Relationship Advice Repository

[-]David Hornbein3y269

Registering that I much prefer the format of the older repositories you link to, where additions are left as comments that can be voted on, over the format here, where everything is in a giant list sorted by topic rather than ranking. For any crowdsourced repository, most suggestions will be mediocre or half-baked, but with voting and sorting it's easy to read only the ones that rise to the top. I'd also be curious to check out the highest-voted suggestions on this topic, but not curious enough to wade through an unranked list of (I assume) mostly mediocre and half-baked ideas to find them.

[-]Ruby3y41

Yeah, that might have been the correct choice, though I consider this a not-yet-concluded experiment. It was an intentional choice to see how using a publicly editable document as built-in distillation goes.

In fact the document is not fully publicly editable, it still requires an admin to approve changes, so you should assume that everything in there is something that someone with modestly good judgment thought was worth including.

My first preference would actually to have made this a wiki page with all the that functionality that has (clear contributions that can be voted on), however our current wiki tech doesn't handle concurrent editing and I was worried about that. Might have been fine though.

[-]Raemon3y25

I'm interested in seeing an experiment using the wiki-option, esp. since that includes the ability to vote on contributions. I suspect the lack of concurrency isn't going to be that big a deal. (Wikipedia does it somehow and I don't think they have google-docs functionality)

[-]Ruby3y20

Wikipedia has some kind of merge conflict tool that we don't for wiki, but yeah, thinking about it now I think it probably would have been fine.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke3y20

It would make more sense to write a summary article of the top voted advice after the voting. The way it is right now discourages adding advice - because there is so much in the OP and instead leads to meta comments like this.

[-]Elizabeth3y*193

I would strongly recommend removing More Than Two from the post. The primary author has been accused of abuse by his co-author and multiple other long term partners (>50% of all long term partners he's had, maybe close to 100%). It's not clear to me his behavior meets a strict definition of abuse, but you can't get to this stage without some combination of "the relationships were terrible and he contributed to that" and "he has absolutely terrible taste in partners", and I think both are pretty disqualifying for a relationship advice guru. Plus, while I don't have any evidence other than his statements and theirs, the kinds of bad behavior they describe are extremely consistent with the failure modes of what he writes about.

Sex at Dawn is also atrocious from a scientific perspective, although much less likely to cause overt harm.

[-]Ruby3y61

I included these comments in the post so people actively know these resources are disendorsed.

[-]Wes F3y2-1

I disagree with this comment. Veaux seems awful, but a bad messenger doesn't make a bad message and his coauthor (one of his ex-partners and accusers) AFAICT, still endorses the book. In any case, I continue to believe it contains good relationship advice.

[-]Elizabeth3y50

Can you say more about what you think is good about the advice, and why that book in particular is the best source of that advice?

The co-author didn't immediately retract the book but had since said at least one of the core models strips people of defenses against abuse, and that that wasn't necessarily the worst thing in the book, just the easiest thing to point to.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/brighterthansunflowers.com/2019/11/29/what-i-got-wrong-in-more-than-two-the-dark-night-of-the-soul/amp/

[-]Bezzi3y160

I would like to express serious disappointment about astrological compatibility being labeled as "worth checking" on LW. The only possible way in which I could see this having any effect is the scenario where your partner believes so much in astrology to turn the incompatibility belief into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[-]Ben Pace3y150

That has to be there as a test of whether anyone actually read the post. The cite is "Oprah Daily".

[-]habryka3y241

I do think the joke would be funnier if the link went to a Rick Roll. I will make the change.

[-]tutor vals3y10

Though I expected it to be a joke, I'm still happy that the first comment on this (good btw) post is a call out on the astrology section. I did not bother to click the link because I did not imagine I could find anything of value behind it so I don't get the occasion to confirm it was a joke until arriving to this comment.

[-]Ruby3y70

I regrettably removed the Zodiac section since someone pointed out that since the post is publicly editable, their first thought is that it was vandalism.

[-]Duncan Sabien (Inactive)3y*13-3

EDIT: The below is somewhat offhand/only partially endorsed, and I added this disclaimer about that after mingyuan's good pushback below.

Having done the battery of questions labeled "infohazard" with my partner Logan: I claim they are an infohazard if and only if your relationship is Bad and you prioritize Not Discovering This Fact.

Like, they are infohazardous ONLY to people in bad relationships who wish not to know this truth.

Which, I think, is not quite what "infohazard" means.

[-]mingyuan3y187

This doesn't seem fully right to me. I think it can be really hard to hear the answers to these kinds of questions, especially early in a relationship when you don't yet feel security, or just if you have a lot of internal insecurity. Hearing criticism of your personality, interests, and skills at that point can feel like "wow my partner dislikes me fundamentally and is going to break up with me", even if that's not how it's intended, and that can lead to further insecurity and further problems.

