#349： Is This a Date or Not？ The Problem With Ambiguity in Relationships
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Scott Shanley explains why dating has become more ambiguous in the past 20 years, and why that has led to people sliding into relationships instead of explicitly deciding and committing to them. He then highlights research that shows that cohabitating before marriage actually increases the likelihood of divorce when you do decide to get married, and that living with someone makes it harder to break up with them even when you realize you should break up.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast dating has never
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been more ambiguous than it is today people sort of end up with each other without explicitly
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defining the nature of the relationship level of commitment or expectations for the future
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what begins as hanging out slides into spending the night which slides into moving in together
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while keeping romantic relationships ambiguous may seem to make them safer and less complicated
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my guest today has conducted research that shows that's not necessarily the case his name is scott
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stanley he's a professor of psychology at the university of denver and he specializes in
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setting commitment cohabitation and marriage today on the show scott explains why dating has gotten
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more ambiguous in the past 20 years and why that has led to people to slide into relationships
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instead of explicitly deciding and committing to them he then highlights research that shows that
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contrary to popular belief cohabitating before marriage actually increases the chances of divorce
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when you do decide to get married and how living with someone makes it harder to break up with them
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even when you realize you should break up with them we then get into what men can do to make dating less
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ambiguous and more decisive and how being upfront about your intentions with women will make you
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more attractive reduce drama down the road and put you in a better position for a happy and fulfilling
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marriage he then shares what you should do if you feel like you've slid into a relationship and what
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married couples can do to strengthen their marriage now whether you're dating thinking about getting
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married or already hitched this podcast is crammed with research back advice and how to have better
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relationships after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is
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slash stanley where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
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dr scott stanley welcome to the show hey thanks for having me on the show i'm excited to be here
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so you're a psychologist who specializes in research on relationships particularly marriage and
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cohabitation and dating i'm curious what's your story how did you get involved in that area
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of psychology well i'm a bit older now and i i was way back when in college i was uh and i was an
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accounting major of all things and after a couple years i was doing great at it uh but i decided this
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is going to be really boring and i started to get interested in psychology i had a brother having
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some serious mental health problems at the time and started taking classes in psychology and i ended up
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uh taken a class with a guy named howard markman who uh he and i have worked together now i don't
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even want to tell you how long it's it's like over it's decades and he's doing research on marriage
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and how you help people do better in marriage prevent marital problems i got very into it and so
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i've been very interested every since and that's been my niche in the field of psychology it's something
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i really love okay so what i would love to do with you in this conversation is kind of
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walk people through the various stages of relationship that starting from dating courtship
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to marriage and you know and what you do when you're in a marriage right so let's start off
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with dating you've written an article and published a blog post about this topic of how dating today is
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much more ambiguous than it was maybe 20 30 years ago yeah i think here's what's here's what i think
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happened in fact let me contrast so i'm old enough to go back to the day when let's say
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back when i was in high school if you wanted to uh hang out with a girl you got super nervous and
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got up the gumption to call her on the telephone or you mean you could do this in person that'd be
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even more crazy uh you call her on the phone in sheer panic and terror and you ask her out on on like
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a date like you got a plan i mean it could just be like going out to get a burger and go to a movie
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but you you're making an offer and she gets to respond to that and if then if you're dating you
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know if you're like going out for a while you know people sort of know it they kind of know you're a
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couple people are talking and if that's going pretty well it wouldn't be very long before you would
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talk to each other and the most amazingly brief conversation which would be something like hey do you
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want to go steady yeah let's do that and then you're telling everybody you're going steady and that's
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like the end of the deal it's like it was super clear it was super public you announced it it was
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mutual everybody understood what that meant now you contrast that with today and especially i think
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taking off over the last 20 years or so uh things have become more and more ambiguous there's fewer
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steps and stages there's a lot more ambiguity and uncertainty about what things mean and about what
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people are doing out there and i think the reason is this i think that it feels safer and and it feels
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safer in a very particular way if i'm not having to be really clear and put it out there what i really
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want if i'm not asking clearly if we're not talking if it's not getting totally clarified somehow in the
