How To Find Your Soulmate
Join Tamara and Sheena as they talk about How To Find Your Soulmate in this episode of Les Talk About It.
Les Talk About It Episode: 9 of 12 of the Relationship Season
In this episode:
- The problem with dating sites
- What a study showed about compatibility in partners
- The mathematical formula to help you find that elusive person to settle down with
Listen to the episode here
Study referenced here
Book we referenced
The Mathematics of Love by Hannah Fry
Available In Audiobook Yes, narrated by Hannah Fry
Synopsis
In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns-from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage-behind the rituals of love. .
The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. .
Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns-from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do. .
In The Mathematics of Love, Dr. Hannah Fry takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the patterns that define our love lives, applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What’s the chance of finding love? What’s the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down?
From evaluating the best strategies for online dating to defining the nebulous concept of beauty, Dr. Fry proves-with great insight, wit, and fun-that math is a surprisingly useful tool to negotiate the complicated, often baffling, sometimes infuriating, always interesting, mysteries of love.
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Les Talk About It Series: Relationships
Relationships are important for humans. We need them to survive, never mind thrive. In this series we delve into relationships and break down some statistics and realities because, let’s face it, most us just muddle through and don’t necessarily have the skillset to rally make a relationship work.
Transcript
please note this transcript has not been edited and is automatically generated meaning certain words will be incorrect
welcome to les talk about it I’m Sheena and I’m Tamara today we’re talking about finding your soulmate so do you believe in soulmates well of course I do I’m with you okay so there is this concept of the soulmate and I think it’s something that a lot of people are into and they search for then you get the pessimist if you don’t believe in soulmates at all yes so we’re gonna be talking about finding really the right person for you which most people believe in soulmates we’re going to talk today about some studies and the psychology behind finding the right person for you mm-hmm and you even got myths for us yes okay so we’re all social creatures we have an underlying need to be with somebody mm-hmm to be partner that’s kind of like a biological sort of deal with most of us yes there are people who don’t but for most parties this is where romance is such a huge genre it’s the biggest join are not just in lace Vic but in any fiction well not even just in fiction even in music and movies and TV and if there isn’t some sort of romantic like finding your soul mate type thread people are like where is the romance yes so romance is deeply encoded in to us absolutely and taut so it’s on all the levels right dating sites are huge and they make a ton of money because of this drive within us this need do you hook up with the right person yeah this promise that they can do it right so people they claim to have personality tests that can find people with similar interests interests to you and therefore we they’ll be your perfect match sounds great but it actually doesn’t work for the most part I mean it seems logical if we both want to raise children if we both have the same ideals if we both have the same religion or you’re both interested in the same things even right is if that’s not actually true so there’s a myth too compatible t-there is how interesting is that so does that mean that there’s a month – soulmates no makes you not prepared to go there but I can tell you about a study that was done okay dr. Ted Hudson from the University of Texas ran a longitudinal study of couples that have been married for years and in his research he discovered something really interesting okay in his own words he sits my research shows that there is no difference in objective compatibility between those couples that are unhappy and those couples are happy just think about that for a minute there is no difference in objective compatibility between happy and and happy couples okay so a couple that unhappy there no more and compatible then I pull that as happy yes okay so happy couples can be on paper completely income incompatible and unhappy couples can on paper be completely compatible okay he went on to say that couples that feel content and warmth in the relationship say that compatibility wasn’t an issue for them in fact they said it was them who made the relationship work not the compatibility of their personalities I actually get that like I think completely 100 planed agree with this theory what’s not a theory he actually did a study these are proven okay well Betty okay I agree with it when unhappy couples were asked what they thought about compatibility they all aren’t saying that compatibility is extremely important in their marriage and they went on to further say that they were not compatible okay so the blame isn’t on them they put the blame on like I’m just not an issue Yeah right okay and they said we just don’t get along very well so that’s where the issue arises with compatibility everyone who’s unhappy naturally blames it on this facade of compatibility but they fail to realize that a successful relationship doesn’t actually hinge its posterity on how I like you oh we’re not puzzle pieces there is something to be said about getting my brand of weird right no sure but like you don’t have to match on every single level to be able to be together and I think that’s where people tend to blame not matching in a certain area for their relationship not working out now people are rolling the hangers with such rubbish this person doesn’t know what they’re talking about rights because compatibility on the surface seems like it should be this thing yes okay but let’s talk about arranged marriages for a