51. The New Way to be Single with Peter McGraw

[00:00:09] Welcome to The Ghost Podcast. Today we have a guest that I'm really excited to introduce. You have heard me talk about him and his podcast on previous episodes. Peter McGraw, welcome to the show. Pleasure to hear.

[00:00:21] Peter McGraw is a bachelor of behavioral economist and he hosts the podcast solo and Peter you also have a book coming out soon. Can you tell me about that? I can and this is my first announcement with a new subtitle. So my publisher came along and said,

[00:00:38] we don't like your subtitle, which was the title of the book's called Solo, not surprisingly. And the subtitle was breaking the rules in a world built for two, you know, a punchy and controversial and sassy. Now it's

[00:00:56] a more sellable title untold, building a remarkable life of your own. I like both of them actually, but I kind of prefer the first time. And I like the positive spin on the building the remarkable life. Yes,

[00:01:11] but I also like the first one how you talk about breaking the mold of two because that's an important concept to all of the things that you talk about. Yes, I think that it's growing on me. I would say that

[00:01:22] it is a better subtitle building a remarkable life of your own for someone who doesn't know the soul of movement. But I think if you're part of the soul of movement, you really like breaking the rules

[00:01:33] and a world built for two. Yeah. So yeah, I've been doing a lot of exploring, you know, I basically started with the books exit on and you know, I have a lot of polyphrons that I'm in the polycommunity

[00:01:46] and just learning a lot more about undoing this stop process that has been imposed on us by religion and the patriarch of your three years and years. And so I find in mind recommended your podcast

[00:01:55] to me, and I always, I think he sent it to me because I always said that I practice relationship and I keep it. I never really liked the term that much for a lot of the reasons that you talk about.

[00:02:04] So when you start telling about relationship design and things like that that just like that really made so much sense to me. So maybe we can start with that. Tell us about what is

[00:02:13] solo? How did you start the solo movement? Just let's dive into that topic? Well, yeah, certainly I didn't start the movement. I feel like I joined the movement. I mean, the movement has been around

[00:02:28] probably since the first person to resist in a range marriage. You know, so I think it probably goes back, you know, 4,000 years or so in a sense. But I would say that it is catching,

[00:02:41] getting some steam. It's catching on a lot more. The more recent history worked by Bella DePollo in particular, a fellow behavioral scientist has been writing extensively on this in myth busting for 20 plus years. When I actually started the podcast, I was kind of voraciously

[00:03:04] consuming any singles related book that I could find. So a bunch by Bella, for example, there's a lot of memoirs out there. There's a few kind of sociological kind of academic books sort of written for a popular audience. But a friend of mine, a fellow bachelor,

[00:03:27] gifted me this book called The Challenge of Being Single. And so I opened it up. I start reading and it said something like, if you're one of the 47 million singles in the United

[00:03:38] States who are constantly blah, blah, blah facing all these challenges. This said or so. And I was like, when was this book written? And I I I I flipped to the publication page. It was written by two

[00:03:52] women an academic and a journalist in 1974. And I mean, now we have 128 million single adults in the United States, nearly one and two. The most common household in the United States is one person.

[00:04:09] Do you live alone? I live with my kids half the time. Okay. So you live alone. Yeah. So you're your your one of those households half the time. That's the most common household. And so I

[00:04:20] like read this book. I was a little deflated because they were talking about many of the same issues that I was talking about on this new podcast, except I was talking about them in a more

[00:04:34] positive way. So like if I if they were writing the book today, they would probably write the opportunity of being single. And that's really what the solo podcast is about. Do you think most people

[00:04:45] are there though? No, no, they're not. And part of the reason is there's no one pointing out the opportunities of being single. And certainly not pointing out that it should be equivalent

[00:05:02] to partner living, that it's no better or worse. It's just different. And and that really was my goal as someone who had with time become comfortable, not just comfortable with this singleness,

[00:05:16] but actually found it to be a very good state for me to be in. I like to say I'm not anti-marriage. I just think it's over prescribed. And so, so I launched the podcast to start sharing that message.