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structure how people do things these days maybe it's not going to hurt as bad if it doesn't work out or if
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we break up and i think that fear kind of comes out of all the you know the gigantic wave of divorce
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that started in the 70s and moved through the 80s i think people just started to feel a lot of
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instability about relationships about dating about being with people and i think people got afraid of
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being clear i think people got afraid of putting it out there and now you get all this ambiguity
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where people aren't even sure with what they're doing on friday night is actually a date because that
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would mean something different than just hanging out and is this where you got the idea of you've
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coined this phrase sliding versus deciding you know it it comes out of that mix but that let me give you
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the detail on that so so we started doing research and i say we especially me and my colleague galena
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rhodes also howard markman but me and especially galena rhodes started doing research a lot of research
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on cohabitation uh 15 17 years ago and one of the things that was always true in the in the literature
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about the research on cohabitation that was very puzzling was this and i'll give you the contrast
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for decades i mean going back to the mid 90s people have believed like overwhelming percentage of people
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believe that the number one thing you can do to make it more likely that your marriage will work out
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is live together before marriage the funny thing is the problem is is the research has really never
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shown that you can find the odd little study here and there that's like a one-off study but you know
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there's scores of studies over like 30 35 years now on cohabitation and cohabitation before marriage
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and the debate shifted a little bit and i'll explain that to you but basically uh the data used to show
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that people that lived together before marriage were actually more likely to divorce more likely to
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have higher conflict be less happy you know all these kinds of difficulties in marriage it shifted to
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a place where it's a little more equivocal in the last 15 years and and i really want to explain that but
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but essentially the the starting place of that story is this really interesting disconnect between
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something that people strongly believe and just doesn't have any evidence of being true so even
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if in the best case for somebody that uh is sort of uh pro living together no matter what to kind of
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figure out the relationship the evidence just doesn't really show an advantage for that and there's a
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lot more evidence of disadvantages now let me get to sliding versus siding because this this is uh
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this is where the story i think it's pretty interesting and this is what people don't
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actually get or see about cohabitation so i've studied commitment since the early 80s and one of
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the things that that primed me to think about is this there's two different ways to think about what
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commitment is in any relationship there's the force you could think of as dedication which is the
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i want to be with you i want a future with you i want to you know share a sense of us as a couple
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that's all that kind of good stuff there and then there's commitment that comes more from a force that
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i like to call uh and others way before me called constraint so what are the things that might keep you
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there when you might want to leave now hold that so put that thought aside a second so when we started
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doing research on cohabitation uh i started to realize and then galena rhodes and i have really
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been doing a lot of research on this and many published studies on this for some time is that
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the thing that people maybe aren't seeing about living together before marriage or just living together
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period is that when you move in with somebody you are making it harder to break up that's a really
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interesting thing because all the people here in the media all the people here from most other social
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scientists is no harm no foul there's no cost to living together in fact it might be good you might
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discover something about the partner that you need to know uh but but let's even take that let's say you
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do learn something that you couldn't have known some other way which by the way i think there's other ways
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to learn things uh you've made it harder to break up already so i think so what we started to realize
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is that uh that there's this inertia to cohabitation and essentially what a lot of people do is that they
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increase that constraint variable before the dedication has really matured enough between the two
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and the bottom line is there is we think some people end up marrying somebody that they wouldn't have
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married if they hadn't moved in with them because they just made it a little bit too hard to break up
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so that's the downside of cohabitation now here's where the sliding part comes in along about uh
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late well in the 1993 in a series of interviews a researcher in australia named joe lindsey
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did a remarkable paper with a very small group of couples and and she basically was uh interviewing them
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and listening carefully to their story and how they uh began to live together and she realized
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this is not like uh a clear transition people are just sort of describing that they were kind of doing
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this and then they were kind of doing that and that it wasn't a clear thing and then sociologists
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uh wendy manning and pam smock in 2005 came out with a paper based on more qualitative interviews with
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people cohabiting where they they had a number of conclusions but the one that really stood out to
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me was this that over half of the couples that were cohabiting said that they more slid into it they
