Logan Ury, behavioral scientist and Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, joins Sam and Shaan to break down why dating is a learnable skill — backed by data. She covers the secretary problem (optimal stopping theory), dating app profile tactics, the myth of the spark, and why modern men are falling behind. Sam shares the story of how he met his wife, and the conversation closes on the future of relationships in an age of AI companions and gender divergence.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Logan Ury (guest, behavioral scientist, Director of Relationship Science at Hinge)
Introduction: How Logan Fixed Shaan’s Eyebrows [00:00:00]
Sam: Logan Ury is a behavioral scientist. I know you, Logan, as just my good friend. You also have a book called How Not to Die Alone. You’ve become a bit of an expert when it comes to dating, but also with masculinity. I just think you’re a great conversationalist and a wonderful person — you’re really smart and you have a lot of data to back your opinions. And you have a Netflix show. You’re the director of relationship science at Hinge. Is that right?
Logan: Yeah, the director of relationship science — but sometimes people just call me the “something something.”
Sam: You can put that on your LinkedIn.
Shaan: Sam, I’ve got to tell you a story. I think I’ve been sitting on this for a while. So, I met Logan for the first time at a conference recently. She walks up to me, I reach out to shake her hand — she goes straight for my face and starts fixing my eyebrows. We haven’t met. She hasn’t introduced herself. She’s just fixing my eyebrows because they’re all bushy and crazy. And then she’s like, “My dad has crazy eyebrows.” And I go, “What?” And by the way, I’m sitting down at the lunch table, so I’m like a pet — she’s petting me. I just thought, the confidence this woman must have. She must come on the show, because nobody does that.
Sam: High agency. Isn’t that an insane move?
Shaan: One of the craziest things anyone’s ever done. Logan, explain yourself.
Logan: Shaan, I think I did say, “Can I touch your face?” But then you didn’t seem that into it, and I was like, “That was the weird thing to do.”
Shaan: Did you feel like I was going to be into it?
Logan: Shaan, I did make an impression on you.
Shaan: You did. Honestly, I never forgot. I went home and my daughter has since just been coming up to me and doing it, and she says, “You know what I’m doing?” And I say, “Yeah, you’re doing the thing that girl did.” And this is my five-year-old. I couldn’t be more happy about this intro.
Sam: Logan, I feel like you are incredibly confident, but also — in a good way — you’re conniving. I don’t know a better word. It’s like you see the end goal and you think, “I’m going to experiment with this, this, and this, and just follow the process.”
Logan: Calculating. You try things.
Sam: And I think you said you had a bunch of clients where you’d teach them how to date. You said men were the easiest ones because you could say, “You need to lose weight. Dress better. Get a haircut. Then go up and say these five words to a woman — do that 50 times.” And they’d go, “Yes, ma’am.” Whereas if you told a woman the same thing, she’d be like, “Well, you’re screwed up too.” There was a difference in how people responded to your instruction.
Logan: Well, that’s why I love My First Million and am truly a fan of the show — I’ve listened to it for years. The way the two of you see the world is that it’s a game, and if you know the rules, you can win. A lot of the show is just teaching people how to play the game. That’s how I like to think about the world too. Sometimes I’ll be like, “Okay, if Sam was on my shoulder, what would he say?” I’ll ask you specifically for advice because I think you just smile your way through life and are like, “Yeah, I could figure that out. I need 30,000 followers on Instagram? Just do some shirtless cold-plunging videos.”
Shaan: Oh, wait — that’s our other friend. Sub-tweet. We’re talking about Sill Blue.
Sam: But that’s how you live. And I think it’s interesting because we looked at our analytics the other day — 93% of our listeners are men. The majority are young men. They look at dating like this impossible thing, but they look at engineering or building businesses as systematic and process-oriented. It’s kind of the same thing, though.
Logan: Totally. Yes. This is why I’m so excited to talk to the MFM audience. I really feel like I can help them with dating, because the way I think about it is: dating is a skill. We’re born knowing how to love — we have these natural instincts — but nobody teaches you how to date. And dating is actually pretty new in the span of human history. Think about how people used to get married. Maybe your parcel of land touched somebody else’s parcel of land, so your dads would marry you off to combine them. Or it was about economic institutions. Starting around the 1800s, people started dating on their own and creating these partnerships. We don’t know how to pick a partner for ourselves, and I think a lot of people are failing at it. That’s why I’m here to help people understand that dating is a skill, and you can get better at it.
The Secretary Problem: When Should You Stop Looking? [00:06:30]
Shaan: Give us something. What’s the first interesting thing that’s less understood or misunderstood?
Logan: I’ve been thinking about your audience as a lot of maximizers — people who feel like they want to find the perfect partner, so they’re going to keep searching until they find that person. I’m a maximizer too. It would take me months just to buy an espresso machine. That’s even worse when it comes to finding a partner. But the mistake a lot of people make — especially the MFM maximizer audience — is that they search for too long. They think, “I want a partner who has the hotness of this person, the ambition of this person, and the family background of this person, and I’m just going to keep searching until I find them.” What they don’t understand is that there are diminishing returns over time.
There’s a concept called the secretary problem. Have you heard of it?
Shaan: Yeah, I’m using it right now to search for an apartment.
Logan: This comes from a line of mathematical inquiry called optimal stopping theory — how long should you search, and when should you stop? Imagine you’re hiring a secretary and there are 100 candidates. You have to go through them one at a time. After each one, you have to say yes or no, and you can’t go back. At what point should you stop? The answer is you should go through the first 37 people, identify the single best candidate among them, and that person becomes your benchmark. The next time you find someone as good or better than that person, hire them.
The idea is: you don’t want to go too long because all the good people might be in the past. But you don’t want to go too short because you don’t know the pool. So 37% is approximately the right amount of time.
How do you apply that to dating? Imagine you’re going to date from ages 18 to 40. What is that 37% mark? About 26.1 years old. By the time you’re 26, you’ve already met a third of the people and you have your benchmark. The next time you find someone you like as much or more than them, marry that person.
This is such important advice because people have their benchmark, then meet someone they like as much, and say, “Well, if they’re great, I can find someone even better.” Then they get to be 40, 41, 42, and all their friends are on their second or third kid, and they’re still trying to go to Vegas for the weekend but nobody’s available. Maximizers do really well in a lot of areas of life, but when it comes to dating, they can get left behind in their search for perfection.
