Psychology & Relationships

Have you ever been fed up with someone, but felt like you couldn’t leave them?

When you finally get fed up, a voice pops in your head: What if me leaving is the motivation they need to change? What if they’re different for the next person?

You tell yourself things will change. But they don’t, and you get angry – angry at yourself for falling into the same pattern, angry at them for disappointing you, angry because you’re alone.

Maybe you can’t tell anyone, or maybe you’ve told people so many times they’re sick of listening. Either way, you’re alone in the desert with your ball and chain, and you don’t know what the hell to do.

The Bullshit-Free Oasis Beckons

If the above resonates with you, you might be in a relationship that doesn’t serve you. Contrary to what you’ve been told for your entire life, breaking up doesn’t mean your relationship failed.

Too often I see clients staying in relationships because of guilt, shame, and fear. You tell yourself things will improve, you just need to be a better partner. Be more patient. Be more understanding. Be more supportive.

What you’re really doing is taking more than half the responsibility for the relationship. As they contribute less, you contribute more. Emotionally, mentally, physically, you’re exhausted. But you won’t leave.

You won’t leave because the world has told you two really nasty things: leaving is failure, and failure is bad.

I Have Some Questions For You…

Would you stay in a job that wasn’t paying you because your parents would call you a bum if you quit?

Would you eat food that makes you sick for the sake of finishing your plate?

Would you keep seeing a personal trainer who overworks you and causes you injury?

No – because the purpose of a job is to pay you. The purpose of food is to nourish you. The purpose of a trainer is to help you become strong. You can make these decisions quickly, easily, and without guilt or shame because they’re so clear.

If you’re struggling with guilt, shame, and a sense of obligation, it’s because you don’t know the purpose of your relationship.

Here’s a broad definition to get you started:

The purpose of a relationship is to enrich your life and the life of your partner.

Let’s dive a little deeper and look at what that means to you.

Free Relationship Counselling, Right Here

I’ve never really tried to translate what I do in session into an article, but if you’re down, so am I.

There are so many ways a relationship can benefit you. Since this is a huge question, it’s helpful to break things down into categories. Here’s something to help you get started:

Maybe your relationship meets basic needs like food, shelter, and a place to live. Maybe you aren’t social or outgoing, and your partner involves you in a lifestyle you have trouble creating on your own. They might provide you with acceptance, and that’s something you’ve never had before. It could be they push you to achieve your dreams.

Figure out what your relationship used to give you, and what it gives you now. Think about what you want from your relationship, and compare the two.

If your two lists are really similar, your relationship is successful. If they aren’t, it’s time to take action.

If Your Relationship Isn’t Meeting Your Needs

Needs change. What you wanted at 25 and what you want at 40 are wildly different. We change radically throughout our lives, but no one ever teaches us how to stay in sync with another person going through the same process.

The first thing to do if your relationship isn’t meeting your needs is to talk about it.

But what if your partner isn’t receptive? What if they won’t talk to you? What if you try again and again, but they just shut you out?

Well…

If two people make a commitment and one person doesn’t honour it, should the other person continue to do so?

When you say it out loud, it’s hard to answer with a yes. But actions speak louder than words, and there are a LOT of people in one way relationships.

Your relationship is defined by the roles you play in it. How many hours per day are you a woman, a man, a husband, a wife? How many hours are you a mother or a father? A room mate? A caretaker? A therapist?

If your relationship isn’t meeting your needs, if you’re spending more time being room mates or care takers than lovers, if your partner isn’t willing to change, why would you be willing to stay?

Lining Up Your Ducks

OK, so you understand your relationship sucks and there’s little to no hope of change. It’s been months or even years, and your partner is unwilling to take action. You know the guilt and obligation you feel is a load of crap, but you still feel stuck.

Here’s why:

Remember that triangle picture above that listed all sorts of needs? Well, those needs form your stability as a person. Your brain will fight tooth and nail any decision that leads to instability, so revisit that list you made earlier.

To make leaving easier, you need to find new ways to meet your needs. Look at all the things you’re getting from your relationship, and figure out how you can meet those needs in a different way.

It’s also a great idea to have a counsellor in mind to help you through the break up, or even beforehand to talk through your problems.

Are You Tired Of Your Relationship? Struggling With Guilt Or Obligation?