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more gradually came to be cohabiting than really talked about it made a decision and came to an
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agreement about what they were doing so that's interesting so the reason let's go back the reason
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why it's harder to break up when you cohabitate is because you end up getting an apartment together
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half you is paying the rent the other half paying the rent so that makes it hard you might get a dog
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together that says and what other what other constraints about you know living together makes
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it harder to break up when you're cohabitating so so let's say you and i think you used my word
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there cohabitating did you use that word or did you say cohabitating because i that's one of my
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favorite phrases is cohabitating because cohabiting has become more part of the dating scene than
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something leading up to marriage these days so so let's work those those three things and come right
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back to your question now so what we try to focus on is when is a couple living together sharing a
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single address because you're buying things together you start to bring you know your stuff over you
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know maybe and and this is the sliding part by the way you know first maybe you've got a drawer
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with some stuff you know first it's a toothbrush then you got a drawer and then maybe you've got part
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of a closet or your partner gets part of the closet at your place and more and more the stuff's coming
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over i like to joke that probably an important marker is when the guy's game console has moved in
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but here you are you know you just you're buying stuff you're you've got a routine and now all of
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that's going to be harder to unwind and what it is it's this process that's like the frog in the
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proverbial pot you know that's heating up slowly doesn't really notice kind of what's going on and
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that's what lindsey was saying and smock and manning were saying is that people really slide into this
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and which we find too in our in our big national study on this uh we find out the people that
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started the study that were cohabiting about well over half nearly two-thirds would say that they
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more slid into it than really talked about it so you're you're in this state where you've made it
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harder to break up because you got all these things now to unwind maybe you've even signed a lease
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etc you got all that going on you made it harder to break up but you hadn't really kind of decided
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yet on a future together you hadn't really sort of talked through and decided that i want you and
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you want me which is the epitome of one of my favorite phrases is what a lot of people are doing
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now is they're giving up options before they made a choice they're actually really putting themselves
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in a place that might be hard to get out of before they actually decided that's the place they want
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to stay and so this goes back to the ambiguity of dating right yeah so let me come back to that
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uh so many things are ambiguous ambiguous today i think it's the biggest change in romance dating sex
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dating and mating in the last 40 years is uh and think of all the things that are ambiguous now
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whether or not what we're doing friday night is it a date or not and and by the way if it were a date
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then you can you can talk to people and you can see that that puts more pressure on it's like well
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what does that mean so who's paying what are the expectations versus just hanging out hookups of
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course you know that's a big thing these days to talk about hookups the whole point of the hookup is
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that it's it's fundamentally ambiguous about what's going on you know there's some sort of physical
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contact um but it's not clear what in fact on a campus it may even be clear that it's not
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supposed to mean something you know we're not supposed to catch feelings but it's it's an
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ambiguous thing breakups are really ambiguous now because if you think about it people don't just sort
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of break it off cleanly these days partly technology comes in here as a difficulty because it's so easy
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to sort of monitor somebody after you break up and people are very aware now that they have all these
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sort of or they may have like a back burner sort of relationship well i might come back to you i might
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not i'm monitoring this other person who maybe i never even broke up with but these other people
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that i've broken up with you know i still see them on facebook they follow me i follow them so that's
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ambiguous and then cohabitation and this is where i really started thinking the most about ambiguity so
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this preceded all these other sort of changes it's fundamentally an ambiguous condition if if i meet
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somebody at a party and they tell me well i got a partner we're living together what i like to tell
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audiences is i'll say look from all i know right now they've just told me they're living with a partner
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i know absolutely nothing about their level of commitment to that person i know that they felt good
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enough at some point about the relationship to move in or that it was convenient enough financially
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but that doesn't tell me anything about their commitment and in fact cohabiting couples are just
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as likely to have sex with somebody outside the relationship you know they're just as likely to
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cheat as couples that are dating and not cohabiting so it doesn't say much about commitment contrast that
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with this if i meet that person and they say they got a partner and they're engaged i know a ton about
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commitment because that's a big public signal of commitment and you don't get that wrong with a
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partner if they tell me they're married i know a ton about commitment don't know if it's a great marriage
