and say, "What's happening?" He can turn away from her or ignore it, or he can turn against her and be like, "Why are you making so much sound? You know I'm on an important phone call." Life is really about these interactions. Successful couples that have happy, long marriages turn towards each other 86% of the time. In contrast, couples that break up or are relationship disasters only turn towards each other 33% of the time. So, it's really about how you turn towards your partner in these small moments.

Sam Parr

We should actually, Sean, do an episode on this John Gottman guy. He's kind of crazy. He's elderly now, but he has done this for probably fifty years.

Logan Ury

Got it.

Sam Parr

And he's been doing it well. Yeah, but you know, he's been doing it forever. There are some crazy stats where he could predict, within 90% accuracy, if you're going to get divorced or not. I think he can do it within like three minutes.

Shaan Puri

Or something, yeah.

Sam Parr

Something like insane, you know? He was like the... yeah.

Shaan Puri

For people who haven't checked it out, you should go look it up. He’s got this thing called "Love Lab." He would have couples come in and essentially argue or fight. He would observe them, and they would mark on a score sheet every second, noting what the interaction was doing. They had this scoring system, and basically, they could score a couple's interactions in just a couple of minutes and predict with 90% accuracy whether that couple was going to stay together or end up breaking apart. Which is kind of amazing when you think about it. It really shows you that life is in the micro, not the macro like we think. I think you were talking about this with dating, right? Like, "Oh, I have a type," and "I have this idea of how we're going to meet," or "I have a soulmate; I have the one." It’s all this macro language when a huge amount of life is just in the micro. For example, she said she was training for an Ironman or something like that, and instead of asking her about it, I pulled the conversation to me. I said, "Oh, me too, I did well," instead of leaning into what she was saying. That’s the difference between a great date and an okay date. Each one of those is just a bunch of micro decisions that lead to your actual result.

Logan Ury

Sean, this is, I feel like, your superpower. I feel like you're kind of like when I say ten minutes' worth of stuff, and then you just summarize the stuff that's worth the takeaway. It's kind of like your *Chatchi Beatty*, just being like, "Here's what she really meant." So, I really appreciate that. There's a good term for what you're talking about, which is a **shift** versus **support response**. I think a lot of people, especially men, get this wrong. Let's say a woman says, "Oh, I'm going to Lake Tahoe this summer." The guy's like, "Cool, I'm going to seem interested and add on to that by saying I went to Lake Tahoe last summer." That's actually shifting the energy back towards yourself. What women and people in general like is when you help them go deeper. You say, "How did you choose Lake Tahoe? Have you ever been there before? What are you most looking forward to? Have you ever traveled with your family before?" Support responses help that person go deeper. You might think that they're equal, but people actually appreciate the support responses more because it shows curiosity about the other person and it makes them feel interesting.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, by the way, Logan, what's your deal? So you got a Netflix show, you wrote a book that did great, you're doing stuff at Hinge, you're on this podcast... like you're kind of a superstar in the making here. Or maybe you already are and I'm late to the party. But like, what's your deal? Are you trying to be like the love guru? What are you trying to do?

Logan Ury

I mean, I feel pretty happy right now. It's like I made a vision board about seven years ago. So, how I met Sam's wife is that we worked together at Airbnb. We didn't even overlap that long, and I was just like, "I really have this passion for dating and relationships." Everything's telling me that there's an opportunity here; people are lost, and I can help them. So, I quit my job not knowing what I would do, and I sort of just from scratch created this career. It's taken the form of a newsletter, a book, a job at Hinge, and a Netflix show. I am hopefully going to have my own podcast this year. So, I'm just kind of like, how can I keep learning, and how can I keep helping people find love? But I don't feel like there's a next level that I need to get to. I kind of just want to enjoy where I am right now.