Sam: Shaan, she was at my house recently, talking to Sarah, and she was like, “Sarah, you are a satisficer.”
Logan: Satisficer. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. Just — you’re okay with okayness.
Logan: I want to say first of all that Sam and I are both obsessed with Sarah. She is wonderful. So it’s not an insult. And actually the research shows that between maximizers and satisficers, satisficers are often happier. It’s not that they settle or have a low bar. It’s that when they find something that meets their bar, they just buy it, accept it, move in — whatever the matter is. Maximizers take longer to make a decision and once they make it, they question it. Satisficers know what they want, and when they find it, they’re happy with it. So Sarah really is a happy satisficer.
Sam: This makes so much sense to me. When I was younger, I started a company with my two best friends. On one hand, there was my buddy Trevor — he’s a maximizer, like me. We would always try a new restaurant, try a new dish. Every time we went out to eat, we tried a new place. And the reality is you have a lot of unsatisfying lunches because you’re trying a bunch of stuff you don’t actually like. You’re hunting for that satisfying feeling of once in a while finding something great.
Our other buddy would just eat Qdoba all the time. And Qdoba is aggressively mediocre. One day he said, “Yeah, I’ll never try as many foods as you, but I’ll be happier every day for lunch.” It stuck with me. There really are two different approaches to life. I’m not sure which one’s better objectively, but there’s definitely a better one for me and a better one for him.
Logan: Research from Adam Grant at Wharton finds that satisficers are happier and they make just as good decisions. You might think — especially listening to this podcast — “No, no, no, I’m going to make the better decision by searching longer.” That’s not what the research shows.
Shaan: But let me ask you something. The secretary problem makes sense for hiring because that’s not life-or-death stakes. Marrying the wrong person is probably one of the hardest things to untangle yourself from. And this approach where you’re like, “You should get to 26.1 years old and then marry the next best person you meet” — did you do that? Does anybody actually do that?
Logan: I mean, I did that.
Shaan: You did it intentionally? You might have just happened to meet somebody when you were 26. You weren’t thinking, “I’ve gone through 37% of the dating pool, I have a benchmark, if anybody’s better than Rebecca, she’s it.”
Sam: What was your number of 37%, though? Like, I went on maybe 20 terrible dates. Two girlfriends in that process. And when I met my wife, I was like, “Wow, she’s amazing.” I went straight from “she’s amazing” to “I want to be with her.” It was like a simple caveman — me like, me like this. I wasn’t mathematicing my way there.
Logan: People definitely get tripped up in what you just asked about — like, “Wait, I’m way past 26.1. Have I ruined it?” It sounds very mathematical, but it’s meant to be a metaphor. The idea is that you likely have already met someone who would have been a great partner. Next time you find someone you like as much, commit to that person. Don’t keep searching.
The 18 to 40 as the equivalent of the secretary problem is very hypothetical — no one knows how long they’ll be single. The point is just that when you’ve met a bunch of people and gotten a sense of your attractiveness in the market, when you find someone great, commit to them.
I’m very happy to talk about this with both of you because you’re both married with kids. There was a version of either of you that could have said, “I’m going to wait until I’m at peak fitness and peak wealth, then find the best possible person I could find at that point.” Instead, you found people when you were a bit younger, when you didn’t have the level of success you’re at today, and that person’s been on the journey with you. I think people really underestimate the opportunity cost of not committing to someone when they’re younger. When you have a partner who’s witnessing your life, where you’re raising each other, where you really know them from a younger age — I think there’s something so precious about that.
Shaan: Definitely true. Now, the thing you just described — I have a batch of friends in my head. Wealthy single guys. They’re still looking and not committing. Becoming 36, 41, 44, and just not committing.
Logan: Peter Pans. A little commitment-phobic. A little maximizer — “Is there something better out there?” They might even be in a relationship but neither all the way in nor all the way out.
Shaan: On the other hand, there’s a group of people who might get to 26 and haven’t actually gone through 37% of the dating pool because they’re just not putting up numbers. Very low volume of interactions with the other sex. There are a bunch of studies about how a certain percentage of men under 30 haven’t even asked anyone out, haven’t dated in years. What’s your take on that group?
Why Young Men Are Falling Behind [00:16:00]
Logan: That’s a great segue into what’s happening with modern men — a topic I’m really passionate about. It reminds me of this story where I was doing a Valentine’s Day segment for Good Morning America. I was talking to one of the participants, a really good-looking guy, and I was like, “How many dates do you go on?” He said, “Well, at night I think I could either edit videos, which will help me achieve my career goals for YouTube, or I can go on a date that might be bad — so I choose editing the videos.” And I thought, “I am terrified about society.” This guy who should be out there killing it is saying, “My YouTube views are more of a sure thing.”
What we’re seeing in the data is that young men are falling behind. There’s a report from the UK called the Lost Boys Report. It shows that among men 16 through 24 in the UK, one in seven are NEET — Not in Education, Employment, or Training. This number went up 40% during the pandemic for men, only 7% for women. Across all metrics — enrolling in college, graduating from college, earning money — young men are really falling behind.
If you project it out 10 years, it’s going to be an even bigger issue. Women are into hypergamous mating, which means they want to find someone equal or higher in status and financial success. For most of human history that worked out fine because the guys had the resources. But now, as women are out-earning men and being more educated than men, there literally isn’t the pool of men for them to date. There’s this mating crisis where women are asking, “Where’s the guy on my level?” And they just aren’t there.
Right now, 60% of college enrollment is women. Soon it’ll be two-thirds. When it’s two-thirds women, half of those women won’t have an equivalent guy with a college degree. So you really have an issue where women want a certain type of guy, and that guy doesn’t exist.
I’m already seeing this. So many of my friends are attractive, confident, successful women in their late 30s and early 40s — they’re just not dating. There just aren’t guys. I live in the Bay Area. You know who’s available to them? Polyamorous guys who are like, “Yeah, you can have a third of me.” So this woman has to say, “Do I want zero of a guy, or do I want a third of a good guy?” And I truly think this is part of the reason why we’re seeing the rise of poly relationships — there’s just not enough great guys.
We’re already seeing the impact of this. The marriage rate is nearing an all-time low in the US. The fertility rate has dropped 20% in 20 years. Fewer people getting together, fewer marriages, fewer babies — this is actually a crisis for humanity.