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or not but i know a ton about commitment if they tell me they have a life partner i know a lot about
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commitment that's a strong statement about where that person's at regarding the other person and what
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they think they tell me they're living together i don't know much of anything and in fact if i
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thought they were attractive and i was on the market i'm going to be likely to see them as still being
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on the market okay so i mean that's interesting there's a lot of unpacked there one question i have
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first so slide this ambiguity people do it in the dating scene because it feels safer yes less risky
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less risky but like as you said cohabitation is sort of you know people slide into it with this
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ambiguity that leads to it makes it harder to break up it's actually this you know it might
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feel safe being but like how does you know dating ambiguously it feels safe in the beginning but
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how does that does it even if you don't cohabitate right what's the downside of sort of keeping things
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ambiguous you see what i'm saying yeah i certainly see what you're saying and let's come back a bit to
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the cohabitation part too on the end of this because it'll it'll make a lot of sense then in terms of
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what sort of changes that risk profile so here's where it gets risky you can sure see with people
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being kind of freaked out about love and commitment plus people you know getting married later and later
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and later so they you know they don't want to like get settled down too fast or whatever so they're
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playing it cool with you know particular partner here's where it gets it gets risky
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the problem with ambiguity is as a relationship goes on and and this could be the the man or the
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woman uh or whoever you know as the relationship goes on it gets more risky because one or both are
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really developing an attachment for that other person or else it wouldn't keep going i mean there's
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somebody is at least and maybe both you know in the best healthy case they're both pretty into each
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other and they're both getting attached and they're both you know kind of moving towards
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greater and greater clarity and at some point maybe they're like conveying to others that you know this
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is my boyfriend this is my girlfriend which is i think today's counterpart to go and study by the way
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so but here's who it's risky for let's say somebody is really into their partner but as it turns out and
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they don't know it yet their partner's not so into them the partner's pretty happy to have sex with
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them partner's pretty happy to hang out with them pretty happy to go out with them maybe even happier
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to stay in with them happy to move in with them but isn't maybe at all even thinking maybe it's even
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already decided well you're not the one you're just the one that will do for now this person let's say
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person a is the more committed person they're already deeply attached they've got some commitment
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developing to this person with what ambiguity allows is for asymmetrical commitment to hide out
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it allows it to sort of live for a long time because when you have something like a system where
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people are sort of used to people announcing you're a boyfriend girlfriend you're used to saying hey
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would you go steady again nobody does that anymore goes way back but you know when you have that sort
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of system it's forcing sort of a timing for a put up or shut up moment of being really public and clear
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without with the massive ambiguity we have now the person that's over committed is really running a
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risk over time of getting burned because they're giving more and more they're also burning time on their
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clock you know if they're really seriously looking for a life partner uh they don't know yet that
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they're wasting time with this other person that maybe is never going to step up or never intends to
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step up and the system makes it easy for that person to hide out who's less committed well so as you're
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saying this it sounds like for a lot of men the ambiguity plays in their favor right like maybe they just
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want you know a sex partner and they just kind of like but like to those guys who who say that like
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what would you say is the downside of that like are they going to get burned eventually well here's here's
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what yes i you're raising such an important thing first off despite the degree to which there's a lot
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of people that would like to you know say there's no differences between men and women you know this is
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one of the areas of difference between men and women there's just no doubt on average there's always
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exceptions and i think these things tend to run about two to one so if we talk about this point
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we should recognize that there's plenty of guys on the other end of that but but it is true that guys
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on average are more willing to have a number of casual sexual relationships than women i mean there's
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some ways in which that's changed there's some ways in which that's changing but that's historically been
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true and there's a lot of evidence for that so it does tend to mean if this system of ambiguity
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on average benefits anybody between men and women it benefits men a little bit more because it plays
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to that avoidance of commitment of not wanting to settle down not wanting to be really clear or be nailed
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down i remember a focus group study from 2000 actually put out by the the national marriage
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project and it was so sobering it was it was really influential in a lot of my thinking about some of
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these things because they interviewed all these guys about what they were looking for what they were
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searching for in relationships and there was i don't know what the number is but there was enough
