✍️ Author Link: Logan Ury

🥰 Who Would Like It?

Everyone! I mean this quite literally, even those in long-term relationships could learn a lot from this book. A lot of what we try in our dating life is what we see on TV or from other people, but that does not mean we are doing things right. The best part of this book is all about becoming more self-aware of bad dating habits. There were parts of this book where my brain literally exploded from just realizing things about myself and how those things relate to relationships I've had in the past.

🔍 How I Discovered It

There was a video Ali Abdaal released a few days ago that got me slightly interested in reading this, and then what sealed the deal was a friend mentioning that this book really shifted her dating perspectives. After reading it, I agree 100%, consider my perspectives shifted.

💡 Key Concepts

☁️ Soulmate Mindset - Belief that relationship satisfaction only comes from finding "the right person."
🛠 Work-it-out Mindset - Relationship success is directly related to the effort put into it.
😍 Happily-Ever-After Fallacy - The false idea that the hardest part of finding love is finding someone. The actual hardest part is in maintaining a relationship.
📏 Evaluability - The easier it is to compare certain things, the more important they seem. (Ex: If height is included in a dating app, people take specific height more seriously. In real life, height is abstract and nowhere near as important.)
🎬 Peak-End Rule - When thinking back on a situation, we tend to disproportionately focus on the most intense emotional moment or the ending of the interaction. (Ex: If a date starts out terribly but ends on a high note, we think of it as a positive experience. If the opposite happens, we'll think of it as a negative experience.)
👀 Mere Exposure Effect - The more we see something, the more we like that thing due to increased familiarity. (Ex: Seeing the same person in multiple classes makes you feel more comfortable around them.)
🧐 Fundamental Attribution Error - The tendency to think people's actions reflect who they are instead of the circumstances they're in. (Ex: If someone is late to a date we assume they are unreliable, and not that they left extremely early but their bus ran very late.)
🪞 Self-Perception Theory - We look at our actions to try to get an idea of who we are. (Ex: If we ghost someone, we'll subconsciously think of ourselves as a bad person. Don't ghost.)
💸 Sunk-Cost Fallacy - The feeling that once you invest time or money into something, you should see it through. (Ex: You've been with this person for 2 years, and even though it's not working out, you can't bring yourself to leave, until you do but only after wasting even more years for both of you.)

📦 Compressed Summary

When I was first learning to drive in my teens, I specifically remember my parents and instructors making a big deal of blind spots. You know, the small gap where you can't see a car coming next to you and turning at the wrong moment can be life or death? That blind spot. Today new cars have all sorts of sounds and lights to let us mortal humans know not to turn at the wrong moment. This book is the relationship version of your car screaming at you not to turn the wheel.

It tries to bring out your relationship blind spots: the things you do or don't do which will make you die alone (or unhappy).

Near the beginning, you take a little test to see what kind of person you are in the dating world: a romanticizer, maximizer, or a hesitater.

❤️ The Romanticizer: You believe in the Disney fairy tale and the idea of a soulmate. There is someone absolutely perfect out there for you and once you meet this person everything will make sense. Keeping the relationship going should be easy, and if it's not, clearly they are not your soulmate.

Dose of Reality: Disney lies, all relationships require effort from both parties to be healthy and fulfilling. Just because being with someone doesn't feel like a Disney movie doesn't mean they are not a wonderful partner.

📈 The Maximizer: You need to be 100% certain you're picking the best option with everything you do, including finding a partner. Someone can be 80% perfect for you, but because there is a possibility of finding someone maybe 2% better it's hard to stop looking for a better alternative. The disturbing thought of "settling" is a constant in your life.

Dose of Reality: Perfection doesn't exist, but great partners (plural) do. Instead of overthinking about someone's few flaws, accept that nobody will meet your standards 100% because even you yourself are not a perfect being. You can have very high standards, just accept anyone who meets them and be happy with that person.

😰 The Hesitater: You want to date, but feel like you're not ready just yet. There are things you want/need to do so that you see yourself as someone that can attract the best potential partner. Dating without a solid career, financial status, or physique is out of the question since you don't think you can attract the right person otherwise.

Dose of Reality: You do not have to be perfect, while improving yourself is a good thing, don't wait forever to get started seeing people. The mere fact that you are working on yourself makes you attractive enough, get out there before it's too late, time waits for no man (or woman).