Sam: Did you guys see — do you remember the “6’5 blue eyes trust fund” song? Somebody did the math and was like, this is like 20 men in New York City. If you do the analysis of needing a trust fund, single, in your 20s, at least 6’5, working in finance — it’s like 20 people.
I think I talked to my friend Dawoon who had Coffee Meets Bagel. She was telling me how it’s basically a binary system for men on dating apps — either you get likes or you don’t. Whereas for women, it’s a winner-take-all market where 5% of guys dominate. What’s the data behind that?
Logan: One stat I can tell you is that a lot of women set their height filter at 6 feet or taller, and only 14% of men in the US are 6 feet or taller. So you have women coming up to me at dinner parties holding up their phone saying, “I’m on Hinge. Where’s my husband?” And I’m like, “He can’t even get into your app because he’s 5’9” and you’ve filtered him out. Your app is a club and your filters are a bouncer.”
Apps have perpetuated this thing where, because you can set filters — which maybe you think about for 30 seconds and decide “yeah, 6 feet is good” — you don’t even realize the implications. When you multiply that across millions of people using apps, a disproportionate amount of attention goes to guys over six feet, and everyone else is sitting there waiting to hear back from someone.
Sam: Have you ever seen the back end of a woman’s app? Like, every person she clicks on is a match. But for guys you’re like swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe — no match.
Logan: It totally depends on who the woman is and how the algorithm works. But certainly for certain women, they get so many more people interested in them than they could ever go through.
Sam: I would swipe yes on literally every —
Shaan: Sam, we know that.
Sam: And I would get no yeses. None. Yeah, when I was on a dating app, it was brutal. But that was back when you had to write messages by hand to each person. There was no swiping. I was on OkCupid.
How to Optimize Your Dating App Profile [00:26:00]
Shaan: Let’s play a game. I’m a guy on a dating app. What are the simple things I should be doing differently to increase my odds of success?
Logan: I’ll answer that by saying what everyone should be doing, and then I have specific things for guys. Let’s talk about a great profile. Your profile is far and away the thing that matters most. It’s like buying a billboard on the 101 in the Bay Area — what are you going to put on that expensive billboard?
You want a really good first photo that clearly shows your face. No filters, no sunglasses. Invest in a good photo. It doesn’t have to be professional, but people want to see what you look like. Honestly, the quality of male profiles is so low that if you just follow these instructions, you’re going to be better than 90% of guys.
Sam: Are we talking dressed up? Casual?
Logan: It doesn’t have to be dressed up, but it’s good lighting. Maybe have a friend take it in portrait mode. Not inside, grainy, anything like that.
Sam: I’ve never asked a friend to take a photo of me in my life. My pool of pictures — I’d rather go to the dentist than ask a friend to take a picture of me.
Logan: So at some point your mom takes a good picture of you and you upload it. Then you want one picture with your friends because we need to see that you have a social life. You don’t want a photo where you all look identical, but we should be able to see what your life is like. Then one of you doing an activity you enjoy — hiking, cooking. I know this probably seems awkward for guys, but it really does matter.
There’s a story about a woman who saw a guy’s profile and it was all Burning Man pictures. She’s like, “I’m not into Burning Man at all,” and swiped left. A few years later she met him in real life and really liked him, and now they’re married. When they talked about it, he said, “Oh yeah, I only went to Burning Man once. I didn’t like it, but those were the only photos I had.” He didn’t realize it was setting him back.
Shaan: Do you guys at Hinge just do a pop-up like, “Hey guys, come in on Saturday morning. We’ll take your profile picture for you?”
Sam: Like at the next MFM event, you should have a photographer there taking app profile shots.
Logan: What’s the ratio of photos you have of yourself versus photos your wife took of you and the kids? Because I know at my house, Sarah is always the one taking pictures.
Sam: She asks me all the time: “Hey, can you take this picture?” And I’m like, “Oh god.”
Logan: That’s actually my main feedback for my husband. “You don’t take enough pictures of me with our daughter.”
Sam: Sarah’s like, “I have no photos of me and the baby. Can you please start taking more photos?”
Logan: So: profile matters most. Hero shot — clear face, good lighting. Activity picture. You and your friends, but not five identical friends. You want to stand out in that picture.
Are you asking if you want to be the hottest out of your group?
Sam: Can we go Machiavellian and just —
Logan: There is a funny theory in behavioral science: people don’t make decisions in a vacuum; they make decisions through comparison. So if you have a friend who looks like you but is slightly less attractive, that’ll make you look even more attractive. I haven’t tried that in the wild, but there’s some data to back it up.
Sam: We had an ugly friend. We even told him. We were like, “You’re the ugly friend, dude. Either I’m at the bottom or I’m going to the middle.” And guess what? Chaos is a ladder, baby. I’m in the middle now.
Logan: Then on Hinge, there are prompts — ice breakers. This is a chance for a lot of guys to shine because so many profiles I look at are just weak here. You want a mixture of humor and vulnerability. Be funny, be sarcastic, give your hot takes — but also have some that show you have a heart and you’re not just silly.
Hinge now has an AI profile feedback tool that will say things like “go deeper” or “say a little bit more.” Think about what are the three things you want to get across. Maybe that you’re family-oriented, that you love the Warriors, that you’re really into cooking. Make sure your profile pictures and prompts are getting that across.
Shaan: What else can a guy do to stand out?
Logan: The next thing — especially for people who aren’t getting many matches — is to send comments with your likes. It’s much better to send a thoughtful comment because you’re more likely to stand out. Guys are often lazy and only comment on the first picture or first prompt on a girl’s profile. If you scroll down and comment on something lower, you have a higher chance of being original because fewer people have commented on it.
Sam: How do you comment without being totally thirsty or lame?
Logan: There’s this line from Chris Rock: if a girl’s name is Eve, don’t walk up to her and say, “Hi, I’m Adam.” She’s heard that a million times. In standup comedy, the best joke might be the third punchline you come up with, because the first or second other people can come up with too.
So if a person has a picture of themselves skiing and you ask, “Where was this taken?” — don’t say “I think it’s Whistler.” You and everyone else. But if you can write back something witty, like, “I’m going to challenge you to a black diamond,” then that’s a much better way to get into a conversation. You’re trying to show your level of wit and humor. Not overthinking it — just: what’s a way to get into a conversation that not every other guy has already tried?