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to make it a serious point in the report there was enough guys who were living with a woman who could
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say to the interviewer i know she's not the one i'm just waiting till i find the one you know she'll do
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and i read that and i thought gosh that's terrible you know how many of those women women know you know
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and and the answer is a lot of them don't and that's part of the difficulty with ambiguity now does this
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burn men here's the way i think about it um ultimately when somebody's ready to settle down
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in marriage and i'll just give you one of the cards to play on this we can go deeper on this one if you
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want uh when people go to settle down you know they're really ready now i want to be married i want
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that i want that lasting love thing it does matter how much experience they've had in relationships
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leading up to that point and and while experience is usually a great thing in so many areas in life
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you know you want to be the experienced guy at work you want to be the experienced guy on a sports team
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you want you know you want to be that guy in terms of relationships and marriage and romance and sex
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turns out not to be great to have a lot of experience and there's a lot of theories glena and i have
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written a lot about why that would be the case and there's there's a number of things that we talk
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about but one of my favorites is is this one so let's say we got a guy named joe joe finally settled
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down picked suzy four years into marriage they've got a kid maybe they got another kid on the way
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well let's just say they got one kid let's keep it pretty simple so she's not pregnant at the moment but
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you know the sex isn't like it's as exciting as it used to be and joe's like starting to
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you know what what is it i wish this was better i wish this was more exciting i wish we did some of
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the things we used to do it's pretty normal stuff in a marriage it's the stuff that married couples kind
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of have to figure out well joe's getting a little unhappy now getting a little bit wondering about the
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sex life so let's think about in fact let's let's have joe and bill let's say joe had 10 sexual
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partners before marriage and let's say bill only ever had sex with his wife which is by the way a
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lower risk pattern in marriage if you only ever lived if you're going to live with somebody before
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marriage if you only ever lived with the one you married and if you only ever had sex with the one
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you married those marriages tend to be doing a little bit better but way way better no but somewhat
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better but let's go back to to to joe joe's a little unhappy sexually so he starts to compare
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uh his wife starts to compare susie not even to just like one of those 10 i think what actually
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happens is you can kind of start to form this image of the super lover in your head who's like
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the average of the three best sexual partners of those 10 that you were with and now your
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wife has to compete with that in your head i think that's pretty hard to do yeah okay that's
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interesting i mean what's interesting about that is that the sex part though it's an important part
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it's only one part of a marriage that's right absolutely right in fact that's you know one of
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the most important things about the secret of doing well in marriage is understanding you know you're
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making a different bargain now you're looking for something you you know you're looking for lasting
00:25:53.880
love you're looking for all the good stuff that comes from really being together and by the way
00:25:59.360
and you you probably know that the data on this um you know married guys have more sex than other
00:26:05.000
guys i mean so you know marriage uh there's there's marriages that don't turn out well there's marriages
00:26:10.620
that are really painful and difficult but on average people do really well you know over life in marriage
00:26:17.060
but it's not like a party every day and it's it's not always scintillating and one of the ways i'd like
00:26:24.840
to think about this now for people that want to if you want to really want to do well in life in terms
00:26:29.340
of the family and marriage thing you want to be careful you you want to look around you want to do a
00:26:34.560
good search and you want to make a good choice in a partner you don't want to move in before marriage
00:26:39.560
or by the way just to complete this loop you don't want to move in at least until you're engaged
00:26:45.100
because if you go back to everything i said about cohabitation and galena rhodes and i have
00:26:49.380
published study after study on this now the people that are already engaged before they get married
00:26:56.500
or married or before they move in or married before they move in don't have that higher risk thing
00:27:02.980
that's related to cohabitation before marriage the group that's at higher risk is the people that live
00:27:08.160
together before they made the future clear and that fits everything that we're saying about inertia
00:27:14.360
and the difficulty for some people with cohabitation is you might be more you know you might be making
00:27:19.520
it more likely that you're going to you know be with that person and that's maybe not who you chose
00:27:24.220
but in the best case you know you do all that well you don't get locked down too soon and you make a
00:27:30.360
good choice and then what's going to happen is you know life's up and down you're going to have some
00:27:36.200
days you're not so happy you're going to have some years you're happy you're going to have some years
00:27:39.640
that are tougher that's normal but what you have is this understanding and this commitment together
00:27:45.460
that we're doing life together and that's the really good stuff when people can really develop
00:27:51.340
it and have it and keep it that's like a powerful thing so how can men make dating less ambiguous
00:27:59.000
because usually you know it's still the day men are typically expected to do the asking and kind of
00:28:04.380
you know lead the the relationship forward and sort of take the initiative in that aspect so how can
00:28:09.480
that guy do that without freaking women out because i feel like now there's the expectation where it's
00:28:14.120
like okay he's asking me on a date right like yeah that yeah that means a lot so like what can you do
00:28:20.360
to make it more of a deciding you're deciding in the relationship instead of just sort of being
00:28:25.280
ambiguous about it so here's an idea and i don't know you know i'm not in the dating scene but
00:28:30.900
this makes some sense to me uh and it beats the heck out of something like you know texting or
00:28:36.600