Just this alone made me a lot more aware of my dating habits and there are entire chapters on each of these three personality types. Logan did a great job of walking me through my maximizer habit to the point where I had to laugh at some parts because it described me so well it was scary.

This is step 1, step 2 is realizing which of the three attachment types you are:

🔒 Secure Attachment (50% of people)

You can draw clear boundaries with drama, are comfortable with intimacy, and have a strong sense of self. This is the ideal partner type, most have healthy relationships and stay in them.

🐈 Avoidant Attachment (25% of people)

You crave being intimate with someone, but having intimacy scares you away. This results in the scenario where the closer you are to someone, the more you subconsciously pull away for fear of them letting you down and invading your independence.

😰 Anxious Attachment (20% of people)

You crave attention and validation from your partner due to an underlying fear of them leaving you. This may lead to being overly clingy or acting out for attention in the relationship and feeling like your partner is not as invested as you.

😠 Anxiously-Avoidant (5% of people)

A bad mix of anxiously attached and avoidant. This type of person is afraid of intimacy and lashes out at anyone that tries to get close.

Understanding which of these attachment styles you or your partner fit into is essential to work on a relationship and to learn strategies to improve intimacy. Although this is a concept that works in scales, meaning you can be somewhere between anxiously-attached and securely-attached, I found it really interesting to analyze my own attachment style so that I can keep this in mind when finding a partner. The more aware of our quirks, the healthy relationships we can have which leads me to the entire rest of the book which can be summed up in one quote:

Decide, don't slide.

Being intentional about looking for important long-term traits, talking about where your relationship is at, where it's going, and what can be better is the only way forward.

🧬 Important Long Term Traits to Look for:

Think about what is actually important, everyone can have preferences but don't be limited by them. Someone being an inch or two taller isn't important, the way they pronounce the word "tomato" won't make much of a difference in the long run, and whether or not someone has a lot of money isn't going to make them a better partner (though it's a bonus, let's be real here 😉). Focus instead on what will make for a good long-term teammate:

🧘‍♂️ Are they emotionally stable?
🎖 Are they loyal?
📈 Are they the type of person that will grow with you?
☕️ Do they also love coffee? (kidding, but almost not kidding)

👩‍❤️‍👨 Talking About Your Current Relationship Together:

I think my favorite quote of all time is "What is measured gets managed" because it's true for finances, true for your health, and true for relationships. There needs to be a constant dialogue (something I'm working on 😅) between you and your partner to make sure things are healthy, so why not have monthly or weekly check-ups on the relationship? 🤨

This way you don't seethe over how your partner places the toilet paper going under for months until you can't take it and explode one day (but obviously, it should go over, anything else is a crime 🧻). Relationships grow over time, people change, take the time to hear your partner and grow along with them rather than letting things get out of control by ignoring the growth.

🗺 Talking About Where Your Relationship is Going:

Do you drive to a destination without a map and directions? No, you use a GPS and double-check it constantly to stick to the path. You need to know where you are going and that you are going together. There might be several times along the way where you both get off the main path and divert, life is full of surprises, but with a set goal in mind, all it takes is getting back on the ramp towards the highway and you're back on track. So what does the destination look like?

👶🏻 Do you want children? How many? Is adoption an option?
🌎 Where do you want to live? Are parents in the picture?
⛪️ Is there a specific religion we want to practice?
💰 What do our finances look like? Are we buying a house? Renting?

Be intentional.

❤️‍🩹 Talk About What Could be Better:

Remember how you used to love getting the massive triple stack burger at Wendy's as a teenager (just me? 🍔) but now your body can't (and shouldn't 😰) handle that level of abuse? Well, that's ok, things change. Maybe now you're more into sushi even though you couldn't stand it before. People change over time and if you don't voice what you like and dislike as you grow, how is your partner supposed to know? Letting someone know where you're at with things allows them to be better, and gives you the opportunity to feel better in the relationship. Don't assume things will improve without checking in from time to time.

I'll end this with the last line of the book:

Go out there and live intentionally ever after 🙌

🤓 Memorable Quotes:

Great relationships are built, not discovered. - pg. 1, Logan Ury

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. - pg. 154, Henry Ford

It's not the strongest of the species [in this case relationship] which survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - pg. 280, Charles Darwin

Choose to decide, not slide. - pg. 284, Logan Ury