Contact me today and learn how I can help with these types of issues.

It’s a question often asked: What attracts women to men? Are some guys just born naturally attractive to women, or is it how a man lives his life that makes him attractive?

Today I’m going to bust THE big myth about what attracts women to men, and give you the straight up honest truth.

You’ll learn the underlying psychology of why women are attracted to certain things men do, and I’ll be showing you how you can use this knowledge to understand why there are so many popular misconceptions about attraction.

Why Is Attraction Such a Complex Issue These Days?

The problem is this:

1) Attraction is a genetic thing – women are programmed to respond to certain qualities like height, dominance, confidence, and so on

Historically (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of years) the men who possessed these qualities produced offspring with a higher chance of survival than men who didn’t, and as a result these men were responsible for a greater percentage of surviving children. The increased success rate was probably something marginal, but over hundreds of thousands of years, even a marginal advantage becomes extremely noticeable and widespread throughout a species.

2) This genetic programming is based on what works in an environment that is VERY different from the environment we live in now

We no longer have to run from predators, hunt and forage for food, and engage in conflict with neighbouring tribes. Things that were typically a disadvantage aren’t such a big deal anymore – people who would’ve been left for dead can now be productive, successful members of society who can provide for a family.

Although you don’t really need to be your classic alpha male type to survive and do well these days, the ancient attraction programming remains intact and pushes women towards guys who behave this way. Don’t go try to be an alpha male though – what you think it means and what it actually is are likely two very different things.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but being attractive is something you can learn to do by paying attention to your beliefs, behaviours, body language, and putting at least a bit of effort into being decent looking.

The modern attractive man isn’t some super aggressive juice head whose life motto is “never back down”. He’s just a normal guy who’s comfortable with who he is: confident, well put together, and willing to put the work in to actually go out and meet people.

The Big Attraction Myth: You Need Things Like Height, Money, and Social Status to Be Attractive to Women

I know I just said women are genetically predisposed to want these things, and it might seem like I’m contradicting myself here. Especially since in our own personal experience we often see the most attractive women with tall, rich, successful men. Actors, business owners, executives, guys with nice houses and fast cars.

The reason why it SEEMS like height, looks, social status, and money attract women is a common cognitive error: a misunderstanding of correlation and causality. Causality means one thing causes another, like being rich causing women to like you. Correlation means one thing is linked to another thing, like rich men being more likely to have attractive women with them, but not necessarily because of their wealth.

Now, there are of course some women who will only date men above a certain height, income level, and so on, but the majority of women aren’t like this.

So why would we believe things like money, social status, and so on are correlates rather than causes?

The reason is rooted in the way women identify these traits in men. If women are attracted to men with status and wealth, an effective evolutionary strategy for men would be to fake these traits. Producing offspring with a faker could be disastrous for the woman; a faker likely does not have adequate resources and social influence to provide for her offspring.

To counter this, women must be able to differentiate between the men who genuinely have wealth and social status, and those who are faking. One way to do this is by developing a heightened sense of social perception and recognizing what successful man behaviour looks like compared to the behaviour of an imitator. The behaviours become the primary source of attraction.

Women are not attracted directly to wealth and status, but to the behaviours indicating a man genuinely has wealth and status.

This provides the explanation for why it seems like wealth, status, and height matter so much. If you were suddenly made better looking, a few inches taller, and inherited a billion dollars, would you behave the same way you do now? Of course not! You’d instantly be more confident, more relaxed, happier, less stressed out, and so on.

Women pick up on these behaviours, and it’s these behaviour patterns that are at the core of attraction, not the wealth and status itself.

Can a Lot of Confidence Overcome Deficiencies in Height/Wealth/Looks/etc.?

It can definitely increase your chances, but you still need to do what you can to make yourself more attractive. Eating right and getting in shape will not only help you look better, it will make you a hundred times more confident. Just because women will still date you if you drive a beater, doesn’t mean they don’t prefer a BMW.

In short, confidence helps, but no woman is going to stick around for very long if you have no ambition, passion, or direction in life. You might get laid, but why would a smart, attractive, fun woman stay with a confident but lazy man when there’s tons of confident ambitious guys out there?

There’s just no excuse to not have your shit together. It’s not so much about being super rich and having washboard abs as it is not having any glaring deficiencies. As long as you’re reasonably in shape, well groomed, drive something not about to break down, and have a clean place of your own, you’re doing fine.