minutes okay so studies have been done around arranged marriages versus people who choose their partner yeah but isn’t that just because with a woman just don’t have a way out actually survey was done around these arranged marriages and they tend to last longer and it’s not necessarily just because they have the option for divorce it’s because they choose to make the relationship work as a couple because they’re in a ranged marriage they actually choose to make it work and so they have a different psychology to people who choose each other if that makes sense okay so like maybe the psychology of having like an embarrassment of choices or well if you think about our last episode when we spoke about the different phases of a relationship right when you’re in an arranged marriage and you get to phase two you don’t have an option out yeah you have to figure it out you have to work through it and you have to figure out how to get to phase three mmm I think an interesting thing with arranged marriages as well is that you’re in this I’m going to put this in air quotes for forced commitments so you’ve kind of leapfrog that trust stage so you can build trust as you go but you’re ready in the commitment like you exactly whether or not you have the option for two divorces that’s besides the point it’s that you’re really in the commitment so now you just have to work through it to make it work so I’m gonna speak from the standpoint of I actually have no idea what goes on in arranged marriages but I have a theory that goes like this I think when arranged marriages were happening the parents who are arranging the measures trying to do the best for their children yes so they’re trying to get that compatibility and trying to make sure that the person that they’re marrying is financially stable and all that sort of stuff yes right so it starts so from the point of view of people who are maybe a little bit wiser than you putting you together with somebody yeah I mean we’re talking about hearing healthy arranged relation marriages I’m not talking about anything that is even like child brides raffle random things like that which unfortunately is very often the only thing that people think of when it comes to arranged marriages which is not true now there are a lot of cultures that still practice it for the adults children and in a lot of cases it actually does work out well so in the Western world autonomy and your ability to choose your own relationships is huge it’s like a basic human right yes okay and we champion that at all levels but we get stuck in a perpetual loop of consciously and unconsciously considering someone else when things aren’t going well in our relationship yes because there’s this thing of life okay this person’s not the right one and because they like to put salt on their food before even tasting it right which is where the illusion of compatibility comes in so the grass is always greener yes I have to say I take all of this with a pinch of salt whether you put it on your food because I think that there are definitely things that cannot be overcome in terms of incompatibility oh sure I don’t think you know you can just take two random strangers put them together and they’ll be a happy relationship if they just work through it no no but I do think there’s a lot to be said that some people are too cheesy I agree with it like I was chatting to a free network the other day and she was talking about her cousin who is successful and beautiful and well-educated and can’t find a stable relationship and this is because the cousin once they partner to have all sorts of things they want them to be to look a certain way they want them to have a certain degree to work in a certain field to earn a certain amount of money and I mean that’s a lot from one person I mean her compatibility issues are out of this world well okay so she’s looking for this elusive magic figuration and she thinks this is the only person she’s gonna be compatible with so she’ll go on dates and the person pitches up and they’re not as hot as she would want them to be she leaves she doesn’t give the person a chance at all okay but that’s problematic no it is but I think this is something a lot of people fall into we they are continually going on dates and they’ll find something to not like about this person even if it’s not as Extreme as this other person and this is what they’re saying so this grass is always greener kind of mentality it’s fostering this illusion of compatibility in the Western world particularly and it’s actually problematic for relationships and it’s problematic to find the right mate your soul mates yes if you like so let’s talk about finding an actual soul mates mm-hmm you’re listening to the lesbian talk show the lesbians or choke on your hub of podcast information this episodes about finding that soul mate it’s an elusive someone that you can build this relationship with so you’ve got some information around this yeah so look I don’t know called promise yawns obscene it’s gonna find you your soul mates but I think if you’re the kind of person who is struggling to find a relationship I think it’s a good place to start okay okay so Hanna Frey is an associate professor at London University and she specializes in the field of mathematics and she’s written a book called the mathematics of love oh cool okay so what she’s taken is a whole bunch of mathematical proofs and applied them to relationships and to romance okay okay so the one thing that she talks about is the optimal stopping theory and this is a theory that’s used in a lot of different situations not just love can be to you know find your perfect house it can be to find the perfect outfit to wear on a date it’s not just about love okay okay so what the theory says is that you’re giving yourself a time span to figure out what you want to figure out and then you’re going experience as many of those things as possible and then the very next thing that you find that is better than all of those things that you’ve experienced is the right one okay so this is a little bit complicated let’s go through the slowly yeah no we will go through the slowly it’s split down into two phases basically okay so the first phase