The average person, presumably, just stumbles along in their relationships, without ever studying the science behind what makes them work.
Imagine this: would you want a man, who didn’t go to medical school and doesn’t have a medical license, to perform surgery on you? What if, now hear me out, he’s seen every episode of Grey’s Anatomy, ER, Scrubs, and House? What if he’s watched some surgery videos on YouTube and “pretty much knows how to do it”? Would that make you feel comfortable?
No! That would be ridiculous! We would demand some base level of education, training, and a history of competence before allowing anyone to operate on us.
So then what about relationships?
Now imagine this: would you want to date someone who isn’t familiar with the communication and emotional skills that make relationships successful? What if, now hear me out, they’ve seen every reality dating TV show? What if they’ve read Cosmopolitan magazine their whole life and they “pretty much know how relationships work”? Would that make you feel comfortable?
No! That would be ridiculous! We ought to demand some base level of education or experience before allowing someone to become our primary attachment figure, upon whom our emotional needs will be met.[1]
And yet, that’s exactly what people do. They go around falling in love with people without examining, evaluating, and testing for relationships skills. They’re just not taking relationships seriously.
Let’s get serious
To establish exactly what I mean by the word serious, and why it matters for improving your relationships, here’s an excerpt from the essay Everyone Can Tell if You’re a Serious Person:
I think the concept of a serious or unserious person has lingered in my mind because I’m at the perfect age to notice it. I’m 29 now, so I exist in this weird purgatory where some people my age are married with kids, and others are in the same position they were in when we left [college]. At 22, the discrepancy between the people that consistently work hard, and those that don’t is pretty small. Not enough time has passed for the rewards of good decision making to pay off. Now at 29, the returns are compounding, and you can see that some are changing gears, and leaving the rest of the pack behind. These people, are serious people.
I regret not taking my life seriously sooner. It seems that learning to be a serious person is a class we have to take the hard way. It might be the most important thing we learn though, because if your life isn’t worth taking seriously, what is?
The first time I got serious about something was right after college—I noticed that I was getting fat. Then I realized that most of my relatives were obese, had high blood pressure, and diabetes. I thought, “Oh, this will be my future if I don’t do something drastic.” So I did something drastic.
Over the course of a year, I spent 300 hours (~5 hours/week) reading books on a variety of topics.[2]
Note: it’s easy to just read a book and not make any changes to your life.
And so with every book I read, I kept asking myself, “how can I use this new information to change my behavior and lifestyle?”
If, while reading a book, I couldn’t provide a good answer to that question, I put that book down and moved on. But if I did find something useful, I would take meticulous notes in my journal, start practicing it immediately, and track my progress week after week.
I became serious about understanding this topic and used free information (via the library and the internet) to learn and experiment on myself, which changed the course of the rest of my life.[3]
This is what I mean by getting serious: it means putting 100% of your effort into something that matters to you.[4]
So if your relationships matter to you, do you take them seriously? Have you studied the available science on what makes them work optimally? I don’t blame you if you haven’t, our education system, and our culture more broadly, doesn’t prioritize teaching us this information.
Consider the amount of education and training that working professionals undergo, versus what it takes to get married:
Accountants — 5 years to get a license.
(A 4-year bachelor’s degree, and complete 1 year of general accounting experience)
Engineers — 8-9 years to get a license.
(A 4-year bachelor’s degree, at least 4-years of progressive work experience, and pass the PE exam)
Surgeons — 13-16 years to get a license.
(A 4-year bachelor’s degree, a 4-year medical school program, a 5-7 year surgical residency, followed by 1-3 years of optional fellowships for subspecialties)
And then we have…
Relationships — In California, a marriage license requires signatures from the couple, an authorized officiant, and at least one witness. Plus there’s an application process, fees, and an official filing.
Total time: 30-60 minutes to get a license.
And after the paperwork is signed, it’s good to remember that around 40% of marriages end in divorce. And for the other 60% of couples that stay together, not all of them are happily married.[5]
I would argue that entering into the most significant emotional and financial agreement of your life (ie: marriage) should warrant at least a bare minimum examination of the science behind relationships (that is, if you want it to go well).[6]
Given the seriousness of this topic, how come we don’t learn about it in school?
My high school offered nothing on the topic of relationships. That’s because K-12 education prioritizes standardized/testable academic subjects. Additionally, some people have strong political opinions on whether emotional and interpersonal subjects should be taught in school, versus taught at home. So while my high school taught me nothing on the science of creating and fostering a healthy relationship, I did get taught in sex-ed how to put a condom on a banana…
As for university, upon checking my alma mater’s course catalog, I see that only the Psychology major has courses relevant to relationships, such as:
“Social Psychology”
“Developmental Psychology”
“Interpersonal Relationships”
But that’s just for Psych majors. Since I studied Data Science and Statistics, none of my required courses taught me anything about the science of relationships.[7]
Okay, so we can’t expect our education system to teach us anything about relationships. So what do we do?
Well, what do working professionals do?
They spend a hell of a lot of time studying, practicing, and mastering their crafts. The answer to getting better at relationships, is to take them seriously.
To get good at a relationship skill, learning something once isn’t enough. You must practice that skill over and over until you internalize it. Fortunately, the field of neuroscience explains how to efficiently learn a new skill so that you never forget it.