Why is Confidence Such a Big Part of Being an Attractive Man?

Essentially, confidence is about being yourself. It’s about being congruent and able to authentically express who you are without worrying about what people think. People who lack confidence, who are socially awkward, who are afraid to speak their mind, what they’re doing is broadcasting to the world that they’re willing to stifle their own impulses and desires for the sake of social acceptance.

This indicates they’re not used to being socially dominant and enforcing their worldview, that they may have been subject to social rejection in the past, or maybe they’re not typically successful and their fear of failure causes doubt and hesitation.

Men who are naturally attractive to women aren’t all super smooth James Bond types, in fact I don’t know many people like that at all. The guys I do know who are quiet and serious but still get laid are very good looking, and they succeed in spite of their personality, not because of it.

Most guys who are really good with women are the guys who are fun to be around. They’re not afraid to show their goofy, quirky side. They’re adventurous and outgoing. For a real life example of a guy who isn’t good looking but has an attractive personality, look at someone like Seth Rogan. He’s the type of guy women say they have a “weird crush” on, the type who isn’t good looking, but is still attractive.

5 Tips for Being More Physically Attractive to Women

Remember, you don’t need to be some fit, super suave looking playboy (trying too hard usually backfires), you just need to look like you put at least a bit of effort in.

1) Develop a style that reflects who you are

Don’t just wear random clothes, think about what sort of image you want to project. When women look at you, what do they see? Try to imagine yourself from your ideal woman’s perspective: if you were your ideal woman, would you date you? Does your style reflect the unique person you are, or are you just another average guy?

2) Go to the gym at least once per week

Even if you’re in decent shape, go to the gym! You’ll look better, but more importantly you’ll feel better. If you aren’t in shape, this is even more important.

3) Get a good haircut

Find a proper salon in your area. You might not notice the difference between a cheap and an expensive haircut, but I guarantee you women do. A well trained stylist who’s good at his/her job will know what kind of haircut suits your face, and they’ll do a much better job. You can get great haircuts in most major cities for around $45.

4) Work on your body language

It’s so important but so hard to notice yourself. I recommend filming yourself talking to see how much you fidget, what your expression and eye contact is like, if you sway back and forth, and so on. Read up on body language and try to become more aware of how you move. It’ll be awkward at first, but you’ll adjust.

5) Make sure you’re groomed

No nose/ear hair, keep your beard trimmed. Nothing wrong with a beard, but don’t just let it grow wildly. If you have bad skin, see a doctor or try a few different skin care products. Get rid of the unibrow, even if it’s just a few stubbly hairs between your eyes. Coordinate your facial hair with your haircut.

5 Tips for Developing an Attractive Personality

This is a much tougher process than being physically attractive. Reason being: the key to being emotionally attractive is being yourself, but hardly anyone understands how exactly to do this. It doesn’t help that so many sources tell you NOT to be yourself, and give you advice about acting smooth that just makes you look like a dickwad.

1) Define yourself

An interesting fact: demographics (location, income level, etc.) are the best predictor of what a person will believe. When you ask most people what they believe, what they value, what they want out of life and why, they can’t tell you. Knowing what you want and having a direction in life that’s congruent with who you are is wildly attractive. Women love a man who knows what he wants and goes after it.

2) Be comfortable alone

Neediness is one of the worst, most unattractive qualities a guy can have. Make sure you spend time being alone and not passively consuming media. Sitting around watching TV or creeping facebook isn’t what I mean. I’m talking about reading, thinking, meditating, being in touch with who you are. We’re exposed to so much social pressure and influence that it takes a conscious effort to shed all off and discover who we are and what we want.

3) Eliminate negative or limiting beliefs

Do you believe you’re incapable, unworthy, not cool? Do you feel, deep down, like you deserve the lifestyle you want? The woman you want? Or do you secretly feel like the women you want are out of your league? Like the job, house, car, type of life you want are out of reach? Trace these beliefs to their roots. Why do you believe those things? Are they valid reasons? Could you be giving certain people or events too much weight when it comes to determining your value as a person? Ultimately, it’s about living up to your own expectations, not anyone else’s.