is calibration and then the second phase as we actually go find the thing that you want in this case a relationship so is calibration like getting your experiences in a row pretty much firstly you’re going to set yourself a time limits okay so with the relationship time limit you’re going to say okay I’ve started dating at the age of 16 and I want to find myself married or in a long-term stable relationship by the age of 32 okay so that gives me a 16 year time span all right so firstly you’re going to be having a calibration phase and in the phase where you can actually find your perfect soul mate by the age or at least your long-term relationship at age of 32 okay okay so we’ve said that 16 years right all right okay so the magic time that you need to stop your experiential phase is 37% through those periods okay okay so into the 16 years that’s about 5.9 yeah so we’ll say six years for simplicity so that makes it the age of so you start a – ish 16 said about 22 you stop experimenting with lots of dating yes and are you going to face two years so from 16 to 22 you would be dating as much as possible and you’re experiencing as many different people as possible not looking to settle down so you just want to gather up the experience yes you’re getting information you’ve seen what you don’t like you’re seeing what you like your experience you’re experiencing life right and then in Phase two it’s when you start dating seriously and the very next person that is better than anyone else that you’ve dated who ticks all the boxes that no one asked before ticked that is the person to settle down with that’s the perfect choice for you and this works whether you’re looking to buy a house or a car or whatever it is now it’s not perfect it’s just a mathematical theory but it gives you a third of a chance to actually find the right thing or person then random luck does huh okay so look this doesn’t take an account that during experiential phase that you’ve only dated bad people or people who hit a low bar okay so if you were dating people who didn’t even come close to expectations the very next person would definitely be better so they’re not necessarily the best person because your little bar is too low okay so what do you do in that case I think then you probably want to maybe briefs it yeah so maybe say okay I am now 22 and I want to be married by 32 so that’s 10 years and like maybe you know reseated that way then maybe go to some counseling so that you can figure out why you keep being attracted to these people who you know are sitting the low but I think also do that whole thing where you work on yourself to become whole before dating because if your is always ending up with the wrong kind of person there is an underlying issue there okay another problem with the Siri is that the other person has a say you might not be the best person that they’re you’ve tainted up until then okay but having said that it gives you way better chances of actually finding someone that you could make work this is pretty cool so I’m going to add a link in the show notes to this book yes so if you’re interested in reading more about this it’s there and there’s other theories so go read it and if you’d like into math or you want a more scientific take on getting the ideal relationship for yourself I think it’s worth a read that is pretty cool but basically there is no magic formula for finding your soulmate no but I mean you can get as close as possible yes and really is there such a big difference between finding somebody who you think is your soulmate and finding somebody who you’ll be happy with for the rest of your life no because I think that’s you know in essence maybe the definition of someone who’s a soul mate or at least close to it but me think about it if you’re going out looking for a pair of shoes for example and you’ve been shopping for that the last three hours and you found the pair of shoes that you really really like but you’re still humming and hawing because I don’t know you gotten to the point where you’re just so confused you just don’t know actually what you want anymore and you pass up the shoes and you go on to the next store and then another two hours day two you’re like actually you know what that pair of shoes was pretty perfect I’m gonna go back to that store and they’ve gone that was the last page I think the same thing happens with relationships you’re always looking for perfect and when you realize that what you had was pretty perfect it’s maybe too late yeah but my biggest takeaway from today’s podcast was the compatibility is actually not the most important thing the most important thing no you can work through not being compatible in some areas and I think what people need to realize is that in a relationship you’re two separate people and you don’t have to love everything I mean commonalities are great but commonalities in terms of your values and your belief systems I think are the most important but most other things are just surface details then I mean you’ve heard of happy couples who when is Jewish and the other one is Muslim yeah so henna fries formula is also really interesting and there we go now you know how to go out today and find somebody to be with mm-hmm so let us know how you deal with relationships are you too picky if you eventually did find the right person how did you get to that you can let us know on the lesbian torso chat group on Facebook if you enjoyed this podcast don’t forget to rate us on every podcast because that rating means we had recommend it to other people mm-hmm can also support us on patreon if you enjoyed these podcasts yep patrons get exclusive podcast and for as little as a dollar a month you can help us keep going and keep going it’s executives I’m Sheena and I’m tomorrow and that’s all for this week hi welcome to let’s talk about it so where does it know what to say cuz I didn’t say my name tomorrow right tomorrow I’m tomorrow otherwise no just hear me no in every TV paper welcome to let’s talk about it this is tomorrow and I’m Sheila I like how you’ve waited me as if this is a visual thing if I just I shoulda saved that thing and then I started to meet yourself like an imaginary friend [Music]