The Neuroscience of Myelination (ie: Deep Practice)
In author Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, he describes the neuroscience of efficient skill building, and explains how those who understand this concept can access a zone of accelerated learning:
[There’s] a neural insulator called myelin, which some neurologists now consider to be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Here’s why. Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse—basically, a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out.
When we fire our circuits in the right way…our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become, [meaning] the more skill you get.
People often make the same mistakes in their relationships, they keep having the same fights. By engaging in the same behavior over and over, they're (unintentionally) reinforcing that this is the best way to navigate the situation. And so the behavior continues.
But how are we supposed to change, and do something differently? The author answers that question:
Deep practice operates at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes and are forced to slow down to correct them. The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities.
Struggle is not optional—it’s neurologically required: in order to get your skill circuit to fire optimally, you must by definition fire the circuit suboptimally; you must make mistakes and pay attention to them. You must also keep firing that circuit (ie: practice) to keep it active, [and it's] sustained with continual positive feedback and success.[8]
Okay, so we're supposed to pay attention and make mistakes. Then what? Are we magically different? No, to build skills through deep practice, it takes a long time and many iterations:
Myelination is slow. Each wrap can go around the nerve fibers 40 or 50 times, and that can take days or weeks.
So, iteration is more important than perfection (I like the phrase: “start messy, polish later”). Keep making mistakes, but make new mistakes, and pay close attention to why you did something incorrectly, and then fix it.
On this matter, John Wooden, widely considered the greatest college basketball coach of all time, had this to say:
Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. When it happens this way, it lasts.
This is what serious people do:they practice a skill and don’t stop until it feels natural to them.
So, are you “serious” about relationships?
As an example of a failure in the education system, let’s take a look at attachment theory: a scientifically grounded framework within developmental psychology, social psychology, and neurobiology, which helps explain interpersonal bonding (ie: parent-child relationships, and also romantic relationships). We know that 50% of people are estimated to have an insecure attachment.
50%!
Half of all people!
And yet this is a completely solvable issue. Research shows that our brains are plastic, and therefore “are capable of rewiring themselves after repeated positive experiences. So, [finding and staying in] healthy relationships can rework our early insecure bonds.”
Given the ubiquity of insecure attachment, I would argue that a person who is serious about relationships would, upon their thorough investigation of the science, discover this relational concept and determine if they are insecurely attached, and then, if necessary, devote the time to fix this about themselves (ie: go to therapy, read books on attachment, and use this information to identify good potential romantic partners).
Attachment theory is great, but there are also plenty of other worthwhile relationship concepts to learn about. For example:
Attunement
Mentalization and building a shared intersubjectivity of experience
Avoiding flooding in arguments and conflict resolution
Positive/negative sentiment override
The four horsemen of relationship havoc: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, & stonewalling
Understanding that true love is not found, but built over time[9]
These skills are just out there, waiting for you to learn them.
“Well,” you might object, “it’s hard to notice patterns in ourselves. It’s much easier to see the mistakes other people make.” I would agree with that. We often watch our friends make the same mistakes over and over when it comes to love. When we try to step in, they sometimes push back, so we watch from the sidelines as we bite our nails, hoping that they’ll change. But isn’t it possible to see these patterns in ourselves?
Ask yourself: are you iterating by making small/slow changes over time, or are you merely repeating the same mistakes without ever changing anything?
Maybe you’re aware that you keep choosing the wrong type of person to date, but do nothing to stop yourself.
Or maybe you’ve already given up on relationships, without ever having tried in the first place.
Or maybe you argue with your partner frequently, but never take a step back and say to yourself: “Wow, maybe I suck at this, maybe I have low skill with respect to communication.”
Maybe you’re just not a serious person when it comes to relationships.
When I decided to become serious about relationships, here’s what I did:
I spent 120 hours across six weeks (~20 hours/week), getting at 6am to study for two hours before work, and up to eight hours on the weekends. The following is what I worked on during that period.
First things first: I asked my friends to call out my relationship Perceptual Blindspots(ie: the things our friends see about us, but we’re not aware of). I got a decent list from them, with the biggest issue being that I probably had avoidant attachment. Then I started reading books on the science of relationships, and I wrote down all the concepts I’d never heard of and hadn’t practiced before.
Here are the books I read/reread over those six weeks:
Relationships:
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find--and Keep--Love — Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Helle
What Makes Love Last: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal — John Gottman and Nan Silver
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen — David Brooks
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence — Esther Perel
Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex and How to Get It — Marty Klein
Trauma and Emotional Intelligence:
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents — Lindsay C. Gibson
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture — Dr. Gabor Maté
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success — Dr. Carol Dweck
Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation — Bruce Tift
You’re Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters — Kate Murphy
Are You Mad at Me? How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You — Meg Josephson
Dating:
Models: Attract Women Through Honesty — Mark Manson
How to Talk to Anyone — Leil Lowndes
Miscellaneous:
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. — Daniel Coyle
After compiling a discrete list of skills from my friends and the books I read, I got to work researching, practicing, and cementing them in my behavior with repeated iterations (ie: myelination).