You and Logan were both CFAR instructors for years, so you're probably WAY more inured than most people to having hard conversations and looking at your scary ugly feelings, but lots of people don't know how to talk about that kind of thing without hurting themselves and each other. I used to struggle a lot with insecurity and difficult conversations, and when that list was posted I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of doing it, but I don't think that means that my relationship was Bad back then. Now it's 2.5 years later and I'm married, and I'm a lot less scared of the questions (though I'm still a bit scared of 14: What true statement has the maximum probability of causing you to break up right now?), but I still don't expect that going through them would have positive EV.

[-]mingyuan3y50

(I started with "doesn't seem fully right" rather than "seems wrong" because I do see where you're coming from)

[-]Duncan Sabien (Inactive)3y43

General agreement with what you're saying here.

I think that there's a pretty important thing about "early in a relationship" ... like, it is in fact the case that a tree can handle more weight than a sapling, and a sapling can handle more weight than a three-inch sprout, and it would be bad and wrong to say that there was something wrong with the three-inch sprout or the sapling just because it hadn't had time to grow and strengthen into a tree yet.

To give a cheap and easy example, many people convert away from homophobia because they learn that someone they know personally and feel positively toward was quietly gay all along. Presumably, that update would have been impossible if the person had led with "btw I'm gay" and thus the relationship never became rich enough to cause the questioning of other assumptions.

That being said, though, I think there's something actually Important about that list of questions, and similar lists like it.

I think you're right to locate some fraction of the, uh, I'm going to call it "problem" even though some people would disagree, in the individual, as opposed to in the relationship itself. Like, you point out that some fraction of why-these-questions-could-be-destructive lies in people's relationships to truth, and their ability to handle scary and confusing stuff. That seems correct, to me.

But I think that, even as I endorse pushback against my offhand comment above, I do stand fairly firmly behind "if you and your partner have had what seems like a good relationship for 6-12 mo+, and this list of questions would cause you problems, that's strong evidence of a real problem somewhere, whether it be in you, or your partner, or the line between you."

Like, I do in fact believe that there is some quality of Goodness (good, healthy relationship between good, healthy people) that smoothly-navigating-these-questions points at, and that an inability to smoothly navigate these questions points to a meaningful lack of a goodness property that is real and important.

I don't think there exist relationships that I would agree are Okay, between people I agree are Okay, that are not able to take those questions in stride. If [questions are damaging], then [something was already genuinely wrong]. It's not that the questions themselves are harmful, it's that they expose something that's already very much there.

(Which I have Gendlin-esque attitudes about.)

[-]Lukas_Gloor3y72

How attached are you to the wording "take those questions in stride"? Because in order to fully agree with your comment, I'd want to replace it with something more like "make it through these questions without lastingly diminishing the strength of the relationship." The re-wording would allow for outcomes like "one person or more feel terrible for having had an insecurity triggered, even though it doesn't imply anything bad about relationship compatibility."

Basically, I feel like there are two types of issues-that-cause-bad-feelings that can be unearthed via these questions:

Noticing you're significantly less compatible than you thought
Triggering insecurities

I agree that there's something wrong/sad about shrugging away from things around the first bullet point.

On the second bullet point, I'd say the nature of triggers/insecurities is precisely that they can give you a bad day even when there's no rational reason to worry. Some of the phrasings you use ("in stride", "navigate smoothly" – edit: though not all of them, because you also say "if these questions would cause you problems" at one point, and that seems like an appropriately strong wording to me!) suggests that you think finding the exercise emotionally very difficult means that there's automatically something suboptimal with the relationship. I don't agree that this follows. I concede that there's a point above which too many or too strong insecurities will predictably impair the nature of a relationship. However, I think that point only comes significantly above "have zero triggers/insecurities." The important part is to keep triggers/insecurities below the threshold where it incentivizes even the most considerate and trusted people in your life to white-lie to you or hide things from you to avoid causing you too much harm. I think the list of questions goes well past that level because it's adversarially optimized to find people's triggers. You don't need that level of bullet-proofness to "live in truth" in a relationship.

This gets me to a bit of a tangential rant, but I think it's a virtue-signalling-related failure mode among rationalists that there sometimes develop these pseudo-virtues in the vicinity of things that are truly important (like "living in truth") where people push the truly important thing to outlandish extremes and thereby pass implicit judgment on others who don't go to these extremes, implying that they're less good rationalists. "Living in truth" is an important virtue, but it has very little to do with "you're doing something wrong as a rationalist if you have significant triggers/insecurities." (I'm not saying that you were claiming that in your post (see also my edit above!), or that your comment is evidence that you think that way, but based on my overall impression from reading your posts/comments, it wouldn't surprise me if part of you thought something like that, perhaps in an unreflected fashion.) All else equal, it's better not to have triggers/insecurities, yes. But people differ tremendously around dimensions like neuroticsm, and there are tons of other rationality-related skills one can practice, and then there's a whole part of actually doing work that reduces suffering (or work that advances someone's self-oriented goals in-real-life, if we're talking about non-effective-altruist rationalists) instead of this perpetually-inward-focused work on "improving one's rationality."