4) Practice self-awareness and authentic expression

Become aware of how you behave, what you say and do. Are these things in line with your beliefs and desired life direction? Imagine who you’d like to be, and make a conscious effort to be that person on a daily basis. Speak your mind and act on your desires – don’t be ashamed or embarrassed about what you believe or what you want. Attractive men are willing to risk rejection or criticism to get the things they want in life.

5) Practice lifestyle design

If there are particular things about your life you want to improve, like making more money, being more fit, meeting new people, learning a new skill, and so on, write those things down and make a plan for reaching them. Having goals you’re working towards brings about a lot of different benefits: confidence when you reach them, a sense of purpose while you’re working on them, and a sense of achievement and self-worth that comes with having a plan for your life.

She goes through my phone all the time, but when I go through hers suddenly I’m invading her privacy, being controlling, and acting paranoid.”

“It’s not my fault you do suspicious things. I don’t. If you didn’t flirt with other girls maybe I wouldn’t have to go through your phone all the time.”

Sound familiar?

This kind of exchange is something I hear all the time. It’s a perfect example of how adult attachment styles can cause conflict in relationships.

About 40% of adults have an attachment style that causes relationship problems. Why are some partners OK with you taking a vacation solo, while others are constantly suspicious? Why do some people want to argue, while others wall up? It has a lot to do with… you guessed it, attachment styles.

Your adult attachment style determines your relationship patterns. They shape how you act when you’re close, how you deal with conflict, and in a lot of ways, are the deciding factor in whether or not your relationship lasts.

The Basic Adult Attachment Styles in Relationships

Secure Attachment

If you have a secure adult attachment style, you have a positive view of yourself and other people. You don’t panic or freak out when your partner goes out. You feel a normal amount of worry if your partner is running late or doesn’t call, but you’re able to cope with those feelings. Dealing with anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, and other negative emotions aren’t overly difficult for you.

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment

Out of all the adult attachment styles I see in couples counselling, this one is the most prevalent. If you have an anxious attachment style, you feel insecure about your relationship, question your partner, and struggle to trust your partner. Even if your partner tries to provide reassurance, the feelings of insecurity and anxiety persist.

Dismissive Avoidant Attachment

If you claim you don’t need relationships, this might be you. You focus on your career, your hobbies, and love your independence. When someone gets too close to you, you feel like they’re interfering with your own interests and pull away. You like to wall up or walk away when conversations get too emotional. When things aren’t going well, you convince yourself you don’t care and create distance between you and your partner.

Fearful Avoidant Attachment

Imagine the source of your pleasure and your fear are the same person. You want to get closer, but if you get too close you might get burned. You’re really happy at times, but then you snap out of it for a second and remember that you have to be on guard. When your partner wants you, you feel suffocated. When your partner isn’t being affectionate, you panic and scramble to get reassurance.

How Do Adult Attachment Styles Develop?

Maybe a few of the points above seem familiar… but how did you become this way? And can you change? If so, how?

Anyone can change anything about themselves with enough knowledge and the right skills. It starts with understanding how your adult attachment style developed, and how it’s affecting your relationship.

Secure Attachment

Develops from healthy affection. You grew up with a relatively stable family and home environment. When you took time to do your own thing, your parents were there when you were done. For the most part, they encouraged and supported you.

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment

Develops from inconsistent affection. It’s likely that you grew up with addicted parents. This style develops when parents are sometimes affectionate, caring and supportive, but other times absent or abusive. Because you don’t know which you’re going to get, you constantly need to test the waters. Once you know things are OK, you feel relief… but it’s only temporary.

Dismissive Avoidant Attachment

Develops from a lack of affection. Your parents probably encouraged you to be independent, or didn’t pay attention to your needs. Maybe they were unable to care for your needs, and you became a little parent yourself. Because you developed an independent, self-sufficient role so early on in life, you became your own critic, your own guardian, your own care taker, and you don’t feel like you need anyone else.

Fearful Avoidant Attachment

Develops from abuse. You needed your parent to feed you, clothe you, and provide you with shelter, and they did. But they were also cruel, and abused you mentally, physically, emotionally, or all of the above. You walked the line – close enough to get the essentials, far enough away to avoid the abuse. You may tell yourself your parent(s) were good people, just bad parents. Many people I see with this style have a split view of their parents, loving the good side and hating the bad, and mimic that with their partner.