Sam: It seems so much easier to meet people in real life. I met my wife in a real-life setting and it just seemed so much simpler. Shouldn’t we just teach guys to do that?
The Lost Art of In-Person Approaches [00:34:00]
Logan: This is a huge issue in modern dating. Almost everyone I talk to says, “I want to meet someone the old-fashioned way. I’m romantic. I don’t want to meet someone on an app.” But then if you ask if they’re meeting people in real life, they basically say no.
Last summer there were run clubs everywhere — everyone’s meeting at run clubs. I haven’t met a single couple that met through a run club. Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want to be on apps, they want to meet people in real life, but they don’t have the social skills to do it. There’s a huge problem with the younger dater: they lack rejection resilience.
This goes down a whole pathway of parenting. They had helicopter parents, snowplow parents who kind of plowed the way for them. They never had to deal with issues. They had colleges that bent to every will — if their dog had an ear infection, they didn’t have to turn in a paper. They have workplaces where they can take a sick day for any random reason. And then you want that person to go up to someone at a coffee shop and deal with rejection? They don’t have the skills to do that.
If everyone listening to this got really good at approaching women, making them feel both comfortable and flattered, and had a good opening line — bring on the babies. That would be great. But people are lacking the social skills right now. And in a post-Me Too era, there’s a fine line between confident and creepy that people haven’t figured out yet.
Logan: How did you meet your wife, Shaan? In real life or on an app?
Shaan: In real life. She was best friends growing up with my cousin. I was there doing something for my cousin, she was there doing something for my cousin. We bumped into each other. It was much easier because I didn’t have to approach with a pickup line. I had like an hour where we were hanging out and I just had to try to make her laugh. If I get this girl to laugh three times in this hour, that’s pretty good. So I was just trying to be as entertaining and fun as possible.
Logan: There’s a concept called the power of weak ties — you’re much more likely to get a job from an acquaintance than from one of your close friends. Your close friends have such overlapping lives with you that they know the same opportunities you know. But an acquaintance you met at a wedding a few years ago and still follow on Instagram might know something you don’t. The same is true with dating.
Shaan, you didn’t meet your wife through your sibling’s best friend — it was your cousin. One thing people listening to this can do is expand their network. Leave your house, go out, make new friends, meet people, volunteer, join boards. The wider your network, the more chance you have of a weak tie eventually introducing you to your spouse.
One of the reasons I was so excited for this conversation is that I love teaching people the strategies Sam used to meet Sarah — which I can happily summarize. Or Sam, if you want to do it.
Sam: I want to hear your take on this.
How Sam Met Sarah: The Art of Being a More Attractive Mate [00:40:00]
Logan: This is my Sam super-fandom. One thing Sam did that I really like is that he thought, “How can I be the most attractive mate possible? I’m going to make myself more interesting.” So Sam really planted a lot of seeds and worked on being more interesting. He was like, “Wow, when I talk about my interest in denim and mention that I’m going to a denim meet, women seem to be into that.” So he was genuinely passionate about it, but he also knew to talk about it.
He was also like, “Well, I’m not making that much money right now, but I want to show that I have a growth mindset and that I’m very ambitious — potentially I’ll be successful long term.”
Sam also likes to test out his stories. How do I know what the best story is? How do I know what the funniest story is? I’m going to practice it over time and get better at it.
If somebody is a super fan of both of you, they might think, “Oh, these guys are so smooth — I bet it was so easy for them.” But you were intentional, Sam, about being the best possible, most attractive mate. And then you snagged a baddie.
Sam: First of all, thank you. Second — I realized that effort goes a long way, and the best way to be attractive to a woman is to work on myself and bring them along with my life, which hopefully is full of interesting things. Even if it’s something as nerdy as denim, the best thing about being a man when it comes to attracting a woman is: if you’re passionate about anything — it doesn’t matter how lame it is — that’s kind of attractive.
And third — you have to say the line that I used to meet her.
Logan: No, I don’t want to bring it up.
Sam: You’re acting like — quick, cut to a commercial.
Shaan: Do you know what this line is?
Sam: I know this line. I can’t believe he’s voluntarily saying this right now.
Logan: Me neither. I thought we were going to skip over this.
Sam: I don’t mind saying it. So, my wife Sarah walked into the place — we were at a happy hour. She walked in. I was with my friend Lily. I go, “Lily, that woman looks fantastic. I’m not leaving until she talks to me.” And as I was saying that, she comes up to me. I didn’t know what to say in time. So I said, “Excuse me, what’s the difference between a chickpea and a lentil?”
She looks at her friend: “I don’t know.”
“I don’t pay $500 to have a lentil on my face.” — I’m talking about a chickpea on my face. — “Classic hummus joke. Am I right? Hi, I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.”
And it absolutely worked.
Shaan: We need a warning label: do not try this at home.
Sam: Sam, why did you say that? Had you said that before?
Shaan: What an absurd line. I don’t remember reading that in The Game.
Sam: I don’t know. I had just finished a cross-country motorcycle trip literally the day before. I had all these pictures on Facebook of the trip. So instead of asking for her phone number, I was like, “Here, let me friend you on Facebook.” I front-loaded my photos with pictures where I looked cool. That also helped.
I did try all those things you said — and I’m still a filthy animal who says things like I said. And it worked.
Logan: The post-game analysis: I wouldn’t recommend that line because it could definitely be misinterpreted. But at least you had the guts to say something. If you just sit at home waiting for the perfect line, you’ll never approach someone. Sam did not have the perfect line, but he just said something and it made an impression. What he said about effort is exactly right.
Men and Women Are Becoming Polarized [00:46:00]
Logan: A lot of the research I’ve been doing this year is about how men and women are becoming increasingly polarized. Women are way more liberal than men right now in how they voted. People used to vote across racial lines; now they’re voting across gender lines. For the first time in history, men in the US are more religious — more likely to go to church than women. Men and women are really being pulled apart.
So how do we actually get people to connect, create these couples, have babies? One thing my research shows is that men think, “Women expect me to be perfect — tall, financially successful, all these things.” What the women are saying is: “We just want you to put some effort in. Just remember my coffee order, know the name of my best friend at work.” Effort is just underappreciated.