[-]Duncan Sabien (Inactive)3y40

No objection to people having short-term dips into negative feelings/reactions which they then successfully work through either alone or with their partner or with some outside help.

[-]Kaj_Sotala3y44

But I think that, even as I endorse pushback against my offhand comment above, I do stand fairly firmly behind "if you and your partner have had what seems like a good relationship for 6-12 mo+, and this list of questions would cause you problems, that's strong evidence of a real problem somewhere, whether it be in you, or your partner, or the line between you."

I suspect that this is both true, and also that for many if not most people, the best way of dealing with that problem is simply to avoid it.

[-]Elizabeth3y121

I think on average people should be more willing than they are to make big investments in relationships (couples therapy to learn how to fight, fly out to meet someone perfect but far away...) and less willing to endure small things that are never ever going to be fixed (they're always late but you can plan around it, they can't stand up to their mom but you don't have to see her that often). The big investments sometimes pay off enormously, and the objectively best relationship for you probably contains a few. And if they don't work, you'll know and act on it. Whereas the small annoyances keep racking up costs, often getting slowly worse but never bad enough to generate the activation energy to fix it or leave. And either you're frogboiled indefinitely, or something (illness, job stress, child) takes enough slack leaves the system that you freak out about something that has objectively been true the entire time, right when there is the least capacity to deal with it.

[Reverse all advice, etc. Maybe the main post should link to reverse all advice as well?]

[-]ClipMonger3y70

I think it should be easier to share really good advice on LW, period, without needing a really strong justification other than it helps people out with things that will clearly hold them back otherwise.

[-]Yonatan Cale3y70

+1 for the Abusive Relationships section.

I think there's a lot of expected value in a project that raises awareness to "these are good reason to break up" and/or "here are common-but-very-bad reasons to stay in an abusive relationship", perhaps with support for people who choose to break up. It's a project I sometimes think of opening but I'm not sure where I'd start

[-]harsimony3y50

Great idea, thanks for posting this!

I wrote a post on how to have productive disagreements with loved ones:

https://harsimony.wordpress.com/2022/06/21/winning-arguments-with-loved-ones/

Here is the subsection on analyzing disagreements:

Because arguments are emotional, it can be helpful to try to dispassionately assess the situation with your partner and get to the root of the problem.

The first step is to break the disagreement down into isolated chunks. Identify the handful of differences you are having, and deal with them as independently as possible. If you notice discussion of one problem bleeding into another, try to refocus on the subject at hand.

For each problem, try to set aside your ego and emotions; what’s the real issue? Ask fair questions of your partner and hear them out. At the end of your discussion, you should be able to articulate your partner’s point in a way they would find satisfactory. A surprising number of arguments can be resolved simply by giving both partners a fair hearing.

It can be helpful to try to come up with neutral examples related to your problem. Flip the roles that you and your partner play in the example and be honest about how it would change things. It also can be helpful to consider things from a third-person perspective [4].

At the end of all of this, you should come to an agreement about the things you will do differently in the future. Once again, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be something you can build upon.

[-]MNoetel3y30

Really appreciate you pulling this together Ruby. Amazing work.
Two resources I've found useful or interesting that weren't on the above list:

Emotion-focused therapy has huge effect sizes for increasing martial satisfaction (suspiciously huge). Even if you account for publication/other biases I'd still wager it's one of the best rehabilitate and preventative interventions for couples (but it basically just pools lots of what you've discussed, like turning toward hard conversations and non-violent communication). This is the best book summarising it: https://www.amazon.com.au/Hold-Me-Tight-Conversations-Lifetime/dp/1491513810
My PhD student did a systematic review of randomised experiments to help people make relationship decisions (e.g., stay or go? if that link is still being minted, see here). Basically, there's nothing, except for helping decide whether to leave an abusive partner. But, the one study on non-abusive couples was interesting: if you flip a coin and do what the coin says, you're much more likely to be happy six months later. The most obvious explanation here is status quo bias: people are afraid of leaving but are happier once they do. If you're thinking hard about leaving, such that you'd be willing to do what a coin says, then probably just go. If you're not quite ready, I found the idea of setting tripwires (see Ch.11 summary here) helpful to make it clear what I want to see change without constantly shifting the goalposts on myself (e.g., if x doesn't happen in 3 months, I'm out).

[-]Ruby3y30

Thanks! Added!

