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How To Not Die Alone

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How To Not Die Alone

Read this fantastic post of Tim Urban: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

Table-of-Contents

• 1. Why is dating so hard?
• 2. Know your blind spot
• 3. Don't let perfect be the enemy of great ^ac5d25
• 4. Stop looking for prom dates
• 5. Decide don't slide
• 6. Bonus
• 7. Tim Urban

1.Why-is-dating-so-hard?

1. Now-days we do define our personal identities more so than we did in the past in the past there was a lot less personal agency you would kind of have these expectations thrust on you you'd become a doctor because your parents told you to become a doctor you'd marry this person because your parents told you to marry that person
2. We've just got way too many options
3. We see all these comparator things and even if it's not like famous youtuber a couple vloggers or it's our friends on social media you know engagement photos all that kind of stuff it's so easy to compare our failures in dating with other people's highlight reels
4. t's actually a pretty big decision

If relationships are the thing the main lever that we can move to contribute to our happiness why are we not spending more time thinking about them?

2.Know-your-blind-spot

Tip number one from the book is to know your blind spot. Three dating tendencies and the idea is that all of us fit into one of these categories but we probably have traits from all three of the categories:

1. the first type of dating tendency is the romanticizer this is the sort of person who kind of believes the whole soulmate stuff (Mmmh yeah but not so much);
2. Hesitator now this is the sort of person that thinks you know what i am not ready for dating just yet (But I am);
3. Maximizer they're looking out for and find the person who most maximize sort of hits the highest score point (That's it!);

3.Don't-let-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-great

We should be trying to do is become instead of a maximizer a satisficer and the idea here is that instead of trying to maximize trying to find the absolute perfect person you possibly can you we should try and find someone who is like good enough and then work to make that relationship something that is absolutely fantastic.

If we look at the studies, the thing we're optimizing for is not can we find the perfect partner because there's no such thing as a perfect partner! The thing we're trying to optimize for is what is going to lead to long-term happiness in our relationship and it turns out that even if you are a maximizer AND if you find the perfect person, the fact that you're a maximizer and you're approaching this with a maximizing kind of point of view means you're going to be less happy in that relationship than someone who is a satisficer.

Being a satisfier rather than a maximizer is one part of the equation but it's not the only part of the equation and the next thing is to actually figure out what sort of person we're looking.

4. Stop looking for prom dates

Present bias and that is the feeling that causes us to prioritize the short term over what actually matters in the long term this is the reason why we procrastinate from all sorts of things in life.

Looking for a prom date rather than looking for a life partner a prom date as she says is someone who looks great in pictures someone is really good looking someone who makes us feel amazing.

Most important trades when choosing a person:

1. Emotionally stable and kind;
2. Growth mindset relative to the fixed mindset. Someone with a growth mindset is more likely to want to work together to overcome those problems because they believe they can grow into;
3. we want to try and find someone who can fight well. not let their kind of emotions get like override kind of the way that they're approaching the conversation;

4. Spread your wings

Three important cardinal rules to keep in mind rule:

1. number one is that we don't actually know what we want. things that we think we want do not correlate to the things that actually bring us long-term happiness
2. The spark is b.s. : it was love at first sight oh i really felt a really strong spark when we first met. Apparently that's all bs. One study that she cites in the book uh that looked at 400 happily married like long-term successful relationship couples and found that only 11 of them fell to that feeling of love at first sight. that spark is not enough to sustain things, instead focus on more on long term life partnery qualities #^ac5d25
3. Always go on a second date. we're just not compatible because we had those three seconds of silence.
4. Fundamental attribution error where we um attribute a behavior that someone has exhibited to a personality. for example if someone is five minutes date late to a date we will do the fundamental attribution error and think oh this this is the sort of person who just doesn't respect people's time

5.Decide,don't-slide

We've been dating for a few months maybe a few years now maybe the pandemic is coming up why don't we just move in together these are all like sliding type things.

You want to actively decide these very big things you want to sit down with your partner and draw up a pros and cons list and like really really actively talk about what could go wrong what what the expectations what are we hoping for from this.

Really actively think about what you want from the relationship what they want from the relationship communicating expectations.

Bonus

Self-Acceptance

1. Practise relaxed awareness. this is about meditating and recognising and just sort of generally being more aware of our own thoughts. To practise, the idea is that you close your eyes for a minute and instead of pushing thoughts away for trying to focus on your breath, just softly notice your thoughts and feelings and body. You might see negative thoughts or emotions, that's totally okay. Just notice them, watch them. Don't try to turn them into positive thoughts or push them away.
2. Rating yourself.
3. Practise gratitude. Writing down a few things you're grateful for each day, that does as much to increase our happiness as doubling our salary.
4. Forgiveness and compassion. If we judge ourselves for not doing well at something or not being good enough at something, can we forgive ourselves for this just as we might forgive someone else. We would recognise that we're all human. Humans are all imperfect.