If you have a profile that’s a seven out of ten, you’re still way ahead of a lot of guys out there. When it comes to basic things men can do — a lot of women say to me, “I go on dates that are zero questions. I asked the guy tons of questions and he didn’t ask me a single one.” And when I talk to guys, they say, “Well, she asked me a question. If she wanted to answer it, she should have just answered it already.” No — ask her the question back. Make her feel interesting.
Sam: Have you guys seen Love on the Spectrum? All the autistic kids say the same thing at first — they’re all taught this line in dating school — they say, “So, what are your interests?” And it’s the best line ever. It’s just such a good opener.
Logan: I’m obsessed with Love on the Spectrum.
Sam: “What are your interests?” If someone said that to me, I’d be like, “How much time do you have? I can go all day.”
Logan: This goes back to the Dale Carnegie stuff: be interested, not interesting. People think, “I have to have the best stories. I have to have the Facebook photos of my motorcycle trip.” No. People want to talk about themselves. Ask them questions, seem very interested in them, and that will make the other person like you.
There’s all this research showing that in conversations where one person is talking a lot and the other is asking questions, the first person thinks, “Wow, that other person’s a great conversationalist.” What that actually means is: they made me feel interesting and important.
Ask questions, ask follow-up questions, seem really interested, and remember stuff. If a girl says on a date, “I have a big project due on Tuesday,” text her Monday night or Tuesday morning: “How did that go?” These little things go so far.
Shaan: I think what I’m hearing is: this is like a sleepy market. There’s a sleepy incumbent. Nobody does any marketing. It feels like you’re shooting fish in a barrel — if you just try, just do the basics, you will clean up.
Sam: Most of my single friends talk about dating like it’s this impossible game they’re nobly fighting. And then I hear what you’re talking about and I’m like, nobody actually tries in a way that matters. If I asked my same friends, “When’s the last time you updated your profile? Let me just see your profile real quick” — this is your landing page. This is what everybody sees. This is how they’re making their decisions. And you put 14 minutes of work into it when you were signing up, speeding through just to get on the app, and you never really touched it again.
Logan: That’s the problem. You’re just not investing effort in the simple things that are going to make a difference. You’re spending a lot of time swiping, but that’s not the thing that’s going to help you actually find somebody.
Shaan, I love your ability to summarize and bring out the most important points. “Try on the things that matter” is an incredible headline for this. Yes, if you’re taller, you’ll have an advantage on the app — that bias is baked into the filters. But if you just give up because you’re not over six feet, that’s a choice you’re making. Why not have a better profile? Why not have a friend take pictures of you? Why not send comments with likes? If you’re serious about finding someone, there are basic things you can do that will set you ahead of most men.
Sam: And you only need one. I failed for nine years and then I had one business that worked, and all of a sudden I was a millionaire. You only needed one. Same thing with dating. You only need one to work. But it definitely helps to put up numbers. When I was dating and I was able to get one person interested in me, I’d be more confident and go after more. When it rains it pours. Getting over that first one is really hard.
Date Like a Scientist [00:56:00]
Shaan: Logan, you have this thing called “date like a scientist.” What does that mean?
Logan: This is sort of the My First Million approach to dating. “Date like a scientist” just means be willing to run experiments and see what works. The business equivalent is throwing up a landing page or running some Google ads.
Let’s say I’m coaching a guy and he says, “I need a woman who has a graduate degree.” I’ll say, “Date like a scientist. Date someone without a graduate degree.” Maybe what you’re actually looking for is someone who’s intellectually curious and you’re using the degree as a proxy. Let’s have you date other types of people and see what happens. I do this for women around dating guys with a different job than they expected, or shorter than they expected.
The whole point is: as we get older, we get clearer and clearer on what we think we want. People walk into my office with a spreadsheet of all the women they’ve dated over the last 10 years and say, “I know exactly what I want: a 5’7” skinny redhead who’s Jewish and plays tennis.” And I’m like, “I think you’re wrong. I think that’s what you think you want, but let’s actually test who makes you happy long term instead of assuming you know.”
Sam: There’s a lot of my friends who are Indian, and their parents had arranged marriages. Many of them are lovely, happy couples. I’ve always thought life’s a lot better when you have less choice. The way I went into marriage was: this is forever, there’s no such thing as divorce — that’s just what you’re taught with an Irish Catholic background. And for some reason I think you’re happier when you’re like, “If I’m miserable, that’s fine. I’m just going to make it better.” Versus: “I wonder if there are other options?” There’s something about finality that makes me happier.
Logan: There is a lot of research on that. When you compare love marriages versus arranged marriages, love marriages usually start off happier. But around the five-year mark, arranged marriages are happier. It’s exactly what you said, Sam. You’re committed. You’re in it. You don’t consider failure as an option. So if my husband’s working too much and I feel stressed out, I’m going to commit to working this out with him versus giving up.
I was at a dialogue conference and this guy said, “I think marriages should be like cell phone contracts — every seven years you decide to recommit or not.” And I was like, that’s a cute thing to say, but that’s not what the research supports. If you have an apartment versus owning a home, are you going to put wallpaper on the wall? Are you going to get a new dishwasher? No — you’ll think, “This is temporary, I have one foot out the door.” But when you own your home and you’re really committed, you invest in it because you think about it as a forever investment.
Sam: Warren Buffett tells his managers three things: one, act like this is the only business you own. Two, assume your entire net worth is in this business. Three, assume you can’t sell it for at least the next 50 years. And if you do that, I think you’ll make better decisions. It’s funny how similar that is to what you’re saying about dating.
Community, the Power of Weak Ties, and What Men Really Need [01:04:00]
Logan: I want to add one thing. I was at a Jewish-Indian wedding this past weekend and it was really beautiful. My friend who’s Indian — her parents live in Atlanta and didn’t have any other family there, but they’ve built this beautiful community around them called Potluck. You could just see the power of that community. During the wedding, so many people from the Potluck community were dancing, and the children of Potluck are all friends.
I think people underestimate how important it is to have a community around you. We’re not meant to be married and have this one person who fulfills every aspect of our lives. We need a community to support us, to talk about our partner with, to help when one person is sick, to help with childcare. Watching this beautiful Indian community really show up for this wedding — it inspired me to invest even more in my own community.
Shaan: I want to think about my friends who are single and figure out what question would make this episode most valuable for them. Here’s two scenarios. Scenario one: you go on a date. It was good, but it wasn’t, “Wow, I met the one.” You don’t have that absolute clarity and conviction. What’s the post-date psychology? How should you be thinking about it in order to give things a chance without stringing things along if you’re settling?