For avoidant attachment, one friend told me that she was able to completely overcome it with therapy and take-home worksheets. So I hired a therapist that specialized in attachment theory. In between appointments, I requested supplemental materials on the science of relationships, and asked for homework to practice in the real world.[10], [11]
Another friend told me (which my therapist confirmed) that you can attain secure attachment by creating a healthier bond with your original attachment figures (ie: your parents), and by having a healthy/secure romantic relationship. The first one seemed easier, so I set out to strengthen my relationship with my parents.
I hadn’t felt close to them in a long time. I called them up and explained that I needed their help with healing my attachment, and that this could be a win-win for all of us.
“Hey, mom and dad, I feel like we’ve grown apart over the last five years, and I want to have a closer relationship with both of you. I’m not interested in blaming either of you for anything—that doesn’t help anyone. Instead, since you’re both my primary attachment figures and my original role models for what a healthy relationship should look like, I’m going to start gently asking for what I want in the present, so I can feel more connected to you, so that we can all have a better future.”
To their credit, they replied, “Wow, that sounds great. How can we help?”
I then started calling them once a day for a month, and in the process, completely reshaped my relationship with them. Within a few weeks, I began to emotionally feel safe enough to be vulnerable, and ask for their support and guidance during hard times—something that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks prior (it surprised me how quickly things changed between us, and that’s simply because I took that first step of being vulnerable and opening up to them).
Eventually we reviewed the past, not for the purposes of blaming anyone, but so that we could understand the intergenerational patterns in our family. I constructed a family tree of trauma/hardship, then I went and read psychology books on family dynamics, trauma and regrowth, parenting, and psychotherapeutic techniques for emotional regulation—all the while performing deep practice by taking what I learned, and executing on a plan to act differently until I internalized each new skill (ie: myelination).
It wasn’t easy. I struggled (and sometimes cried) during some tough conversations, but now we’re closer than ever as a family.
That’s all well and dandy, but there’s only so much you can learn about romantic relationships without being in one, so while I’ve been dating casually for years, I finally decided to get serious about relationships.
Next I tackled my social anxiety. Approaching and talking to women always stressed me out. So I started studying the evolutionary origin of the feeling of social anxiety by reading the works of Jaak Panksepp (who founded the field of affective neuroscience) and reading behavioral psychology articles on PubMed.
Eventually, through enough experimentation, one day my social anxiety just turned off like a light switch. It’s not a problem anymore. It doesn’t affect me in the slightest. (I’ll write a blogpost explaining what I did some day.)
With my newfound freedom and confidence, I began approaching cute women at public events, chatting them up, and making them laugh. If I liked their vibe, I’d say to them, “Hey you’re cute, are you single?”[12]
Over just a couple weeks, I asked out a half-dozen women at bars, coffee shops, and social events. (Which was wild to me, given that I had only done that once before in my life).
Eventually I met a woman and we clicked. With each date we went on, I took the opportunity to practice everything I learned. Remember, myelination is slow. You can’t learn a new skill the first time you attempt something. It takes repeated iterations of deep practice to internalize a new skill.
Recall what the basketball coach John Wooden said:
Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. When it happens this way, it lasts.
From Dr. Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller's book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, I learned that:
[Secure people] communicate freely, are loving and affectionate, do not retreat during conflict, and are consistently there for their partner.
And that:
The key to finding a mate who can fulfill [your relationship] needs is to first fully acknowledge your need for intimacy, availability, and security in a relationship.
[Then] start assessing people you date on the basis of their ability to meet those needs.
So with the new woman I began seeing, I would catch myself falling into avoidant patterns, correct myself, and watch how with each repetition it became easier and easier to act in a healthy/secure way: I started discussing our relationship needs, our communication styles, and how we prefer to express love.
It went really well.
Why? Because I decided to take relationships seriously and put in the work.[13]
What happened after my initial intense six week period?
Eventually, I got to a place where I felt competent in my skills to be able to successfully navigate relationships, knowing full well that I now had the tools to develop myself further as necessary.
As a result of my efforts, I now know:
Who I am as a person.
What I’m looking for in terms of compatibility.
How to initiate difficult conversations so that I can build secure, healthy relationships.
And a deep understanding of relationship science to be able to evaluate potential new partners.
Since then, my approach to dating and relationships has completely changed. I used to just wing it and go off vibes. Here’s an analogy for what I do now:
When going in for an operation, you don’t ask the surgeon to provide you with their qualifications. Because the hospital hired them, you presume the surgeon is legitimate. But for relationships, people don’t come pre-vetted. Therefore, it is your responsibility to perform the due diligence, to determine, if a potential romantic partner has the right qualifications to be able to serve as a good emotional attachment figure.
I learned to start asking things like:
What’s your relationship with your parents like?
(ie: figure out if they have a securely attached background)
What were your previous relationships like?
(ie: if they describe every ex as “crazy”, then they probably have poor judgment/taste)
How do you typically call attention to the things that bother you in relationships?
(ie: evaluating communication skills)
When you’ve gotten into arguments with an ex-partner, how did they usually resolve?
(ie: testing for conflict resolution skills; do they always think they’re right, or can they admit to their faults?)
Of course, it would be kind of weird to ask these, one-after-another, on a first date. At the beginning of seeing someone new, I mostly just try to have fun and see if I can be my authentic self with them. But by the third or fourth date, I think it’s fair game to start initiating serious conversations about:
What kind of relationship are you seeking?
What are your values (moral, religious, financial[14])?