saying you up you know i mean it's i think a guy can uh in person or on the phone i mean you could do
00:28:49.000
this in text but text is so i just read a big study yesterday that there's so much more information in
00:28:55.540
voice tone than there even is in face facial expression so imagine how much less information
00:29:01.980
there is like in texting or emailing or messaging on facebook or whatever this would be a gutsy move
00:29:09.580
but it's hard to imagine that a woman wouldn't be responsive to this i mean what would it be like
00:29:17.200
to actually call her up and say hey i'd like to take you out friday and then instead of leaving her
00:29:24.880
in a mound of ambiguity about what that means what is he expecting what's that going to be
00:29:31.600
do what people try doing what people used to do here's what i would like to do i'd like to take you out
00:29:36.680
to dinner here and then there's this concert there's this show there's this something that's you know
00:29:44.400
there's something to do afterwards or i'd like to walk along the river whatever might make sense
00:29:50.640
or it could be a you know a bike hike you know hey let's let's go this let's go bike down there and
00:29:55.620
let's go have dinner by the water and then let's bike back ask her out and have a plan i think one of
00:30:03.620
the things that could really work well for women about that and it used to work pretty well is you're not
00:30:09.720
only you're taking a lot of ambiguity out of the mix for her right off the bat because you're
00:30:17.420
declaring that you're actually interested in taking her out yeah that's a little freaky and we live in
00:30:23.420
a culture that's extra freaky but i kind of think that the the guy that does that for a lot of women
00:30:29.020
is going to look pretty impressive okay because because they know that that takes some guts and it's
00:30:34.540
it's not an easy thing to do and then the fact that you actually say clearly here's what i'm
00:30:39.600
thinking and i'll have you home by 11 i mean you could even say something like that if you want to
00:30:44.140
really put her mind at ease about well if we're going out to dinner what does that mean you know
00:30:48.860
what you know if you have a plan and you be clear i think you're taking a lot of anxiety off the
00:30:56.640
table for her at risk to yourself that's because that is what if you're going to really get rid of
00:31:02.560
ambiguity somebody's taking some risk to be declarative about being interested and so as
00:31:10.000
the guy if you're taking that lead and willing to do that i mean women can do this too by the way but
00:31:15.840
if you're willing to do that i think it's a pretty strong thing to do in terms of showing a woman
00:31:20.960
that you're serious and that you're interested and you'd like to to know more about her right so
00:31:26.060
you gotta take a risk yeah you gotta take a risk manly to take risks it's manly to take a risk i think
00:31:31.320
it's a it's a good thing to take a risk going back to the benefits by making it less ambiguous you're
00:31:37.380
going to save yourself a lot of heartache in the future a lot of just mental bandwidth emotional
00:31:42.720
bandwidth dealing with you know getting out of something that you sort of slid into yeah and you
00:31:47.580
know what this is a great question just about let's think about what are you actually risking okay so
00:31:56.900
in the moment and this is always scary who's ever asking somebody out you know it's a scary thing
00:32:03.080
because in the moment you are risking because you're saying you want something and what you want in this
00:32:09.820
case is to get to know this person and have more time with them so yeah you're willing to take that
00:32:14.040
risk but you're also going to get pretty valuable information you're not only giving them information
00:32:20.760
right off the bat which is a pretty great thing for them you're actually going to get information
00:32:26.940
because let's say this is a woman you were pretty interested in and she just says flat out right there
00:32:34.820
on the phone you know not she friend zones you you know i'm just not really interested in that that's
00:32:41.400
it's not what i'm up for it's not where we're going by the way this could be like an online thing too
00:32:45.860
you could be online dating but you know forming into it like a real request which could be for
00:32:51.020
coffee by the way for a first meeting but either way you know you're taking the risk you're asking
00:32:54.900
but you're going to get some information because if she's like uh well i you know i i'm you know i
00:33:02.680
think there's a shower with uh for my pregnant girlfriend friday night i gotta check you know if
00:33:08.660
that's pretty valuable to you because do you want to actually start spending a lot of time in a vague way
00:33:14.680
trying to figure out something with this woman over the next two months that maybe you could know
00:33:22.600
within the next 15 minutes by asking her out in a clear way not saying you're proposing marriage not
00:33:28.780
saying you're asking her to have your baby you know and have a life with you it's like hey how about
00:33:33.240
saturday night i got this idea would you do that with me and as the relationship progresses you want
00:33:39.600
to be you want to have like those decisive moments where you're not just sort of sliding into it
00:33:43.320
yeah so let's come back to cohabitation for a second so let's say somebody says
00:33:47.420
to me and again keep in mind you could you could hear all sorts of social scientists these days say
00:33:52.560
well there's no risk to cohabiting it's just not that's only true let me come back to this and then
00:33:57.380
come back to deciding that's only true if you cohabit only after you're engaged or you don't already
00:34:04.400
have a child together or you're and or you're over the age of 23 and you only ever cohabit with that
00:34:13.980
one person that you marry so think about that for a moment because people see this headline in news
00:34:19.960
articles that there's no longer any risk to cohabiting before marriage it's not true for most people because
00:34:25.360
most people are not going to fit all those criteria so here's why the deciding part so let's say
00:34:30.660
you're you're you're growing in the place where you you know you really want to marry this person
00:34:36.820
well i am suggesting to people you're adding some risk if you slide into moving together before you've
00:34:44.920
really clarified a future some people are going to decide from values maybe religious beliefs uh they're
00:34:51.020
going to wait till marriage uh that's that certainly looks great on paper by the way but i always
00:34:56.560
encourage people at least you'd want to know what's the future and one of the biggest future
00:35:01.480
questions you could ask is do we have a future are we going to get married will you marry me if that
00:35:07.740
question's like mutual and determined you could struggle in a lot of ways in your marriage but
00:35:12.840
because you've decided that before you moved in together you're not likely that couple that we're
00:35:19.460
concerned about who ends up marrying somebody just because it got too hard to leave so you could be
00:35:25.500
making i think of it this way anytime there's an important relationship transition that could limit
00:35:31.780
your future options you should be making a clear decision and not sliding and seems like something
00:35:39.980
needs to be connected with that is maybe public declarations that seems to be an important aspect
00:35:44.420
of that yeah thank you for picking up on that because it's it's one of the things i think the most
00:35:48.500
about now i think it's a crucial thing one person being committed to the other in this context in
00:35:58.340
terms of trying to lower risks and making a good choice the one person being committed to the other
00:36:03.000
doesn't mean a lot because somebody can be telling themselves well and i think people do this all the
00:36:10.000
time well i know i'm i really like him i want to be with him i'd like to marry him i know it's going
00:36:20.180
to freak him out if i bring up the m word so i'm just gonna kind of maneuver things or hope that we
00:36:27.920
start living together which is again so easy to do since the paradigm there is this sliding thing where
00:36:34.500