[-]Mo Putera3y30

The 'Resources' section lists How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk [book] -- I also enjoyed weft's Book Review: How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen, written by Julie King and Joanne Faber, daughter of Adele Faber, who co-wrote the former with Elaine Mazlich. Quoting weft:

The core principles are the same, but the update stands on its own. Where the original "Kids" acts more like a workbook, asking the reader to self-generate responses, "Little Kids" feels more like it's trying to download a response system into your head via modeling and story-telling. I personally prefer this system better, because the workbook approach feels like it's only getting to my System 2 (sorry for the colloquialism). Meanwhile being surrounded with examples and stories works better for me to fully integrate a new mode of interaction.

I too prefer examples and stories to self-generated responses, so I thought it'd be a useful complement to others like weft and I.

[-]Ruby3y20

Added!

[-]Elizabeth3y*20

I found Crucial Conversations to be the adult version of How To Talk So... and it seriously levelled up my interpersonal skills at the time.

[-]Ruby3y20

Added!

[-]Morpheus3y30

I'd add the pragmatist guide to relationships (has material on seeking as well as on maintaining relationships) I read like half the book (the parts remotely relevant to me (the book has ~660 pages)) and is very much written from a more selfish livehacking/"munchkinism"/economist (markets and contracts) kind of perspective, which I found entertaining, but which might be off-putting for some. The authors also know and seem to practice their Bayesian epistemology, and the book held up pretty well to online spot checks, and asking people. I still felt like sometimes the authors didn't add enough uncertainty disclaimers around their theories about humans, but it's not like I wouldn't have similar complaints about some lw posts. and

The pragmatist guide to sexuality(lots of data on what people's sexuality is actually like! 100% recommended (though maybe just skip the authors interpretations and look at the tables))

[-]Ruby3y20

Added!

[-]Richard_Ngo3y30

I've edited via the link you gave, but it doesn't seem to be showing up in the main post.

(Specifically, I edited the first dating doc link, which was broken.)

[-]Ruby3y2-1

Looks like I had to press "Publish Changes" for it to go live, which is probably only a button that I see.

[-]Ruby3y20

I've added Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong based on CarolJ's recommendation on the EA Forum crosspost.

^{^}

Coference is a preference that is referenced on someone else's preference, e.g. "I have a preference for your preference or something that's the combination of our first-order individual preferences.

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How to contribute

Format

Content

How to submit content

General Advice

Introspection & Communication are Essential

A relationship is fundamentally a negotiated agreement

Balancing Each Other's Wants & Needs

Avoid the Typical Mind Fallacy

Each partner needs to maintain their sense of self

Bring the real you to the relationship

Leave Someone Better Than You Found Them (excerpts from blog post)

Leaving people with more agency

Celebrating the Word “No”

Replacing “Yes” with “Fuck Yes”

Leaving Yourself Better Than You Found You

Comments

Honesty & Communication

Collaborative relationships require honesty

You can be honest about feelings you're conflicted about

Use a "Dating Doc" to set relationship expectations

Reveal Culture (and the other "cultures" too) [blog post]

Ask Culture assumptions of trust

Guess Culture assumptions of trust

Reveal Culture assumptions of trust

If you want honesty, make sure not to punish it!

Steer towards forbidden conversations (excerpts)

Non-Violent Communication (NVC): List of Books

Summaries of Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Don't use silence to communicate if you can avoid it

Conflict

Facilitated mediation is great! Have a low bar to get some

Have an explicit negotiation at some point early on

You're not stuck with your relationship in one form forever!

Comments

Take time apart

Emotional Intimacy

Share emotions while still taking responsibility for them

Letting Others Be Vulnerable (excerpts)

End of Relationships

Be prepared for a breakup

After a breakup, maybe get a bunch of space from each other

Strategies and tools for getting through a breakup (excerpts)

Strategies (in order of importance) [abridged]

Consent

How to Have Sex on Purpose [blog post]

Consent Once Doesn't Mean Consent Always

Polyamory

Polyamory takes what normal relationships do, just more so

I would recommend Polysecure over More Than Two [Book]

Blogposts on Polyamory by Ozymandius

Providing Support & Expressing Love/Affection

Love Languages (aka how to express and receive affection effectively)

Related to the idea of Love Languages is Personal User Manuals.

Learn to Listen: Problem-Solving vs Support

Warnings & Cautions

Being a savior is risky / Trying to fix others is risky

Probably don’t make your relationship contingent on the other person changing

Have other relationships! Diversify!

Thinking you're good at relationships is a recipe for not noticing when you're being bad at relationships

Sex

Models and Concepts

Attachment Styles

Power Differences

Power dynamics between people in EA [excerpts]

Age Differences

Thoughts on dating younger people

Thoughts on age gap relationships

Inexperienced people can pick up bad habits from dating other inexperienced people

If you’re unhappy in your relationship

Abusive Relationships

It's not normal to be harmed

Don't let the fear of leaving trap you

Resources