What are your long-term goals or aspirations?
The aforementioned two lists of questions will begin to paint a clear picture of:
Is this a securely attached person that is reliable, dependable, and willing to have hard conversations?
Do we have enough commonalities to be compatible?
“Wow, this seems like a lot of effort!”
^If you’re thinking this, then I’ll remind you of this quote from earlier:
If your life isn’t worth taking seriously, what is?
Maybe you object, “I don’t have the time to learn all this!” Yes, you do.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent American Time Use Survey, American adults spend, on average, 3 hours a day watching television and using social media → 3 hours * 7 days = 21 hours per week.
It only takes ~6 hours to read a 250 page book. So going without TV, you could finish a book in just two days.
We have plenty of leisure time, we just choose to allocate in different ways.
“Therapy is expensive!” No, not really. And besides, there are alternatives.
A one hour therapy session costs anywhere from $100–200 without health insurance, and is often cheaper with insurance. It’s another resource allocation issue: we make sacrifices for the things that matter to us.
If you decide to try therapy, find a specialist for whatever specific thing you need help with. There are experts in: relationships, attachment, sex, trauma, anxiety, etc.
It was difficult for me to swallow my pride and ask for help from a therapist, but I’m glad that I did. As my dad used to tell me growing up, “There’s nothing more important than your health.”
The good news is: if you do try therapy, and uncover maladaptive coping strategies, or flawed logic that’s preventing you from having healthy relationships, then you get to potentially develop new skills that'll stick around for the rest of your life.
That’s some of the best ROI (“return on investment”) you’ll ever get.
Besides individual therapy sessions, consider couples therapy once you’re in a relationship and if you’re having troubles. They’re professionals and have considerable education and training:
Couples therapist — 6-8 years to get a license.
(A 4-year bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy or counseling, log thousands of hours of supervised clinical work, and pass a state exam)
They’re experts for a reason. Learn from them.
Besides therapy, many religions have premarital counseling, which is a 12-week course that goes over things like: communication, conflict resolution, money management, family boundaries, parenting styles, how you enjoy expressing/receiving affection, and expectations around intimacy. You get assigned homework each week to learn how to have a successful marriage.
Free alternatives
If you’re truly strapped for cash, there are free resources:
The library.
Dr. K on YouTube is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist that releases great videos on relationships, mental health, emotional regulation, etc.
I recommend you read books on topics like: relationship science (shout out to researcher/author John Gottman!), emotional intelligence, anxiety, and trauma. Read books written by credible authors like psychologists, doctors, and licensed professionals (not celebrities or gurus).
Reading the right book, at the right time when you need it, is sublime: it’s the type of experience where you read one paragraph, and have to stop and think about what you just read.
It’s good to remember that self-awareness about a problem is not enough to fix it. Reading gets you knowledge, but wisdom only comes after you apply that knowledge repeatedly.
After I read a book, I take notes on what I’ve learned, and then make a plan for how I’m going to integrate that new information into my daily life until it's fully internalized.[15]
“I’ve been hurt in the past and don’t know if I can learn to trust someone again…”
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!
So, what will you do now?
When I get serious about something, I don’t settle for mediocre or average. I don’t settle for anything less than my absolute best. Relying on scientific experts, authors, and deep practice—I will become the best version of myself.
One day I will be a great boyfriend/husband/partner.
I won’t stop until that’s true.
So, are you gonna get serious about the most consequential emotional and financial decision of your life, and actually get to work studying and practicing relationship skills until they internalize, so that you can avoid being one of the 40% of marriages that end in divorce?
Or are you just gonna wing it?
Remember, everyone can tell if you’re a serious person or not.
It’s okay if you haven’t dated before. We all start somewhere. Even a surgeon eventually has to perform his first ever operation. What’s important, however, is that you’re not just winging it, and that you have a good understanding of the theory behind what makes relationships, or surgery, go well.
If you want a visual demonstration of what a serious person looks like, check out this video of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger (a seven-time Mr. Olympia winner and five-time Mr. Universe winner) working out with famed bodybuilder Ed Corney. The latter is screaming with each rep of the 315lbs he’s squatting, and on the verge of passing out.
After Ed’s completed 8 reps, and has already pushed his nervous system close to the limit, Arnold then casually taunts Ed by saying, “C’mon, let’s get serious,” and goads him to actually start trying. Pure savagery from Arnold. After he completes the set, Ed collapses to the floor.
Why it’s financially significant should hopefully be obvious (ie: housing, kids & their college funds, the potential of divorce, etc), but what science confirms its emotional significance? In psychology, attachment theory confirms that your partner regulates both your emotional and physical health:
What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit. They are a part of me, and I will do anything to save them; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.
Numerous studies show that…our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities.
[One study] found that if you have a mild form of high blood pressure, being in a satisfying marriage is good for you; spending time in the presence of your partner actually benefits you by lowering your blood pressure to healthier levels. If, on the other hand, you are not satisfied with your marriage, contact with your partner will actually raise your blood pressure, which will remain elevated as long as you are in physical proximity! The implications of this study are profound: When our partner is unable to meet our basic attachment needs, we experience a chronic sense of disquiet and tension that leaves us more exposed to various ailments. Not only is our emotional well-being sacrificed when we are in a romantic partnership with someone who doesn’t provide a secure base, but so is our physical health. [Whereas] having a partner who fulfills our intrinsic attachment needs and feels comfortable acting as a secure base and safe haven can help us remain emotionally and physically healthier and live longer.
