what are some of the first things you learn about them?

that they disappoint you in all kinds of ways

so this is true in visual illusion

if you take pictures of people

and you blur them out and you make them fuzzy

everybody looks more attractive

as you get into the little details of life

you start seeing wrinkles

right? when you look at people in general terms

you only see the good things in them

this by the way is not just about romantic attraction

you know in companies hire CEOs and they hire CEOs

from outside the company they often have

high expectations from them but when you

look at the results the results show that

they pay way more to external CEOs

than internal ones and they perform worse

but when you look at an external one

it's very easy to say oh my goodness

this person is just great because you don't

know the little details, right?

so if you look at somebody you don't know very well

all the little annoying habits that they have

are just going to be outside of scope for you

and you will just imagine that they all work well

only when they move in you get to to see those details

so imagine a world in which

when you look at other people

they look more glorious

than when you get to know them

in all the details

and now you in bed next to somebody

and you wake up in the morning

and you say

is this what I want for the rest of my life

when I have other options here?

and this is the tinder, your phone is here

and you basically in all of those things

all of those options look so wonderful

by the way also in online dating or Facebook whatever it is

people only present their positive sides, right

so you don't

so you have this bias idea that

the outside option the set of the outside option

look so promising

and now when you wake up next to somebody

or you have a little fight with somebody

and you think to yourself

in one click

I could have a date with somebody else

now imagine that you have an apartment

and you have a deal with the landlord

that the lease is day to day

and every morning you wake up and you say

do I want to extend this lease or not?

and every day your landlord decide

if they want to extend that least or not

how much would you invest in the apartment?

would you paint the walls? would you get flowers?

would you fix the walls?

would you do all kinds of things? of course not

because you're always with one foot outside

so the analogy is that you wake up next to your romantic partner every morning

and you say should we do it for another day or should we stop now?

the moment you think in the short term horizon

the odds that you will invest in a relationship

is much much lower

so the thing that worries me is that

when we are in a relationship but continuously with one foot out

and continuously thinking about how the outside world is more tempting

and more interesting and so on

it's actually not a good recipe for investing in a relationship

it's not a zero-sum game

it gets better when you invest in it

and if you don't think you're there for a long time

the likely of investment is just not that high