7.Tim-Urban

Marriage is Forgettable Wednesday. Together.

So I’ll leave the butterflies and the kisses in the rain and the twice-a-day sex to you and spend this post trying to figure out the best way to make Forgettable Wednesday as happy as possible.

To endure 20,000 days with another human being and do so happily, there are three key ingredients necessary:

1) An Epic Friendship I enjoy spending time with most of my friends—that’s why they’re my friends. But with certain friends, the time is so high-quality, so interesting, and so fun that they pass the Traffic Test. To me, almost nothing is more critical in choosing a life partner than finding someone who passes the Traffic Test. When there are people in your life who do pass the Traffic Test, what a whopping shame it would be to spend 95% of the rest of your life with someone who doesn’t.

A Traffic Test-passing friendship entails:

• A great sense of humor click. No one wants to spend 50 years fake laughing.
• Fun. And the ability to extract fun out of unfun situations—airport delays, long drives, errands. Not surprisingly, studies suggest that the amount of fun a couple has is a strong predictor for their future.6
• A respect for each other’s brains and way of thinking. A life partner doubles as a career/life therapist, and if you don’t respect the way someone thinks, you’re not going to want to tell them your thoughts on work each day, or on anything else interesting that pops into your head, because you won’t really care that much what they have to say about it.
• A decent number of common interests, activities, and people-preferences. Otherwise a lot of what makes you ‘you’ will inevitably become a much smaller part of your life, and you and your life partner will struggle to find enjoyable ways to spend a free Saturday together.

2) A Feeling of Home

If someone told you you had to sit in a chair for 12 straight hours without moving, aside from wondering why the hell they were making you do this, your first thought would be, “I better get in the most comfortable possible position”—because you’d know that even the slightest bit of discomfort would grow to pain and eventually, torture. When you have to do something for a long, long time, it’s best if it’s supremely comfortable.

Feeling “at home” means feeling safe, cozy, natural, and utterly yourself, and in order to have this feeling with a partner, a few things need to be in place:

• Trust and security. Secrets are poison to a relationship, because they form an invisible wall inside the relationship, leaving both people somewhat alone in the world—and besides, who wants to spend 50 years lying or worrying about hiding something?
• Natural chemistry. Interacting should be easy and natural, you should feel on the same “wavelength” in general. When I’m with someone on a very different wavelength than I am, it doesn’t take long before the interaction becomes exhausting.
• Acceptance of human flaws. You’re flawed ==imperfetto==. Like, really flawed. And so is your current or future life-partner. Being flawed is part of the definition of being a human. This isn’t to say people shouldn’t work on self-improvement, but when it comes to a life partnership, the healthy attitude is, “Every person comes with a set of flaws, these are my partner’s, and they’re part of the package I knowingly chose to spend my life with.”
• A generally positive vibe. Remember, this is the vibe you’re a part of now, forever. It’s not really acceptable for it to be a negative one, nor is it sustainable. 3) A Determination to be Good at Marriage

Relationships are hard. Expecting a strong relationship without treating it like a rigorous part-time job is like expecting to have a great career without putting in any effort.

So what skills does someone need to learn to be good at marriage?

• Communication. Communication being on this list is as silly as “oxygen” being on a list of items you need to stay healthy. And yet, poor communication is the downfall of a huge number of couples Communication is hard to do well consistently—successful couples often need to create pre-planned systems.
• Maintaining equality. Relationships can slip into an unequal power dynamic pretty quickly. When one person’s mood always dictates the mood in the room, when one person’s needs or opinion consistently prevail over the other’s, when one person can treat the other in a way they’d never stand for being treated themselves—you’ve got a problem.
• Fighting well. Fighting is inevitable. But there are good and bad ways to fight. When a couple is good at fighting, they defuse tension, approach things with humor, and genuinely listen to the other side, while avoiding getting nasty, personal or defensive. They also fight less often than a bad couple. According to John Gottman, 69% of a typical couple’s fights are perpetual, based on core differences, and cannot be resolved—and a skilled couple understands this and refrains from engaging in these brawls again and again.

In searching for your life partner or assessing your current life partnership, it’s important to remember that every relationship is flawed and you probably won’t end up in something that gets an A in every one of the above items and bullet points—but you should hope to do pretty well on most of them, since each one plays a large part in your lifelong happiness.

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