As for my required general education (GE) classes, one of my requirements could have been fulfilled by taking "Introductory Psychology", but instead I took…macroeconomics.
(I got an A in that class, but unfortunately it didn’t teach me anything about the science of relationships—but hey, at least I know what a Gini coefficient is!)
Here’s an example of what deep practice looks like from the book:
Clarissa plays two notes [on the clarinet]. Then she stops. She pulls the clarinet from her lips and stares at the paper. Her eyes narrow. She plays seven notes, the song’s opening phrase. She misses the last note and immediately stops. She squints at the music. She starts over, making it a few notes farther into the song this time, missing the last note, backtracking, patching in the fix. When she’s finished with this phrase, she stops again for six long seconds, seeming to replay it in her mind, fingering the clarinet as she thinks. She leans forward, takes a breath, and starts again.
It sounds pretty bad. It’s not music. Common sense would lead us to believe Clarissa is failing, but in this case that’s wrong. This is actually how a professional musician would practice on Wednesday for a Saturday performance. She’s got a blueprint in her mind she’s constantly comparing herself to. She’s working in phrases, complete thoughts. She’s not ignoring errors, she’s hearing them, fixing them. She’s fitting small parts into the whole, drawing the lens in and out all the time, scaffolding herself to a higher level.
This is not ordinary practice. This is something else: a highly targeted, error-focused process. Something is growing, being built.
After that song, she plays another. But this time she plays it in one go, without stopping. Absent of any jarring stops, the tune tumbles out in tuneful, recognizable form, albeit with the occasional squeak.
McPherson [her music academy teacher] groans. “She just plays it, like she’s on a moving sidewalk. It’s completely awful. She’s not thinking, not learning, not building, just wasting time. She goes from mediocre to brilliant and then back again, and she has no idea she’s doing it.”
Many of these skills I pulled directly from John Gottman & Nan Silver’s book What Makes Love Last: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal — I highly recommend reading it.
Therapy can be an effective tool if you know what you’re doing. Sure, you can go there to vent and process your feelings, which is sometimes helpful, but I like their support because they’re professionals who are trained to see patterns in you, and they can help guide you to make realizations about yourself so that you don’t keep making the same mistakes.
For each session: I bring my journal, a list of questions for my therapist, request recommendations on books/articles/podcasts that can supplement my learning, and create homework for myself to go and practice outside of therapy each week. I turn my therapy sessions into a college class where I’m trying to learn and absorb as much as possible from the professor.
Check with your employer to see if they offer free, or reduced-cost, mental health support. Many places do, but it’s up to you to go find out. My workplace, for example, covers six sessions annually for free.
I said this to one woman and she replied, “Sorry, but I’m not into men,” to which I quipped back, “Whoa that’s crazy, I’m not into men either!” She laughed, and because she was cool, we kept on talking for a while.
On the topic of avoidant attachment, I eventually started seeing and recognizing it everywhere. It’s ubiquitous across media and literature.
During my six week period of intense learning and deep practice, I rewatched my favorite TV show of all time, HBO's The Newsroom, and read Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina.
The characters Maggie and Don in the HBO show are a classic anxious-avoidant partnership, where she keeps seeking closeness, and he keeps finding reasons to break up.
And in the 1878 Russian novel (a full 70 years before attachment theory was developed by psychologists), the characters of Levin and Kitty during their initial courtship are also anxious-avoidant, where he is obsessed with her, and she keeps avoiding his advances for love.
One time, I was going out with a woman for a couple weeks, when she told me, “My aspiration in life is to make tons of money so I can buy lots of luxury purses.” That relationship didn’t last long…
In college, people cram the night before an exam, to try to retain as much information in the short-term. But once the exam is complete, that knowledge is swiftly forgotten because they never use it again. The mantra of “use it or lose it” is validated in the neuroscientific literature: if you stay at something long enough, eventually it sinks in.
The average person, presumably, just stumbles along in their relationships, without ever studying the science behind what makes them work.
So then what about relationships?
And yet, that’s exactly what people do. They go around falling in love with people without examining, evaluating, and testing for relationships skills. They’re just not taking relationships seriously.
Let’s get serious
To establish exactly what I mean by the word serious, and why it matters for improving your relationships, here’s an excerpt from the essay Everyone Can Tell if You’re a Serious Person:
The first time I got serious about something was right after college—I noticed that I was getting fat. Then I realized that most of my relatives were obese, had high blood pressure, and diabetes. I thought, “Oh, this will be my future if I don’t do something drastic.” So I did something drastic.
Over the course of a year, I spent 300 hours (~5 hours/week) reading books on a variety of topics.[2]
Note: it’s easy to just read a book and not make any changes to your life.
And so with every book I read, I kept asking myself, “how can I use this new information to change my behavior and lifestyle?”
If, while reading a book, I couldn’t provide a good answer to that question, I put that book down and moved on. But if I did find something useful, I would take meticulous notes in my journal, start practicing it immediately, and track my progress week after week.