we're just sort of gradually there and then somebody's leases up and like oh yeah hey why
00:36:39.580
don't you just be here that's not much of a discussion about what it means and about the
00:36:44.380
future so since that's such a common thing i see people sort of thinking well i can just sort of reel
00:36:49.960
that person in and that's just a bad play it's just it's high risk because getting married once
00:36:56.480
you're already constrained doesn't do the same thing as getting married when you're not constrained
00:37:02.920
and the signal thing that's coming back to that that one person can be very committed to marrying
00:37:08.860
their partner but if there's not like a public declaration together about who we are and what
00:37:15.160
we're doing then they might be just fooling themselves about what the relationship is they
00:37:21.640
might be reading into it stuff that's not there and it's got to probably more than just like a facebook
00:37:26.000
status it's got to be something heavier probably yeah and you know facebook status i was pretty excited
00:37:30.920
when that that got to be a thing because i was already you know 20 years ago i was starting to
00:37:36.740
pay a lot of attention to this sort of loss of steps and stages and this loss of ways people had to kind
00:37:42.620
of signify to other people that were a thing that were a couple and then facebook came out i don't know
00:37:49.980
what would that be 10 years ago or so and i thought well that's kind of cool but that's become passe now
00:37:55.020
and i don't even know how much people are doing it you might get a little bit more information these
00:37:59.360
days out of whether somebody will post a picture of them as a couple versus them as an individual
00:38:05.340
i mean there is some information in those things that sort of is replacing a little bit what used
00:38:11.760
to be there if you really want to know you want something that's a public signal that we're a couple
00:38:18.240
with a future that everybody that matters to you and your network gets and understands because then
00:38:24.660
you're not going to be misunderstanding each other so let's say there's a guy listening to this podcast
00:38:28.600
and like he realized like he's listening he's like man i've slid into this relationship that i'm in
00:38:33.100
right now what's their next step like what what should someone do if they've slid into a relationship
00:38:38.980
they're not happy with it they're feeling constrained well i think if if somebody recognizes
00:38:44.520
themselves in that so so let's answer your question for two people and this isn't exactly the right answer
00:38:51.620
for everybody but but these two are pretty common so let's take the first situation it's somebody that
00:38:58.300
means eventually to be married and plans to settle down but they're not married yet they don't have a child
00:39:04.240
together so it's relatively simple situation and they've figured out i have slid through this and this
00:39:11.120
and this and this isn't the person i'm constrained i'm feeling that i'm feeling like the constraints are
00:39:17.220
are higher than the dedication you got to find a way to break up i mean why wouldn't you break up
00:39:23.340
that's that's like if you're living together i think that is the couple that before marriage
00:39:29.960
would benefit from moving out and then you know if there really is something there you know they can
00:39:35.140
get back together they can figure that out they can they can make a decision they can sort of put the
00:39:39.760
things in the right sequence then if they want but i think you got to give yourself a way
00:39:45.040
to get out and you have to push it because otherwise the inertia is just going to keep
00:39:51.220
going you're going to keep doing things that will make it harder to eventually leave one of the biggies
00:39:57.480
of course is that you're assuming you're you're sexual you you might just have a baby coming along
00:40:06.560
one time here and now you're you know you're really in it because even if that relationship doesn't
00:40:10.960
make it you're a parent with that person for the rest of your life and and so if you recognize that
00:40:17.100
you've slid so far and you're not married and that's the future you want you find a way to break
00:40:22.140
up i think it's a more challenging question now for the person that's married uh and and by the way
00:40:30.540
some people have slid all the way up to a certain point in marriage and it's still the same person they
00:40:36.220
would have chosen it's just they got there by sliding so i might even be talking more to that
00:40:41.240
person now uh because i think these people are i think that person's pretty common what i think that
00:40:46.340
person can do is to recognize it's time to make a choice that you're in this marriage and this is what
00:40:51.780
you're doing and that you are choosing this partner yeah you walk the aisle yeah you had a wedding but
00:40:58.600
you were all so constrained by that time uh the choices people make when they're really already
00:41:05.040
constrained just don't tell you as much about what they really want so for the person that's like
00:41:09.380
slid far along and it's committed it's married maybe they've got a kid and it actually is going to be
00:41:17.180
for many of these folks their better life to make that work that and that may be the very same person
00:41:23.540
they would have chosen if they were making decisions all along but they never really anchored
00:41:28.280
their commitment in choosing this person because everything was a slide so what i say to that person is
00:41:34.460
time to look yourself in the mirror and decide you know really like challenge yourself to say you
00:41:41.060
know i'm not just gonna like hang out and you know it's kind of a gut check thing where you decide
00:41:47.220
i'm choosing this i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna invest with her and make this the best life we can
00:41:53.320
have together instead of hanging out and just sliding all the rest of the way and do you do anything
00:41:58.380
like a public declaration or is it just sort of a you know between you and your the other person
00:42:03.500
you know this is a that's a great point if you had two people this would be a little
00:42:09.000
this happens um i don't know how often it happens it happens often enough if you have two people that
00:42:15.620
sort of recognize that moment together i think you could make it a public thing sometimes people will
00:42:20.640
like retake their vows they'll they'll do another ceremony that would be more typical in certain
00:42:28.460
religious settings where they you know they might sort of uh have a recommitment ceremony um but
00:42:35.420
even just as a couple two people that recognize that together and they sort of yeah you know we kind
00:42:41.440
of slide slid all the way here but we want to do this let's do this right i i don't know if it has to
00:42:48.720
be like to be hard to say what you're going to tell your friends hey you know suzy and i you know
00:42:54.980
we've been married for five years now we finally decided we're going to really be married i i don't
00:42:59.420
know how you say that right i don't know i don't know what you do but you could sure say it to each
00:43:03.600
other now i i think it's very common that you might not be doing that as a couple and it might just
00:43:09.820
be you and you might just be thinking yeah i'm a slider but you know this is a pretty good person
00:43:15.560
and this is a pretty good deal and i want to make it work i'm deciding right now to do my part and
00:43:22.380
give my best to my partner okay so just to recap uh basically don't be ambiguous with your dating if
00:43:28.700
you are in the dating scene because it'll save you a lot of trouble later on um and this is going to
00:43:34.900
take like some guys don't plan on getting married until 30 mid 30s yeah this is going to require them
00:43:40.800
to you know have some i don't know restraint you know and not just go with the flow and that's kind
00:43:45.580
of hard sometimes when you're in your 20s right because the whole culture is going you know everything's
00:43:50.060
going a certain direction and anytime you decide to do something a little different um in fact you know
00:43:57.340
this is a great sort of implied question let's say a guy really sort of shifts his deal a bit and