[00:05:31] And then, I mean, it's completely changed my life. I mean, it's I have a whole different perspective, a whole new language, a whole new approach to my own dating life. And my approach to relationships

[00:05:46] more generally. So the episode on relationship design you were talking about, I could never have had published that episode, you know, close to three years ago when I got involved in the movement.

[00:06:01] But I too read about relationship and Rkey and thought, wow, what a cool idea. What a bad name. And felt like, you know, like many things that needed a little bit of sprucing up. So to speak. But,

[00:06:18] you know, the basics of that idea, that is that rather than defaulting into a particular script, a particular agreement, a particular set of rules for a relationship romantic or otherwise, you should co-create them with the other person or persons. And regularly revisit them,

[00:06:41] those agreements, those rules in a way that continues to let the relationship exist be healthy. Not always grow to be honest, you know, it doesn't, you know, not every relationship has to be growth oriented per se. It doesn't have to be building to something.

[00:07:00] But one where both people opt in rather than defaulting. And I don't know how much you have talked about the relationship escalator on this podcast, but that was an idea that I had

[00:07:16] never heard of and now talk about all the time. Yeah, I have, I don't believe I've talked about it. I would love to have you explain that. And before you do that, or maybe as part of that,

[00:07:31] can you explain how, what do you see as the difference between singal and solo? Yes, okay. Again, I had no distinction between singal and solo. I'm very fortunate to have a small community of people who have come together around the podcast. And they're really wonderful,

[00:07:51] you know, they're smart, they're articulate actually in my forthcoming book have some of their voices. So I have in between each chapter, I have two solo love letters. So these are members of the community talking about their single life just because I recognize that

[00:08:09] my experience won't resonate with most people. And so I wanted to have a voice that has a chance to resonate. And so one of those members of the community was sort of pointing out that I

[00:08:26] sort of didn't have a good definition of solo. And it forced me to kind of do the work to figure out what is the difference between being single, which is about relationship status and being solo,

[00:08:39] which is about identity. And in many ways, the solo movement, in my opinion, is about transcending relationship status that you are not what your relationship is. And frankly, you know, the data bear this out, knowing whether someone is married or single tells you almost nothing

[00:08:59] about their happiness. Almost nothing. And they tell you a lot about their lifestyle, and they tell you a lot about their opportunities, and they tell you a lot about their goals in some ways. But it tells you very little about how good their life is.

[00:09:16] And in a sense, you know, just because someone is in a relationship or marriage is no guarantee to happiness. Like you said, you know, I have a good friend who lives in London and she's a similar

[00:09:26] aged to me. And she's never been married, never had kids and, you know, we're both single. But I have been married and have kids. And, you know, we've had a lot of conversations about,

[00:09:34] you know, she kind of had this like idealic version in her head if I just get married. My life is going to be so happy. And I was like, well, I was very for 12 years. And, you know, there was no, that was not a good

[00:09:42] relationship. It wasn't a bad relationship, like he wasn't a bad person. But it wasn't a fulfilling relationship. And I think a lot of people don't think about that. I think you get married and you're done.

[00:09:51] Like you're, you're good for life. And I think that's a recipe for a bad marriage because for that relationship to work. Both people have to be working on it growing, improving. And I would say continually negotiating the rules and agreements rather than just opting into

[00:10:11] the ones defaulting into the ones that the world gives us. And what we'll talk about those. So a quick bit of, if I could put on my, you know, my professor jacket with the, you know,

[00:10:24] the elbow patches on the sleeves. You know, the data on this is really fascinating. So the, the pro marriage crowd would tell you and your friend assumes this to be the case. It's obviously

[00:10:39] perpetuated by the media of happily ever after. And so with the pro marriage crowd will say is that the research that looks at the happiness of married people finds that indeed married people are

[00:10:52] happier than single people who are happier than divorce people. Now, first of all, those differences are rather small, but because the, the data are based upon thousands, 10,000, hundreds of thousands of people, it is statistically significant. So you can detect it. It's a real difference.