I became serious about understanding this topic and used free information (via the library and the internet) to learn and experiment on myself, which changed the course of the rest of my life.[3]
This is what I mean by getting serious: it means putting 100% of your effort into something that matters to you.[4]
So if your relationships matter to you, do you take them seriously? Have you studied the available science on what makes them work optimally? I don’t blame you if you haven’t, our education system, and our culture more broadly, doesn’t prioritize teaching us this information.
Consider the amount of education and training that working professionals undergo, versus what it takes to get married:
And then we have…
I would argue that entering into the most significant emotional and financial agreement of your life (ie: marriage) should warrant at least a bare minimum examination of the science behind relationships (that is, if you want it to go well).[6]
Given the seriousness of this topic, how come we don’t learn about it in school?
My high school offered nothing on the topic of relationships. That’s because K-12 education prioritizes standardized/testable academic subjects. Additionally, some people have strong political opinions on whether emotional and interpersonal subjects should be taught in school, versus taught at home. So while my high school taught me nothing on the science of creating and fostering a healthy relationship, I did get taught in sex-ed how to put a condom on a banana…
As for university, upon checking my alma mater’s course catalog, I see that only the Psychology major has courses relevant to relationships, such as:
But that’s just for Psych majors. Since I studied Data Science and Statistics, none of my required courses taught me anything about the science of relationships.[7]
Okay, so we can’t expect our education system to teach us anything about relationships. So what do we do?
Well, what do working professionals do?
They spend a hell of a lot of time studying, practicing, and mastering their crafts. The answer to getting better at relationships, is to take them seriously.
To get good at a relationship skill, learning something once isn’t enough. You must practice that skill over and over until you internalize it. Fortunately, the field of neuroscience explains how to efficiently learn a new skill so that you never forget it.
The Neuroscience of Myelination (ie: Deep Practice)
In author Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, he describes the neuroscience of efficient skill building, and explains how those who understand this concept can access a zone of accelerated learning:
People often make the same mistakes in their relationships, they keep having the same fights. By engaging in the same behavior over and over, they're (unintentionally) reinforcing that this is the best way to navigate the situation. And so the behavior continues.
But how are we supposed to change, and do something differently? The author answers that question:
Okay, so we're supposed to pay attention and make mistakes. Then what? Are we magically different? No, to build skills through deep practice, it takes a long time and many iterations:
So, iteration is more important than perfection (I like the phrase: “start messy, polish later”). Keep making mistakes, but make new mistakes, and pay close attention to why you did something incorrectly, and then fix it.
On this matter, John Wooden, widely considered the greatest college basketball coach of all time, had this to say:
This is what serious people do: they practice a skill and don’t stop until it feels natural to them.
So, are you “serious” about relationships?
As an example of a failure in the education system, let’s take a look at attachment theory: a scientifically grounded framework within developmental psychology, social psychology, and neurobiology, which helps explain interpersonal bonding (ie: parent-child relationships, and also romantic relationships). We know that 50% of people are estimated to have an insecure attachment.
50%!
Half of all people!
And yet this is a completely solvable issue. Research shows that our brains are plastic, and therefore “are capable of rewiring themselves after repeated positive experiences. So, [finding and staying in] healthy relationships can rework our early insecure bonds.”
Given the ubiquity of insecure attachment, I would argue that a person who is serious about relationships would, upon their thorough investigation of the science, discover this relational concept and determine if they are insecurely attached, and then, if necessary, devote the time to fix this about themselves (ie: go to therapy, read books on attachment, and use this information to identify good potential romantic partners).
Attachment theory is great, but there are also plenty of other worthwhile relationship concepts to learn about. For example:
These skills are just out there, waiting for you to learn them.
“Well,” you might object, “it’s hard to notice patterns in ourselves. It’s much easier to see the mistakes other people make.” I would agree with that. We often watch our friends make the same mistakes over and over when it comes to love. When we try to step in, they sometimes push back, so we watch from the sidelines as we bite our nails, hoping that they’ll change. But isn’t it possible to see these patterns in ourselves?
Ask yourself: are you iterating by making small/slow changes over time, or are you merely repeating the same mistakes without ever changing anything?
Maybe you’re just not a serious person when it comes to relationships.
When I decided to become serious about relationships, here’s what I did:
I spent 120 hours across six weeks (~20 hours/week), getting at 6am to study for two hours before work, and up to eight hours on the weekends. The following is what I worked on during that period.
First things first: I asked my friends to call out my relationship Perceptual Blindspots (ie: the things our friends see about us, but we’re not aware of). I got a decent list from them, with the biggest issue being that I probably had avoidant attachment. Then I started reading books on the science of relationships, and I wrote down all the concepts I’d never heard of and hadn’t practiced before.
Here are the books I read/reread over those six weeks:
After compiling a discrete list of skills from my friends and the books I read, I got to work researching, practicing, and cementing them in my behavior with repeated iterations (ie: myelination).
For avoidant attachment, one friend told me that she was able to completely overcome it with therapy and take-home worksheets. So I hired a therapist that specialized in attachment theory. In between appointments, I requested supplemental materials on the science of relationships, and asked for homework to practice in the real world.[10], [11]
Another friend told me (which my therapist confirmed) that you can attain secure attachment by creating a healthier bond with your original attachment figures (ie: your parents), and by having a healthy/secure romantic relationship. The first one seemed easier, so I set out to strengthen my relationship with my parents.