Special Note

Sometimes, I have clients with great childhoods who have negative adult attachment styles. As you’ll see in the next section, your style can change due to really good/really bad relationships. A secure person can become anxious or avoidant after an abusive relationship, for example. If you connect with unhealthy attachment styles in the first section, but not the explanations in the second section, chances are that’s why.

 

Change Your Attachment Style, Have Better Relationships

If you’ve ever heard that “people don’t change”, forget it – it’s bullshit. I wouldn’t have a job if that saying was true. I’ll talk you through the basic process in this section, but it’s no replacement for quality counselling and couples therapy.

The most important tool in your arsenal is a technique called cognitive reframing. If you don’t know what that is, make sure you read this.

Secure Attachment

Do your best to understand your partner. Openly discuss the patterns that are happening and work together to create new, healthy patterns. Follow the advice I give for each of the unhealthy styles and provide as much support, love, and patience as you can.

Anxious Preoccupied Attachment

Being suspicious and accusing your partner don’t help. In fact, the more often you accuse and frustrate an innocent person, the less reason they have to maintain innocence. Your brain has created a pattern to help you, but it’s doing the opposite. To break this pattern, you have to take a giant leap. As long as you keep snooping phone messages, flinging accusations, and interrogating them, the pattern will continue. Your brain will tell you that the things you’re doing are preventing cheating and other forms of emotional pain. The only way to break the cycle is to prove yourself wrong, so challenge yourself – the next time you want to accuse or interrogate, try not doing it and see what happens.

Dismissive Avoidant Attachment

Don’t take too much pride in being able to wall up or walk away. Walking away or shelling up when you’re angry isn’t a good thing (most of the time). Until you learn to continue talking to your partner even when you’re feeling strong emotions, issues will continue to come up again and again. As your casual relationship turns more serious it’s perfectly normal for you to spend less time doing the things you enjoy independently. Take a giant leap and rely on your partner for something once in a while. It feels really nice to have someone you can depend on, but you’ll never have that unless you give your partner a chance.

Fearful Avoidant Attachment

You have a lot of really deep work to do. Your parents are (supposed to be) the safest, most loving people in your life. When they abuse you, it sends a really nasty message about the world and people in general. You’ll have to make good use of the cognitive reframing technique I mentioned earlier, and question the conclusions you’ve made about the world. Ask yourself where your negative beliefs about relationships come from, and if those beliefs make sense.

The tough thing with this style is your beliefs are often so suppressed you won’t be able to access them. You might have to hack your brain a little bit and watch for emotional outbursts. Whenever you feel stronger emotions than make sense for a situation, something deep has been uncovered and is escaping through the situation you’re experiencing. Pay attention to those situations, and watch for common factors in your outbursts.

Here’s What To Do Next

Post a comment below and ask me a question, or share your experiences.  Nothing is more valuable than people who have personal experience sharing how they cope, progress, and succeed. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to book a session and work on your attachment styles with some support!

It’s been 7 years now. More than 1,000 people. And through it all, there has been a consistent pattern in all the couples I’ve seen.

The pattern is simple – three things that are easy, free, and have an instant impact on your relationship.

No more excuses! Take the advice in this post and I promise you’ll see immediate results.

 

1) Go To Bed Together

 

If you aren’t going to bed together, you’re missing out on one of the best ways to connect. I know sometimes people have different sleep schedules, and it can be frustrating for both of you. If you commit to doing this, your schedules sync up and it becomes second nature.

As a general rule, join your partner within 30 minutes of them going to bed. But what about couples that work opposite, or very different hours?

If you’re the one who stays up late, go to bed with your partner until they fall asleep. Bed is one of the few times you have privacy and the chance to be intimate (both sexually and emotionally) so it’s important not to skip out. On top of that, it can be hard to fall asleep before your partner joins you.

Falling asleep alone has this weird exaggerated mental effect. People who fall asleep alone tend to report feeling more alone and unsupported in the relationship, even if they aren’t. I’m not a neuroscientist, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re hard wired on some level to crave closeness at night, and to feel more isolated than usual if we don’t have it.

 

2) No Electronics In Bed!

 

Creeping around on your phone is a bedtime ritual for many people, and it’s absolutely horrible for your relationship. It totally defeats the purpose of going to bed together.