[00:11:13] But in my opinion, it's not a meaningful difference. And so what the pro marriage crowd will, will infer from this and shout very loudly is that you should get married and stay married and be happy. Okay. There's two other problems with that besides the fact that those happiness

[00:11:35] differences are rather small to show that happiness difference between married people and singles, you need to remove the divorce people from the sample. Which seems like cheating for me, if you're telling people to get married as a path to happiness with a 33% divorce rate in the United

[00:11:54] States. That's the non-travel chance that at some point it won't work out. 33%. I thought it was it is 33%. More or less. The reason people think it's 50% is because the way the divorce rate is

[00:12:09] calculated is that it compares the number of marriages in a year to the number of divorces in a year. And so it's not an apples to apples comparison. But I mean, you know, whether it's 50% or 33%,

[00:12:24] it's not trivial that that ends up happening. The other thing is, and this is really fascinating, is of course you can't actually show causality. You can't show that marriages cause happiness because you can't run an experiment. I love to be able as a behavioral economist to run that

[00:12:47] experiment where I randomly assign people to marriages and randomly assign them to divorces and randomly assign people to never get married even though they want to and see how their lives turn out. I just can't get that past my human subjects committees at my university.

[00:13:06] But you could do a proxy for that. And that is, you can look at those same, very same longitudinal studies and you can look at people's happiness before they get married. And what you see is fascinating,

[00:13:22] what you see is that the people who get married and stay married are already slightly happier than singles, which, and the people who get married to get divorced are slightly less happy than singles. Again, not meaningful in my opinion, but yet those effects persist. And so that changes

[00:13:47] the story, which is that it just might be easier to stay married if you're a little bit of a happier person in general. Right? A more satisfied with your life in general. And so I don't think

[00:14:01] that the pro-marriage folks have a very strong case when it comes to happiness in that sense. I feel like there's a just natural human tendency and I'm nothing to back this up, but that people

[00:14:14] want other people to do the same thing they're doing. So people who are on married feel like everyone else should be married and people who are single feel like everyone else should be single.

[00:14:24] I don't know, so I was curious to that. I think so. Well, I would say this. I think that the first statement is certainly correct. I think that the second statement has some degree of

[00:14:37] versity. I think it's unpopular to tell people that they should be single. Right? Like, I don't go to dinner parties with my married couples and being like, you know, I'm really, you know, I'm

[00:14:50] really rooting against you here. Hope you hope you break up and join the singles crowd again. Kind of thing. Or actually for sure, but don't you think people think it? Well, I think that if you are happily single, it's very easy to feel like you're seeing the matrix.

[00:15:12] Right? I think you can start to see the mythology. You can start to see past what people are saying to realize that not every marriage is happy. And in the same way that not every single person

[00:15:28] is some thriving. You know, and that's what I mean by knowing whether someone as married or single tells you almost nothing about how happy they are, that for some people marriage is

[00:15:40] and their particular partner is the best thing to ever happen to them and they would really be lost without them, that it provides meaning, it provides structure, that parenting really works well for them and so on. It just, you know, unfortunately doesn't agree with people enough.

[00:15:59] Given the high rates at which people do this, in 1960, 90% of people would go on and get married. Right? So it's just almost nothing hits rates like that. You know, and so I as a, you know, as someone who teaches marketing knows about what we call

[00:16:20] heterogeneity, which is just that there are differences in people's tastes in their lifestyle in their goals. And so almost nothing is that popular and obviously marriages are no longer that popular as a result of changes to culture, especially. So I think that leads us right into the

[00:16:45] topic of the relationship escalator because everything that you're talking about and what we're framing this conversation around is this expectation of society to have this escalator of how our relationship would go. So can you talk a little bit about that topic? Yeah, certainly, and I think

