New couples make out…

Old couples give each other a peck on the cheek.

The longer you’re together, the more habitual your kissing becomes. You don’t need to make out for hours when you’ve been sleeping in the same bed for years. You take each other’s physical presence for granted.

But maybe you’ve noticed you’ve lost something else aside from those epic make-out sessions…

You don’t feel as connected.

You don’t feel as wanted.

Some women are fine with that. They complain that their partners only kiss them if they want something from them. They’ve stopped craving kisses from their partner, because kissing feels like an expression of need rather than an expression of love.

The Gottman Institute wants to change all that.

They want to bring makeout-style kisses back…

Even if you’ve been together forever.

Kissing releases a chemical cocktail into your blood, starting with oxytocin, the hormone that makes you feel close and connected.

Kissing also releases dopamine, the chemical of pleasure that motivates us to seek rewards.

Next are epinephrine and norepinephrine, which makes your heart beat faster and butterflies flutter in your stomach.

Finally, kissing reduces cortisol levels, lowering your blood pressure and making you feel less stressed.

All of that can happen in just seconds.

Kissing makes you feel better. It brings you closer and reminds you how pleasurable it is to be with your guy.

But not all kisses are created equal. The best kisses are at least 6 seconds long.

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Kelly didn’t even like Jonah.

And yet here she was, glancing down at her phone every few minutes, listening to breakup songs.

She met him on Tinder. He seemed nice enough. They went out a handful of times. Enough to make her think they were dating, or at least moving in that direction.

But recently Jonah had stopped texting her. Occasionally he’d text back if she texted him first, but otherwise she never heard from him.

Her girlfriends told her to forget about him. After all, hadn’t Kelly said she wasn’t sure about him? Jonah was an okay guy, but certainly not her ideal match.

Kelly knew she should listen to her girlfriends. She should put Jonah out of her head. There were a few guys on Tinder who wanted to meet up. She should throw herself back in the dating pool.

But she didn’t want to.

She just wanted Jonah to chase her again.

Why We Hate Losing

You’ve heard it said a thousand times: “We always want what we can’t have.”

But you may not realize there’s an even more powerful principle at work:

We don’t want to lose what we ALREADY have…

Even if what we have isn’t all that good.

This principle is called “loss aversion,” and it’s behind many of our worst decisions.

Researchers have learned that people will go out of their way to avoid losing something they have, even if they could get something even better in return.

In fact, the pain of losing what we have is twice as strong as the happiness of unexpectedly gaining something good.

So, if you lose that $20 bill in your wallet, the pain you’d feel would be two times stronger than the pleasure you’d feel if you had found a $20 bill on the sidewalk.

This principle explains why it’s so hard to get rid of the old clothes in your closet, even if you’re making room for new clothes. It explains why resigning from your job is so hard, even if you’re ready to move onto something new.

And it explains why we feel so much pain when a romantic prospect vanishes on us, even though their absence opens up the possibility of meeting someone better.

But there’s one thing that makes the pain of loss even worse…

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Imagine two couples.

The first couple, Jack and Jill, have a gazillion friends in common. They met at a party thrown by mutual friends, and it was love at first sight. They’ve stayed with the same social circle, so all of Jack’s friends know Jill’s friends, and vice versa.

The second couple, Bob and Barb, have some friends in common. But they met later in life, when they’d already developed strong social networks on their own. Most of Bob’s friends just know Barb; they don’t know any of her friends. Most of Barb’s friends just know Bob; they don’t know any of his friends.

Which is the stronger couple?

Before I tell you, let me share the story of how Facebook—yes, Facebook—figured this out.

Facebook Wants to Know Who You’re Dating

Back in 2011, a group of Facebook employees were sitting around trying to figure out how to organize your News Feed to make sure you saw posts by the people you cared about the most.

Maybe you hadn’t told Facebook that this girl was your cousin, but you’re going to get mad if your cousin’s engagement announcement gets lost at the bottom of your feed.

Not everyone tells Facebook who they’re in a relationship with, either. But clearly you want your guy’s posts to show up first.

So Facebook got to work developing an algorithm that could figure out who the most important person in your life is—which would usually be your boyfriend or husband.

Back in the old days, researchers used something called “embeddedness” to determine the strength of social ties. The more people you know in common, the stronger your relationship.

Jack and Jill are highly embedded. They have lots of friends in common. Their friends all know one another.

But it turns out that embeddedness doesn’t prove you’ve got a strong relationship. You need more than mutual friends to stay together.

What you need is dispersion.

Who’s the Stronger Couple?

Dispersion is what Bob and Barb have.

It’s defined as “the extent to which two people’s mutual friends are not themselves well-connected.”[1]

Bob is friends with many of Barb’s friends, family members, and co-workers, even though he only knows them through Barb and wouldn’t bump into them otherwise.

Barb is friends with Bob’s friends, family members, and co-workers on Facebook, even though she wouldn’t have known them if it weren’t for Bob.

If Bob and Barb ever break up, Bob would lose a good chunk of his social network, because they’re only friends with Bob through Barb.

On the other hand, if Jack and Jill ever break up, their friends would have a tough time figuring out who to invite to parties, because their ties are equally strong to both Jack and Jill.

What the researchers found was that Bob and Barb are actually the stronger couple.

But why?

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You’re on a first date, and you really want to make it to a second date. Should you:

1. (a) Talk about him, or (b) talk about yourself?
2. (a) Ask lots of questions, or (b) not ask questions?
3. (a) Play it cool, or (b) get excited?

I’ll give you a clue. The answer is either all a’s or all b’s.

Before I tell you which one it is, let me tell you how the scientific method was used to discover these answers.

Two scholars from Stanford and one from the University of California wanted to know what makes two people click.

So they sent graduate students on more than 1,000 4-minute dates. Each student wore an audio recording device. After the date, the participants rated their experience.

The researchers encoded thousands of minutes of first-date conversations. The results, published in the May 2013 American Journal of Sociology, provided some surprises as well as confirming some common-sense truths.

For example, women are much choosier than men. They look for men who excite and engage them in conversation.

Men, on the other hand, express interest in a number of women. They’re less focused on the quality of a conversation and more focused on physical attraction.

I’m sure none of that surprises you! Next, the researchers tried to nail down the signs that a date was going well.

When a man is feeling a sense of connection with a woman, he’s more likely to laugh. His voice evens out into a monotone, presumably because it sounds more masculine.

Women display different signs. When they’re feeling connected to a man, they tend to speak more softly, at a higher pitch. They take shorter turns while speaking.

The best dates, the researchers found, are those with a high level of excitement. Both parties are enthusiastic, engaged, and swap stories instead of swapping questions.

So far, so good. Now comes the part that turns conventional dating wisdom on its head…

The most successful dates are those in which the woman spends a lot of time talking about herself.

The more she says I, me, and myself, the more successful the date—both in terms of how connected she feels to him and how connected he feels to her.

Why?

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