I get that for some people it’s a way to unwind, and that’s cool – just do it *before* bed. Scroll through your feed, catch up on sports, read forums, do whatever you want as long as it’s not in the bedroom. When you’re done, put your phone on silent and leave it under your pillow or on your bedside table (facedown).

This goes for TV as well. And if you aren’t sold on the relationship benefits, consider that your brain forms associations between things very easily. It won’t secrete as much melatonin (sleep chemical) if it doesn’t think you’re going to your sleeping spot.

You have to train your brain to associate your bedroom with sleep… and sex! But watching TV and creeping your phone are definitely not associations you want to build.

 

3) Spend At Least 1 Hour a Week Dating

 

The vast, vast majority (I’d say 90%+) of couples I see don’t even spend an hour a week together doing stuff.

You don’t need to be going out for fancy dinners, expensive outings, or extravagant locations, a simple picnic in the park is enough. The key here isn’t so much what you’re doing, but that you’re doing it together with no interruptions.

If you have kids, get a sitter. Turn your phones off. I don’t care if you use your phone for work or if you’re on call. If you can’t be away from your phone for an hour, you’re lying to yourself about how important you are and disrespecting your spouse at the same time. Period.

Ride bikes together. Get some gelato and go for a stroll downtown. See a fortune teller, even if you know it’s a bunch of BS. Halloween is coming up… grab a latte and go pick pumpkins together.

 

Have Your Own Tips?

 

Have your own date ideas? Tips that have helped out your relationship? I’d love to hear about them! Post a comment below the article, and subscribe to my weekly email for free dating and relationship tips!

A while ago I wrote an article on the causes of cheating.

The main thing I wanted to get across was that, overwhelmingly, insecurity is the root cause of cheating.

Understandably, a couple of commenters disagreed with me. The source of our disagreement is something pretty simple.

In psychology, there are two causes of behaviour. There’s immediate causes (proximate) and “deeper causes” (ultimate).

 

The Two Causes of Behaviour

 

Say a ship sinks. You could say it went down because too much water got into the hull, and you’d be right. This is an immediate, or proximate cause.

You could also say it went down because the captain wasn’t paying attention, or the spotter was busy watching people make out, or whatever. You’d still be right. This would be the ultimate cause.

Insecurity is often an ultimate cause of cheating, but almost always a proximate cause.

I should’ve done a better job at explaining the whole proximate / ultimate thing in my last article. My bad.

A secure person with a good support system of friends and family, separate interests and activities, and a stable sense of self is more likely to leave a relationship than cheat.

If you have no where to go, no one to talk to, nothing you can do to clear your head and socialize with other people, and so on, leaving a relationship becomes waaaay more difficult.

This is what I was talking about when I said cheating is about unmet personal needs, not unmet relationship needs.

It’s pretty common for people to fulfil their personal needs with their relationship. The needs you’re responsible for fulfilling outside the relationship and the needs your relationship should fulfil become all mixed up.

 

It’s Like Jenga

 

Like most people, I’m a visual learner. This will make a lot more sense with a picture, so here’s a visual version of what your needs look like:

If you look at the yellow bar, you’ll see friendship, family, intimacy. That’s where relationship needs fit in.

Imagine each coloured bar is divided into separate blocks, like Jenga. Leaving a relationship that provides you with intimacy would be like pulling out one of the blocks. There’d be a hole, but the tower would remain standing.

If you have your personal needs fulfilled, this is exactly what would happen.

When you don’t have your personal needs fulfilled, the little “intimacy” block in the middle isn’t so little anymore. Suddenly your relationship now represents the entire yellow bar, maybe chunks of the orange bar, and some of the green bar too.

If you pull all that out, well… the whole thing crumbles. Even if a relationship isn’t “meeting your needs”, it’s still fulfilling a bunch of your personal needs. You can’t end the relationship without tearing yourself apart.

When I say insecurity and unmet personal needs are the cause of cheating, that’s what I’m talking about.

There might be deeper, ultimate causes, but eventually you’ll run into the proximate cause of not leaving the relationship to resolve things in a healthy way.

Hope that provides some more clarity. If you still disagree with me, though (d’oh…) I’m interested in hearing what you have to say.

Mark Thursday, February 26 2015 in your calendar – it will forever be remembered as the weirdest moment in internet history. In case you missed it, the internet basically exploded in debate over “the dress”.