The Spark Myth [01:08:00]
Logan: Yeah, that’s kind of my tagline. I have this concept called “F*** the spark.”
Through ten years of coaching, I’ll help a guy with a date. He’ll come to my house afterwards and I’ll say, “How was it?” He’ll say, “She was great. She was beautiful. It was fun. I’m never going to see her again.” And I’m like, “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?” And he says, “I just didn’t feel the spark.”
The spark has become my nemesis. People expect to show up and feel this romcom moment of butterflies and rainbows, and they’ll give up if they don’t feel it. So I developed the three myths of the spark.
Myth one: if I don’t feel it from the beginning, it can’t grow. Absolutely not true. Only 11% of people experience love at first sight. Many people develop feelings over time — that’s why people marry someone in their apartment building or someone at work. It grows.
Myth two: if you feel the spark, it’s a good thing. Also not always true. Some people are just really “sparky.” They give that feeling to everyone. And then you think, “Oh my god, there’s something special between me and that person.” And it’s like, “No, honey. He gives that feeling to everyone. He’s very sparky — and could also be narcissistic, which is why it’s happening.”
Myth three: if you have a spark, the relationship is viable. Also not true. You can start really hot and heavy and then it fades.
My antidote is the slow burn. I feel like I married the slow burn — Sam can attest to this. My husband isn’t the most charming person you’ll ever meet, but he’s really smart and really funny. He just takes time to warm up. By giving him more time, I found this amazing lottery pick. I feel like I won the lottery. But if I’d been looking for the sparkiest person, we wouldn’t have wound up together.
So: if you feel zero attraction, especially for men — don’t go on the second date. It’s not going to go from zero to something. But if you feel some attraction, give that person another chance. Especially if you don’t go on that many dates.
The Three Dating Tendencies [01:14:00]
Shaan: Sometimes when you study a subject a lot and help a lot of people, each person thinks their problem is very unique and very hard. But you’ve seen a hundred of these. If you could shake someone and get them to do one thing or understand one mindset that would have all these positive benefits — what is it? Is it different for men and women?
Logan: We talked about “F*** the spark.” We talked about date like a scientist. The last one is my concept called the three dating tendencies. People can take the quiz on my website and it tells you which tendency you are.
Shaan: I actually just took it. Do you want me to tell you my results?
Logan: I assume you’re a maximizer.
Shaan: I scored equally high on hesitator and maximizer. I tried to put myself in the mindset of 24-year-old me.
Logan: Let me explain all three. A hesitator doesn’t think they’re ready for dating because they’re not the person they want to be yet. They hold themselves to a high standard and want to be completely ready before starting a new project. The hesitator’s motto: “I’ll wait until I’m a catch.”
A maximizer loves doing research, exploring options, turning over every stone until they’re confident they found the right one. They make decisions carefully and want to be 100% certain before choosing. The maximizer’s motto: “Why settle?”
And then there’s the romanticizer — which men tend to score lower on — someone who’s obsessed with the “how we met” story. “I want to find my soulmate. I’ll know it when I see it.” They’re so focused on the romcom element that they ignore great potential partners. When they hit a bump in the road, instead of thinking “I’ll work through it,” they think, “Well, if it was my soulmate, we wouldn’t have issues” — and they end the relationship.
Having this language is very helpful. I get emails from men all the time saying, “I’m a hesitator. I’m not putting myself out there.” And I say, “Great. You just need to go from zero to one. You just need to be on dates.” For maximizers, my advice is what I said at the beginning of the episode: you can keep searching forever for the perfect person, but you’ll miss out on choosing someone great and building something together.
The Future of Dating: AI Companions, Poly Relationships, and the Mating Gap [01:20:00]
Sam: What’s going to happen in 10, 15, 20 years with kids who are 25 right now? It’s pretty crazy that you’re saying that — we already know most women want someone who’s above them or provides. But among my employees, the women are kicking the guys’ asses. The 25-year-old woman is a better employee. We had an event recently and the women dressed wonderfully — presentable — and I had to pull the men aside and say, “You’ve got to dress nicer at these things. At least tuck your t-shirt in.” The men typically ask for more money but are less good at their jobs. They tend to be sloppier. They think it’s cool not to care.
Is it just going to be a bunch of single people and fewer children? Or a bunch of women married to older, richer men?
Logan: Predictions are pretty hard, but I’ll throw some things at the wall. I do think we’re going to continue to have this mating gap — as women continue to thrive in education and employment, there just aren’t enough great guys for them. I’m already seeing the rise of single mothers by choice, where women hit 40 and think, “I didn’t find the guy. I still want to be a mom.” They use a sperm donor and have kids on their own.
Another thing is the rise of polyamory — relationships where the woman is willing to have less of a great guy rather than be with a guy she’s not interested in.
And then there’s the rise of AI companionship. I’m getting ads all the time from Replika: “Get your perfect AI boyfriend. He always says the right things.” Women love this, by the way — I think more than men. More women seem to be engaging with AI boyfriends than men with AI girlfriends. I didn’t think it was going to be that way.
Shaan: On VC Twitter it was always “AI girlfriend’s going to be huge” — but actually AI boyfriend has been the dominant use case so far.
Logan: So imagine some combination of AI glasses with HD pornography, sex robots that are very realistic, and companionship from your AI boyfriend or girlfriend. Why are you going to go up to somebody in a coffee shop and risk rejection? Why are you going to have a girlfriend who bugs you to pick up your socks when a chatbot tells you how great you are all the time? As the friction gets lower and lower to having a digital spouse or partner, the effort required for human relationships just feels extra hard.
If you’re just watching Twitch and watching other people live their lives — are people just going to slowly die off because we’re not actually dating and mating? I think that’s one real possibility.
But I also think women are going to have to change their expectations, and men are going to have to raise the bar on themselves. Women are now saying, “I’m going to earn as much or more than you. I also have to do a lot of the labor around having a kid, raising a kid. I have this double burden of domestic and work.” So no longer is a guy just being a provider enough.
You now need to be emotionally intelligent. Emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating. But guys weren’t raised for that. They were told from a young age: be successful, be a provider, make money. Now the game has changed and they’re caught without those skills. Plus, when they are vulnerable, women are like, “Oh, you seem weak. I’m turned off by that.”