Shaan Puri

And what's your take on this? Do you feel a lot of pressure? Because, let's say you're a relationship coach. The layman version of me thinks, "So, do they have it all figured out?" I know that's never the case, but I think there is this weird expectation that people have, especially the further you are away from doing the work yourself. If you're talking about this, it seems like you need to be fully self-actualized in some way. So, do you feel pressure in that regard? And, I guess, what's your story? When did you get married? How did that go for you? I'm just curious.

Logan Ury

Sure, yeah. I will quote one of my mentors here. Eli Finkel is one of the best relationship scientists in the country, and he's at Northwestern. The dedication in his book is to my wife, Allison, who thinks it's hilarious that I'm a marriage expert.

Shaan Puri

And so, that's good.

Logan Ury

I kind of feel the same way, but what I will say is that the thing that fascinates me the most, the thing I feel like I always want to work on, is the decision-making process of who you marry. So, I actually feel like I'm more of a dating expert than a marriage expert. Sometimes when people ask me about sex, I'm like, "I don't know shit about sex. I'm not a sex expert." What I'm actually really good at is figuring out who you should be with and why. So, I don't feel as much pressure as someone who's putting out a book about marriage. But I would say, of course, I have my own issues. There are moments where I'm like, "Oh, my husband's pretty introverted. My life would be easier if he wanted to go to this party with me." Then I just remind myself of all the things that are great about him. I also say to myself, "Here are all the annoying things that are annoying about me." By kind of nagging myself, it helps me be more understanding of my husband. One last thing I'll say about that is that I think having a kid has changed our relationship so much, and mostly for the positive. In the past, if he did something that annoyed me, I might either say something about it or bottle it up, and then it explodes later. But because I see what a great dad he is, my tank is so full of love for him that I can just let most things go. That has been a really good development.

Sam Parr

Sean, her husband, is hilarious. If I say anything that is too much, we can take this out. But basically, he's a hardcore vegan, yet he's shredded. You're like, "Why is he?" And he'll tell you he's going for the hungry wolf or hungry lion.

Logan Ury

**Hungry warrior, hungry lion.**

Sam Parr

So, he looks hungry, but he's trying to get after life. He's shredded, and he's an engineer. He works at a big AI company where he's brilliant. He also lost his leg recently because of cancer a couple of years ago, but he laughs about it. He's just a very principled, very interesting, almost strange guy in the best way. He doesn't have any social media. Everything about him, you're like, "That's strange." Then you start hearing his reasoning, and you're like, "Oh, you live the right way. I'm the flawed one." It's very funny. He's a very funny guy.

Logan Ury

Yeah, I think that's a beautiful testament to my husband. I think that I'm drawn to very extreme people. Like, I think that's one of the reasons why I love Sam and why I love my first million. I think it kind of goes back to this idea that you can create the life that you want. You can create your own rules; you can live that way. I've never met anyone more than my husband who doesn't care what other people think. So, it is hard to be this hardcore vegan. We went to this wedding, and there was basically no food for him to eat. Well, guess what? He brings packets of Justin's peanut butter and he chugs them in the bathroom. He pregames with Sweetgreen. He just basically adapts. I think he's very extreme. Like, yeah, he's super healthy, he works out every day, he meditates every day. He lost his leg to cancer, but a few weeks from now, he's going to be climbing in the Paraclimbing World Cup Championship. So, he's just an extreme guy who's very disciplined and has been very successful. Oh, and he's really funny.

Shaan Puri

Amazing, Logan! This was great. To all you singles out there, you're welcome for the advice and the tips. Go take some photos and get some good lighting! By the way, what's a good first date spot? If someone wants to do a first date with someone they met on an app, should they go for coffee, dinner, or what's the move?

Logan Ury

Dinner's too intense. I think coffee feels too much like a job interview. What if you go get an interesting, maybe non-alcoholic drink somewhere and go for a walk? I think people have really great conversations when they don't have to make direct eye contact. Or just go do something fun! Go play pickleball and kind of shake out your sillies. You know, take yourself a little less seriously.

Shaan Puri

Alright, thank you so much, Logan. Great to have you!

Logan Ury

Thanks a lot.

Sam Parr

Thank you!