00:44:03.760
starts to be much more intentional and less ambiguous uh he'll have to make some decisions
00:44:11.320
within himself because i actually think what's going to happen is he's going to get more women
00:44:14.740
interested in him i think there'll be women that are going to pick up on that and say well this this
00:44:20.100
is a serious guy you know this is a real deal and so i think a guy that decides that he's going to be
00:44:26.060
less ambiguous uh may become sort of uh more attractive to more women and going to have to
00:44:35.100
decide what he's really about yeah we've had you know relationship people on the podcast before and
00:44:39.660
they said like the one thing women want like as you said they want security yes so just being explicit
00:44:44.840
about what you're doing with the relationship that eliminates so much of the anxiety when that's
00:44:49.960
going to make you more attractive yeah be explicit and be genuine i mean obviously
00:44:53.740
people could use this as a way to game people that would be pretty tragic but you know there's
00:44:59.480
those people out there but for the guy that really wants to be genuine and serious women tend to like
00:45:04.940
that a lot okay so uh let's say that was that was really useful we unpacked a lot there let's say we
00:45:11.160
we followed everything the guy was um he decided he was very upfront explicit not ambiguous
00:45:17.800
gets married didn't do the cohabitating thing what do you what can that guy do to maintain that strong
00:45:25.100
marriage or you know those moments when the marriage gets weak what can he do to strength help strengthen
00:45:29.320
it great so so let me give uh one piece of advice that's just to him and then another that's sort of
00:45:35.500
to him and his wife so just to him one of the things that i love to talk about and it comes out of the
00:45:42.280
the work on commitment and the theory on commitment one of the things you see when somebody's really
00:45:46.640
committed to their partner is that they more freely willingly and without grumbling about it
00:45:53.780
do little things that are kind of sacrifices for their partner they're not giant sacrifices
00:46:00.580
they're little sacrifices where you know sort of like she's going to like it better if i do this i
00:46:06.240
know if i do this for her today it's going to really help her a lot i know i like she likes it when i do
00:46:11.500
this and the way i like to put it to to anybody uh male or female about their their relationship is
00:46:18.060
is this you know you probably know unless you're not paying any attention to your partner you know we
00:46:24.380
all know a few things that just are always appreciated by our partner you know maybe not
00:46:31.140
every day recognized but uh there's some things where we know she really likes it when i do that she
00:46:37.780
likes it when i do that and she likes it when i do that and here's my favorite way to construct this
00:46:41.800
list construct that list but make it this way it's those things that you know that you can do that are
00:46:48.400
easy to do you know she likes it and this is the best part you know you're really not really likely to
00:46:55.600
do any one of those three things today in fact you're not really very likely to do any one of those
00:47:00.080
three things this week but you know that list you know what it is you can do them they're small
00:47:05.500
you know she likes it and you're not likely to do them and then make it a regular habit of yours
00:47:11.100
a couple times a week to do one of those things it's not rocket science because you're just acting
00:47:17.280
then on your commitment you're pushing yourself to do that little bit extra and i think people i think
00:47:23.480
it's a very strong play for the quality of your marriage for your for your relationship because
00:47:28.980
it really signals that you thought about them it's a little more likely to stand out to them
00:47:34.120
because it's the right list it's stuff you know that they tune into and you know that they care
00:47:39.520
about not all the time but most of the time so that's to the individual and that's a general you
00:47:45.780
know if it's specifically the general you know do your part to the two i think the one of the most
00:47:51.100
important things that we emphasize in all the stuff that we've done with couples over the years and
00:47:56.300
the things we do about preventing declines in marriage and keeping marriage strong is keep fun and
00:48:02.620
friendship alive people just slack on that it's another form of sliding we just sort of let it
00:48:07.460
slide away as opposed to just kind of deciding together 15 minutes two hours at a time whatever you
00:48:16.460
can do whatever can work to preserve times together a time or two a week where you're together and
00:48:24.500
you're not working on anything you're not trying to fix anything you're not talking about money
00:48:30.260
like you don't bring any of that stuff up but you're doing something that you both like to do
00:48:35.300
together that could be taking a walk taking a hike taking a bike ride watching you know binge watching
00:48:41.060
on netflix whatever it is you're making the time for that and all the world all the rest of the world
00:48:47.820
all the noise problems off limits maybe even mobile devices out of the room or not with you or tucked
00:48:55.920
away because those are really distracting so preserve fun and friendship and then the other one is this
00:49:02.060
if you're really struggling with communication and conflict that's something you can learn to do
00:49:07.920
differently and it's a common thing in marriage so i encourage people uh you know we have a online
00:49:13.960
program where people can can really work to communicate better if they want books we got books
00:49:19.680
all kinds of books out there there's different ways people can learn you go to a therapist go to a
00:49:25.180
counselor go to a relationship education workshop do something to learn how to handle conflict better
00:49:32.120
so that it's not damaging your relationship because when you have the the conflict regularly not being
00:49:38.760
handled well which can be pretty common it's like acid on that good stuff that positive connection that
00:49:44.960
you're building by doing the things around commitment and fun and friendship that's great well scott this
00:49:49.800
has been a great conversation we we really unpacked a lot i feel like yeah we cover some ground but
00:49:54.620
there's a lot more people could investigate where can people learn more about your work so the if
00:49:59.520
people want to read a lot about this sort of dating mating stuff cohabitation i write a lot about the
00:50:05.260
things that we do research on and the things that we publish research on on my blog which is sliding
00:50:11.000
versus deciding.com and spell it a number of ways or just search for my name and the blog but
00:50:17.540
sliding versus deciding.com they can read all kinds of things about the very things that we just everything
00:50:22.580
we just talked about i've written a lot about on that blog if they want to go further if you got
00:50:27.080
a couple like a married or premarital couple trying to sort of figure out their deal and figure out what
00:50:32.020
their future is they want to do something like an online program we got a really great one that's
00:50:36.580
it's just it's only 25 bucks and it's at love takes learning.com it's a program called e-prep at
00:50:43.340
love takes learning.com they can do that they can work through some of the kinds of things that we teach
00:50:48.340
couples in our workshops and in our books to strengthen their marriage to strengthen their
00:50:52.820
relationship awesome well scott stanley thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:50:56.300
thank you really appreciate it my guest there is dr scott stanley is a professor of psychology at the
00:51:00.380
university of denver and you can find out more information about his work at sliding versus
00:51:03.860
deciding.blogspot.com also check out our show notes at aom.is stanley where you can find links
00:51:09.240
to resources we can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of
00:51:24.020
manliness podcast for more tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website
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