What’s there to debate?

When you look at this dress, do you see a white and gold dress, or a black and blue dress?

Well, internet split down the middle, and “the dress” became the focus of debate and analysis in every household with an internet connection. Scientists have explained why we see it differently, but the psychology of why it was even an argument hasn’t been covered.

 

How “The Dress” Exposes Our Psychological Shortcomings

 

A friend of mine first showed me the picture, and I thought he was fucking with me. It’s clearly, CLEARLY white, with stripes of gold. So I showed my wife.

She looks at it and scrunches her nose a bit, trying to figure out what I’m up to.

“It’s blue and green.”

What!??!?!

I was immediately sucked in. How could she possibly see anything other than white and gold? It’s not like this is a matter of opinion, I mean… it’s obvious, right?

This is where things get really interesting.

There are two types of disagreements: objective and subjective. Objective is fact based, like the distance between two places. Subjective is opinion based, like whether a dress is white and gold or black and blue.

Problems start happening when people mistake subjective disagreements for objective ones, which is basically all the time. But why does it happen?

If you’ve never left your own culture, you have culture blindness. You don’t know how your culture influences your world because you’ve never been anywhere else. This is why world travel is so good for growth – it exposes how much of your worldview is blind acceptance of cultural beliefs and traditions.

Since you can’t travel away from your body, you have psychological blindness. It becomes impossible to see how your perception changes the way you see things, so your brain just says fuck it and assumes everything you believe is legit.

A great example of this is language. We all use the same words, but they carry a slightly different meaning to each of us. If you ask one hundred people to define “near by” in terms of distance, you’ll get one hundred different answers.

 

The 2 Reasons Why “The Dress” Became An Internet Sensation

 

The dress was such a hit because it exposed a short circuit in your brain. Two things came together to make this happen:

1) The subtle differences in the way we define words, or in this case, colours.

2) The mental blindness I mentioned earlier.

One and two together creates a seemingly impossible scenario. If you define colours the way other people do, and you see the world accurately, how can there be a disagreement?? Your brain scrambles to try and reconcile the apparent paradox.

Essentially, “the dress” was a form of mental travel. Like stepping out of your house for the first time and realizing how much your windows distort the view. It stripped away the illusion of objectivity, and gave the whole internet a brief glimpse at how plugged in we are to our own personal Matrix.

It’s interesting to note the lack of disagreement when you break down the dress into individual colours. Suddenly, the disagreement vanishes:

When you break it down…

With the colours isolated from the picture, it becomes easy to look at each colour and ask “What colour is this to you?”

I might call one of those coloured squares gold, while you might call it green-gold or brown. Everyone I know who saw this picture only disagreed slightly on how they’d label the colours, but no where near a difference worth arguing about.

It’s when everything is mixed together that perceived differences arise. The ability to spot these similarities in seemingly opposing perspectives is called integrative complexity and it’s hands down the most important skill for resolving conflicts.

I know to some (most) people this is just a weird viral thing, but to me it’s an opportunity to show people why conflict is so insane. The dress is a stunning metaphor for conflict in general.

Whether it’s a disagreement between friends, husband and wife, or world leaders, we’re all looking at the same dress and arguing about the colours.

If you bring up love at first sight, inevitably everyone and their dog is gonna have a different opinion.

Some swear they’ve felt it, and the skeptics have some really good questions for them. Is it real? How would it even work? If it is real, how could it be the same as “true” love?

Well, after you read my story and do the 10 second thought experiment, hopefully you’ll have the answers.

 

Love at First Sight is Possible Because of Subjective Reality

 

Like most of you, my family moved a few times when I was growing up. This meant switching schools, and in grade 5 I experienced my first move that took me away from a love interest. Before I left, her and I made a pact that if I came back when we were older we would date.

I thought about it when I saw things that reminded me of my old school, or when I visited my old town and ran into friends from back in the day. I lived about 2,000 miles away, so I didn’t visit much. One summer I was in the old ‘hood and I ran into the girl in question.

I was pretty conflicted about approaching her. It’d been like 10 years. Was 10 years too long for a pact? Was it just something dumb we said as kids? Nah… 10 years is perfect timing for a pact. If it was a year or two that would just be a regular plan and defeat the whole point of making pacts in the first place.