I hadn’t felt close to them in a long time. I called them up and explained that I needed their help with healing my attachment, and that this could be a win-win for all of us.
“Hey, mom and dad, I feel like we’ve grown apart over the last five years, and I want to have a closer relationship with both of you. I’m not interested in blaming either of you for anything—that doesn’t help anyone. Instead, since you’re both my primary attachment figures and my original role models for what a healthy relationship should look like, I’m going to start gently asking for what I want in the present, so I can feel more connected to you, so that we can all have a better future.”
To their credit, they replied, “Wow, that sounds great. How can we help?”
I then started calling them once a day for a month, and in the process, completely reshaped my relationship with them. Within a few weeks, I began to emotionally feel safe enough to be vulnerable, and ask for their support and guidance during hard times—something that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks prior (it surprised me how quickly things changed between us, and that’s simply because I took that first step of being vulnerable and opening up to them).
Eventually we reviewed the past, not for the purposes of blaming anyone, but so that we could understand the intergenerational patterns in our family. I constructed a family tree of trauma/hardship, then I went and read psychology books on family dynamics, trauma and regrowth, parenting, and psychotherapeutic techniques for emotional regulation—all the while performing deep practice by taking what I learned, and executing on a plan to act differently until I internalized each new skill (ie: myelination).
It wasn’t easy. I struggled (and sometimes cried) during some tough conversations, but now we’re closer than ever as a family.
That’s all well and dandy, but there’s only so much you can learn about romantic relationships without being in one, so while I’ve been dating casually for years, I finally decided to get serious about relationships.
Next I tackled my social anxiety. Approaching and talking to women always stressed me out. So I started studying the evolutionary origin of the feeling of social anxiety by reading the works of Jaak Panksepp (who founded the field of affective neuroscience) and reading behavioral psychology articles on PubMed.
Eventually, through enough experimentation, one day my social anxiety just turned off like a light switch. It’s not a problem anymore. It doesn’t affect me in the slightest. (I’ll write a blogpost explaining what I did some day.)
With my newfound freedom and confidence, I began approaching cute women at public events, chatting them up, and making them laugh. If I liked their vibe, I’d say to them, “Hey you’re cute, are you single?”[12]
Over just a couple weeks, I asked out a half-dozen women at bars, coffee shops, and social events. (Which was wild to me, given that I had only done that once before in my life).
Eventually I met a woman and we clicked. With each date we went on, I took the opportunity to practice everything I learned. Remember, myelination is slow. You can’t learn a new skill the first time you attempt something. It takes repeated iterations of deep practice to internalize a new skill.
Recall what the basketball coach John Wooden said:
From Dr. Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller's book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, I learned that:
And that:
So with the new woman I began seeing, I would catch myself falling into avoidant patterns, correct myself, and watch how with each repetition it became easier and easier to act in a healthy/secure way: I started discussing our relationship needs, our communication styles, and how we prefer to express love.
It went really well.
Why? Because I decided to take relationships seriously and put in the work.[13]
What happened after my initial intense six week period?
Eventually, I got to a place where I felt competent in my skills to be able to successfully navigate relationships, knowing full well that I now had the tools to develop myself further as necessary.
As a result of my efforts, I now know:
Since then, my approach to dating and relationships has completely changed. I used to just wing it and go off vibes. Here’s an analogy for what I do now:
When going in for an operation, you don’t ask the surgeon to provide you with their qualifications. Because the hospital hired them, you presume the surgeon is legitimate. But for relationships, people don’t come pre-vetted. Therefore, it is your responsibility to perform the due diligence, to determine, if a potential romantic partner has the right qualifications to be able to serve as a good emotional attachment figure.
I learned to start asking things like:
Of course, it would be kind of weird to ask these, one-after-another, on a first date. At the beginning of seeing someone new, I mostly just try to have fun and see if I can be my authentic self with them. But by the third or fourth date, I think it’s fair game to start initiating serious conversations about:
The aforementioned two lists of questions will begin to paint a clear picture of:
“Wow, this seems like a lot of effort!”
^If you’re thinking this, then I’ll remind you of this quote from earlier:
Maybe you object, “I don’t have the time to learn all this!” Yes, you do.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent American Time Use Survey, American adults spend, on average, 3 hours a day watching television and using social media → 3 hours * 7 days = 21 hours per week.
It only takes ~6 hours to read a 250 page book. So going without TV, you could finish a book in just two days.
We have plenty of leisure time, we just choose to allocate in different ways.
“Therapy is expensive!” No, not really. And besides, there are alternatives.
A one hour therapy session costs anywhere from $100–200 without health insurance, and is often cheaper with insurance. It’s another resource allocation issue: we make sacrifices for the things that matter to us.
If you decide to try therapy, find a specialist for whatever specific thing you need help with. There are experts in: relationships, attachment, sex, trauma, anxiety, etc.
It was difficult for me to swallow my pride and ask for help from a therapist, but I’m glad that I did. As my dad used to tell me growing up, “There’s nothing more important than your health.”
The good news is: if you do try therapy, and uncover maladaptive coping strategies, or flawed logic that’s preventing you from having healthy relationships, then you get to potentially develop new skills that'll stick around for the rest of your life.
That’s some of the best ROI (“return on investment”) you’ll ever get.