The genders are overlapping more. Women have to be more masculine in the workplace. Men have to be more emotionally open in relationships. Some of that blurring is making dating worse and more confusing. Dating hasn’t caught up with the data. People just don’t know how to act in this modern world, and we need to figure out some changes so that people actually still want to be in partnership.
Shaan: I am so thankful I don’t have to deal with this. Bring me back to the 60s where I worked with asbestos and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, because this sounds really hard.
You remember that huge tsunami in Southeast Asia? I was there the day before it hit. We happened to leave, and the next day we turned on the TV and our hotel was floating in the ocean. I feel a little bit like that with dating right now — like, “Wow, we got out of there.” None of the things you described is a tailwind making it easier. But easy might not be the only criteria here. The way you’re describing dating is that dating is a skill. It’s an endeavor just like any other endeavor. It’s going to take effort. It’s going to take rejection. It’s going to take resilience. It’s going to take leveling up your skills if you want to be successful. Just like in business — you can’t go in and expect no obstacles, no rejections. Your skills from day one aren’t good enough to win.
If I wanted to level up my skills — you talked about emotional intelligence, being a good conversationalist, knowing how to ask questions properly — is there a killer book you’d recommend, or a way to actually develop those skills besides the obvious one, which is getting practice?
Men’s Groups, Emotional Intelligence, and Relationship Fitness [01:30:00]
Logan: We talked about effort going a long way — remembering things, following up. Women really love that. Develop your relational skills.
One thing I’m really passionate about is men’s groups. A year ago, my husband joined one. Our good friend David Claven started it. About six men. They meet once a month. They silently write down on post-it notes what’s top of mind for them. Then they go around and whoever has the things most present for them takes up space. They give each other feedback. It’s a great place for men to be angry, to be sad, to create a council of peers. Then they hold each other accountable.
I’ve seen so much growth in my husband, so much growth in the other guys in this group. And I think it’s better than therapy because most therapists are female. Having your wife or a female therapist tell you what to do — that’s fine. But having a council of peers who can really relate to you and create a safe space for you to be angry and sad — I think that creates a lot more growth.
I really hope at least one person listening to this decides to create a men’s group. It’s not that complicated. Find a few guys you respect, commit to meeting once a month, create a space where they feel safe to discuss what’s challenging for them, and just support each other in achieving those goals.
Sam: Have you ever done one — not business-related, like an actual men’s group?
Shaan: I’ve done a few. The one you and I did, we were all early in our relationships at the time and we were asking each other questions. And I like to make fun of it, but the reality is it’s super useful and awesome. Making fun of it normalizes it and makes it cool.
I’ve done it a few times, and the way you described it just now is kind of perfect. It’s much better than therapy. In therapy, it’s an intense focus on self. But in these groups, because it’s a group, you get a lot out of it even when you weren’t the one talking or sharing. There’s so much that’s either related to your own situation or just the focus of helping somebody else — all of a sudden you feel lighter. And you’re like, “I didn’t even change my own situation, but I feel better.”
Logan: A great point. And I don’t think there are that many places for men to talk about shame. Shame is a very challenging feeling. I heard a story from someone in a different men’s group: this guy had been fired from his job eight years ago and still carried this deep shame — “I’m not good enough, I’m useless, I was fired because I’m a bad employee.” His men’s group happened to have a guy who’s 40 talking to people who are 55. When he shared that story as a deep trauma of his life, he heard from a bunch of older guys: “Oh yeah, that happened to me. That’s going to be a footnote in your life.”
It took this thing he felt deeply shameful about — “I can’t provide for my family, I’m a problem” — even though it was years ago and he now has a perfectly good job. Having these older guys say, “That happens to everyone, it doesn’t matter” — that helps him move on. Most men are just holding everything in. Once you get it out there, it kind of goes away.
Sam: Is there anything someone can go read or watch or listen to right now? Like a gateway drug — because starting a men’s group isn’t exactly the gateway drug for people of our generation. Shaan and I both did the same thing: we read The Game, which has so many flaws, but the one thing it did was encourage me to go talk to women. That was my gateway drug: “Oh my gosh, people will respond to me if I act nice and interested.”
Logan: Alain de Botton — he has really good stuff out there. He’s basically this British philosopher who has studied a lot of this. He’s the School of Life guy.
Sam: He’s amazing. I interviewed him for my book. Really awesome.
Logan: Esther Perel is one of the GOATs here. Her book Mating in Captivity has changed a lot of people’s lives. The true godfather and godmother of relationship science — the scientific study of all this — are John and Julie Gottman. They really set the bar. So much of the research that I and others quote comes from them. They created the love lab. They actually tested out a lot of this stuff.
Obviously people can read my book, How Not to Die Alone. And I have 12 coaches who work for me, a lot of whom specialize in working with men. Going back to what you said, Sam — it’s actually pretty easy for a lot of them to coach men because they’re not doing some of the basic things. When they get these guys doing the basics, they start seeing success so quickly.
Sam: I’m actually reading one of John Gottman’s books now. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. People ask me, “Do you have a problem with your marriage?” I’m like, “No, it’s pretty great. I just don’t want to wait until I’m sick to start exercising.” It’s good to do maintenance. Read the book when things are good, not when they’re on the fritz.
Shaan: One of the big edges in life right now is that people think if you do therapy or any kind of mental health work, it implies sickness. That language hasn’t shifted yet to “mental fitness.” People who go to CrossFit — you don’t look at them and say, “Oh, they must be diseased.” They just care about maximizing their physical potential. Similarly, being as clear as you could be, as positive as you could be, taking the time to do that is really important. And same thing with relationships. There’s an assumption that if you’re working on a relationship, it’s because it’s hurting or broken. I think that’s insane. There’s such a thing as relationship fitness that’s very different from relationship health — nursing something back from some problem.
Logan: I’ll add on to that. I think we’re halfway there in terms of the shift. We used to say “mental illness.” Now we say “mental health.” Going towards “mental fitness” makes so much sense. My friend Emily had a book that just came out about being emotionally fit — how can you go to the gym for your emotions? It’s not like, “Oh, I worked out arms yesterday, I’m good for life.” You have to constantly work at it.