Being 18 or 19 at this point, I had changed a lot but I was sure she’d remember. In my mind, it played out with her being thrilled to see me and us going somewhere and catching up. The reality was a bit different.

When I approached her, she gave me that confused, I-don’t-remember-you look.

Not yet ready to throw in the towel, I attributed this to me being older and extremely good looking. I did the classic it’s-me-don’t-you-remember pose that everyone does for some reason.

You know the one – sort of smiling with your eyebrows raised and arms out with a look of expectation, as if this will somehow jog their memory.

I’ll never forget her response. “Ohhh yeah, right… weren’t you that kid that sort of liked wrestling?”

I seriously doubt she could’ve said a more deflating sentence. That’s about as opposite of our pact as you can get. I mean, yeah my mom took me to Toronto to see WWF Raw in ’97, but to be vaguely remembered for that?

The point of this story is that our feelings of attraction and intimacy are based on perception, not reality. This defeats the common objection that feelings of connection, or even love, upon meeting someone “aren’t real”.

Whether you develop an understanding of someone over time, or (falsely) believe you possess that understanding instantly, the experience is the same. You could just as easily argue that loving someone who constantly lies about who they are means your love for them isn’t “real”.

This point of contention aside, how could you possibly believe you know enough about someone to love them on sight?

 

The Psychology of Love at First Sight

 

Alright, so people who experience love at first sight have a couple psychological traits in common. One, they’re raised on boy-meets-girl fairytale stories, or at least believe in the concept of love involving some element of destiny or fate. We all rely on our beliefs to explain the world around us, and the way we filter the world and interpret things is shaped by our beliefs.

Whether or not your beliefs are accurate is irrelevant – your beliefs are accurate to you so your brain will serve up emotions corresponding to those beliefs. Your emotions shape the way you act, and the end result is your brain basically manipulates you into acting in accordance with your beliefs without stopping to question whether or not they make sense.

The second thing you need to know in order to understand love at first sight is heuristics. I’ll spare you the boring explanation. Instead, let’s do that experiment I talked about:

I’m going to describe someone, and I want you to imagine what they look like. Imagine someone really smart, they’re the top performer in the chess club, the captain of the debate team, and they get straight A’s. Hold the image in your head and scroll down.

I asked 10 people these same questions.

There were only two types of people described.

Does the person you imagined look like either of these two?

Scroll down.

First off, I’ll acknowledge that the results you get from your friends might be totally different. That’s not the point of this thought experiment.

The point is you are able to imagine very detailed physical descriptions of people without being given any physical traits.

I didn’t mention gender, height, weight, appearance, ethnicity, hair colour, eye colour, clothing, yet people are able to answer these questions. And not only answer them, but answer them with confidence.

Not a single person said “I can’t tell you what they look like, you didn’t describe them physically.”

This is called the availability heuristic. It’s the tendency for us to accept whatever comes to mind first without stopping to consider whether or not it’s true. If one of the people surveyed came across a guy similar to the photo, they would assume a shitload of information about him, even though it might be totally inaccurate.

It’s not just these people either. We all do this, all the time. Every time you look at someone you have a general idea of what they’re like, if you’d get along, and so on.

This is the basic process behind love at first sight. Take someone who has ingrained ideas about what their ideal romantic partner would be like, who whole-heartedly believes their first impressions of people are totally accurate, and put a person representing their ideal in front of them.

Another factor is the simple belief in love at first sight, caused by a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. You see what you want to see, and selectively ignore things that might challenge your beliefs. The less someone relies on an evidence based interpretation of the world, the more likely they are to believe in hokey shit like astrology, the law of attraction, or that they know and intimately love someone on first sight.

Unlike the former two, however, emotions like love are based entirely upon belief. Think about it – if I show you a picture of a guy and tell you he cheated on his wife and abandoned his kids, how would you feel? What about if I told you he’s a swell dude and an awesome father to his loving family? Obviously, who he actually is doesn’t change, but your emotions do.

In that sense, love at first sight is absolutely real, and the feeling is identical to the love you feel from getting to know someone over a long period of time. Whether or not you actually know someone doesn’t change the emotion you experience.

What do you think? Are you convinced, or do you think this is all psychobabble bullshit? Let me know what you think, especially if you’ve experienced love at first sight yourself!