Besides individual therapy sessions, consider couples therapy once you’re in a relationship and if you’re having troubles. They’re professionals and have considerable education and training:
They’re experts for a reason. Learn from them.
Besides therapy, many religions have premarital counseling, which is a 12-week course that goes over things like: communication, conflict resolution, money management, family boundaries, parenting styles, how you enjoy expressing/receiving affection, and expectations around intimacy. You get assigned homework each week to learn how to have a successful marriage.
Free alternatives
If you’re truly strapped for cash, there are free resources:
I recommend you read books on topics like: relationship science (shout out to researcher/author John Gottman!), emotional intelligence, anxiety, and trauma. Read books written by credible authors like psychologists, doctors, and licensed professionals (not celebrities or gurus).
Reading the right book, at the right time when you need it, is sublime: it’s the type of experience where you read one paragraph, and have to stop and think about what you just read.
It’s good to remember that self-awareness about a problem is not enough to fix it. Reading gets you knowledge, but wisdom only comes after you apply that knowledge repeatedly.
After I read a book, I take notes on what I’ve learned, and then make a plan for how I’m going to integrate that new information into my daily life until it's fully internalized.[15]
“I’ve been hurt in the past and don’t know if I can learn to trust someone again…”
From the legendary Rocky Balboa:
So, what will you do now?
When I get serious about something, I don’t settle for mediocre or average. I don’t settle for anything less than my absolute best. Relying on scientific experts, authors, and deep practice—I will become the best version of myself.
One day I will be a great boyfriend/husband/partner.
I won’t stop until that’s true.
So, are you gonna get serious about the most consequential emotional and financial decision of your life, and actually get to work studying and practicing relationship skills until they internalize, so that you can avoid being one of the 40% of marriages that end in divorce?
Or are you just gonna wing it?
Remember, everyone can tell if you’re a serious person or not.
It’s okay if you haven’t dated before. We all start somewhere. Even a surgeon eventually has to perform his first ever operation. What’s important, however, is that you’re not just winging it, and that you have a good understanding of the theory behind what makes relationships, or surgery, go well.
I read books on:
The results?
If you want a visual demonstration of what a serious person looks like, check out this video of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger (a seven-time Mr. Olympia winner and five-time Mr. Universe winner) working out with famed bodybuilder Ed Corney. The latter is screaming with each rep of the 315lbs he’s squatting, and on the verge of passing out.
After Ed’s completed 8 reps, and has already pushed his nervous system close to the limit, Arnold then casually taunts Ed by saying, “C’mon, let’s get serious,” and goads him to actually start trying. Pure savagery from Arnold. After he completes the set, Ed collapses to the floor.
People stay unhappily married because of:
Why it’s financially significant should hopefully be obvious (ie: housing, kids & their college funds, the potential of divorce, etc), but what science confirms its emotional significance? In psychology, attachment theory confirms that your partner regulates both your emotional and physical health:
As for my required general education (GE) classes, one of my requirements could have been fulfilled by taking "Introductory Psychology", but instead I took…macroeconomics.
(I got an A in that class, but unfortunately it didn’t teach me anything about the science of relationships—but hey, at least I know what a Gini coefficient is!)
Here’s an example of what deep practice looks like from the book:
Many of these skills I pulled directly from John Gottman & Nan Silver’s book What Makes Love Last: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal — I highly recommend reading it.
Therapy can be an effective tool if you know what you’re doing. Sure, you can go there to vent and process your feelings, which is sometimes helpful, but I like their support because they’re professionals who are trained to see patterns in you, and they can help guide you to make realizations about yourself so that you don’t keep making the same mistakes.
For each session: I bring my journal, a list of questions for my therapist, request recommendations on books/articles/podcasts that can supplement my learning, and create homework for myself to go and practice outside of therapy each week. I turn my therapy sessions into a college class where I’m trying to learn and absorb as much as possible from the professor.
Check with your employer to see if they offer free, or reduced-cost, mental health support. Many places do, but it’s up to you to go find out. My workplace, for example, covers six sessions annually for free.
I said this to one woman and she replied, “Sorry, but I’m not into men,” to which I quipped back, “Whoa that’s crazy, I’m not into men either!” She laughed, and because she was cool, we kept on talking for a while.
On the topic of avoidant attachment, I eventually started seeing and recognizing it everywhere. It’s ubiquitous across media and literature.
During my six week period of intense learning and deep practice, I rewatched my favorite TV show of all time, HBO's The Newsroom, and read Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina.
The characters Maggie and Don in the HBO show are a classic anxious-avoidant partnership, where she keeps seeking closeness, and he keeps finding reasons to break up.
And in the 1878 Russian novel (a full 70 years before attachment theory was developed by psychologists), the characters of Levin and Kitty during their initial courtship are also anxious-avoidant, where he is obsessed with her, and she keeps avoiding his advances for love.
One time, I was going out with a woman for a couple weeks, when she told me, “My aspiration in life is to make tons of money so I can buy lots of luxury purses.” That relationship didn’t last long…
In college, people cram the night before an exam, to try to retain as much information in the short-term. But once the exam is complete, that knowledge is swiftly forgotten because they never use it again. The mantra of “use it or lose it” is validated in the neuroscientific literature: if you stay at something long enough, eventually it sinks in.