That’s actually the crux of what the Gottmans say. My favorite takeaway from their many years of research is this idea that relationships are not about the honeymoon or the trip to Hawaii. They’re about the daily life interactions. They talk about this concept of a bid. A bid could be something really small — Sam walks into the room where Sarah’s on her laptop and she sighs. That’s a bid from Sarah for Sam to say, “Oh, what’s going on?”
Sam can do one of three things: he can turn towards her and say, “What’s happening?” He can turn away from her or ignore it. Or he can turn against her: “Why are you making so much sound? I’m on an important call.” Successful couples turn towards each other 86% of the time. Couples that break up — the relationship disasters — only turn towards each other 33% of the time. It’s really about these small moments.
Sam: We should actually do an episode on this John Gottman guy. He’s kind of crazy. He’s elderly now but he’s been doing this for probably 50 years. He can predict with 90% accuracy whether you’re going to get divorced — I think within three minutes of observing a couple.
Shaan: He has this thing called the love lab. He’d have couples come in, essentially argue or fight, and he’d observe them. They would mark every second on a score sheet — some notation of what the interaction was doing — and they had this scoring system. They could score a couple’s interactions in just a couple of minutes and predict with 90% accuracy whether they’d stay together or break apart. Which is amazing.
And it really shows you that life is in the micro. We think about dating with all this macro language — “I have a type,” “I have a soulmate,” “I’ll know it when I see it” — when a huge amount of life is in the micro. She said she was training for an Iron Man and instead of asking her about it, I pulled the conversation to myself. That’s the micro difference between a great date and an okay date.
Logan: Shaan, this is your superpower. I’ll say like 10 minutes’ worth of stuff and then you summarize the things that are worth taking away.
There’s actually a good term for what you’re talking about: the shift versus support response. A lot of people — especially men — get this wrong. Let’s say a woman says, “Oh, I’m going to Lake Tahoe this summer.” The guy thinks, “Cool, I’ll seem interested” — and says, “I went to Lake Tahoe last summer.” That’s actually shifting the energy back to yourself. What women and people in general like is when you help them go deeper: “How did you choose Lake Tahoe? Have you ever been there before? What are you most looking forward to?” Support responses help that person go deeper. People appreciate them more because it shows curiosity and makes them feel interesting.
Logan’s Story: Career, Marriage, and What She’s Building [01:46:00]
Shaan: By the way, Logan — what’s your deal? You’ve got a Netflix show. You wrote a book that did great. You’re doing stuff at Hinge. You’re on this podcast. You’re kind of a superstar in the making here. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to be the love guru?
Logan: I feel pretty happy right now. I made a vision board about seven years ago. I met Sam’s wife when we worked together at Airbnb — we didn’t even overlap that long. And I was just like, “I really have this passion for dating and relationships. Everything’s telling me there’s an opportunity here. People are lost and I can help them.” So I quit my job not knowing what I would do, and I’ve sort of created this career from scratch — a newsletter, a book, the job at Hinge, the Netflix show. I’m hopefully going to have my own podcast this year. I just want to keep learning and keep helping people find love. I don’t feel like there’s a next level I need to get to. I kind of just want to enjoy where I am right now.
Sam: Do you feel a lot of pressure? Like — you’re a relationship coach, and the layman version of me thinks, “So, do they have it all figured out?” There’s a weird expectation that if you’re talking about this, you need to be fully self-actualized. Do you feel that pressure? When did you get married, how did that go?
Logan: I’ll quote one of my mentors. Eli Finkel is one of the best relationship scientists in the country — he’s at Northwestern. The dedication in his book is: “To my wife Allison, who thinks it’s hilarious that I’m a marriage expert.” I kind of feel the same way.
What I will say is: the thing that fascinates me most, the thing I always want to work on, is the decision-making process of who you marry. I’m actually more of a dating expert than a marriage expert. When people ask me about sex, I’m like, “I don’t know about sex. I’m not a sex expert.” What I’m actually really good at is who you should be with and why. I don’t feel as much pressure as someone putting out a book about marriage.
But of course I have my own issues. Of course there are moments where I’m like, “My husband’s pretty introverted. My life would be easier if he wanted to go to this party with me.” And then I just remind myself of all the things that are great about him. And I also remind myself of all the annoying things about me. By negging myself a little, it helps me be more understanding of him.
One last thing: having a kid has changed our relationship so much for the positive. In the past, if he did something that annoyed me, I might either say something about it or bottle it up and let it explode later. But because I see what a great dad he is, my tank is so full of love for him that I can just let most things go.
Sam: Shaan, her husband’s hilarious. He’s a vegan — like hardcore vegan — but he’s shredded. And he’ll tell you he’s going for the “hungry warrior” aesthetic. He looks hungry, but he’s trying to get after it in life. He’s an engineer, works at a big AI company, brilliant. He also lost his leg recently because of cancer, but he laughs about it. He’s very principled, very interesting, almost strange — in the best way. Like, he doesn’t have any social media. Everything about him you think, “That’s strange,” and then you hear his reasoning and you’re like, “Oh — you live the right way. I’m the flawed one.”
Logan: I think that’s a beautiful testament to my husband. I’m drawn to very extreme people — I think that’s one of the reasons why I love Sam and love My First Million. You can create the life you want. You can create your own rules and live that way. My husband doesn’t care what other people think more than anyone I’ve ever met.
It is hard to be a hardcore vegan. We went to this wedding and there was basically no food for him. You know what he does? He brings packets of Justin’s peanut butter and chugs them in the bathroom, and pregames with sweet potatoes. He just adapts. He’s super healthy. He works out every day. He meditates every day. He lost his leg to cancer — but a few weeks from now, he’s going to be competing in the para-climbing World Cup championship. He’s just an extreme, very disciplined person who’s been very successful. And he’s really funny.
Closing Advice: First Dates, Final Tips [01:54:00]
Sam: Logan, this was great. To all you singles out there — you’re welcome. Go take some photos. Get some good lighting. By the way, what’s a good first date spot? Somebody wants to do a first date with someone they met on an app — coffee, dinner? What’s the move?
Logan: Dinner’s too intense. Coffee feels too much like a job interview. What if you go get an interesting maybe non-alcoholic drink somewhere and go for a walk? People have really great conversations when they don’t have to make direct eye contact. Or just go do something fun. Go play pickleball and shake out your sillies. Take yourself a little less seriously.
Sam: All right. Thank you so much, Logan. Great to have you.
Logan: Thanks a lot. See you.
Shaan: Thank you.