[00:17:00] it helps to understand the escalator if you're going to understand the four types of singles. All right. So I'm going to give you a quick lesson when I say you, I mean, your listeners, a quick lesson on the relationship escalator, but they already know it. They just don't

[00:17:15] know what is called and they've never had the stages and the rules articulated very clearly to them. But many of them have written it fully or partially. Their parents probably have. Their siblings might have. It's portrayed in movies and books and love songs. It is the default

[00:17:39] high status romantic and sexual relationship that is assumed to be the goal. And as if you listen to the Pro-Maris crowd, we'll make you happy. We'll provide fulfillment in your life. And the stages are, you know, you meet someone, you flirt, you go out on a date,

[00:18:00] catch some feelings, probably have sex. At some point you define the relationship. It becomes exclusive. I eat monogamous. You meet the friends. You meet the family. You move it in with one another. You merge your lives. You may get married, less the case now.

[00:18:22] But you certainly are a partnership. Kids may follow. You may get you may end up buying a house. You know the American dream. And it ideally ends with one of you dying. That's the relationship escalator. Now the rules of the escalator are, there's three categories

[00:18:42] of rules. I've already mentioned one and it's the 800-pound gorilla of rules and that is consistent, sexual and romantic monogamy. That is this is a relationship in which the relationship

[00:18:57] is closed, except to one other person. And you do not share romance or sex with anyone else outside of it. By the way, spoiler alert, it doesn't guarantee sex or romance within the relationship.

[00:19:12] As many people find out at some point, I tell a story in my book about a friend of mine who's mother just decided one day no more sex with that. You know, no more. And I asked her. I said,

[00:19:28] oh well, is he allowed to take a lover? Can he hire a sex worker? Or when she looked at me like I was a degenerate. Are you kidding me? No. Because this is the rule that they abide by.

[00:19:41] I've mentioned a second rule. Already, which is merging, you merge your lives. You move in together, you merge your living arrangements. You often merge your identity. You start using the word

[00:19:55] we need a vacation. And I call it the benefit of a relationship. So two become one in identity. And then you merge your lifestyles. Typically, you start to vacation together. You get on a similar schedule. You take on the similar kinds of hobbies. Sometimes the things that

[00:20:18] you were doing before that don't fit get dropped away. And often a lot of compromise flows from that merged life. And then the last rule is hierarchy. That is that this is to be

[00:20:41] the most important adult adult relationship in your life. The only relationship that may be more important is an adult child that between parent and child. Well, going down, not always going up.

[00:20:55] Right. So I had a friend who was recently married, we were talking about his funeral. Don't ask me why. We were talking about funerals. We're getting to that age, I guess. And he just matter

[00:21:06] factly said, my wife is going to plan my funeral. And I said, but what about your mother? You know? And he's like, no, it's going to be my wife. And so that's hierarchy.

[00:21:19] And that hierarchy often comes with wide ranging veto power over what you do, who you do it with. And so on. And so the relationship anarchist or the relationship designers, as I would say,

[00:21:35] are keen to be aware of those rules and not just blindly accept them. And instead, if someone's creating a romantic partnership, one that's designed to be long term, you would discuss those, should we move in together? Are we going to merge our identities? Will this be a monogamous

[00:21:58] relationship, sexually and or romantically? Is this, you know, is this relationship going to always be the most important? What happens at my childhood friend of 35 years needs me to fly across country to help him for a month? You know, would that be okay?

[00:22:21] You know, for me to do where the rules of the escalator would probably say no. Not okay, you know, to do that. And as well as all these other little agreements about things like good

[00:22:33] night tax and set their bedrooms and holidays with a family and so on and so forth. It's a pretty long list of in a lot of conversations when you move out of that standardized agreement.

[00:22:49] I want to talk for a minute about the concept of veto power over some else's life because one of the things I was thinking about when I listened to your podcast and some of the questions

[00:22:59] I actually had for you that I was thinking about, and I don't know if you've addressed these and your other episodes are not. I think that ability to give someone veto power over your life is what

[00:23:09] scares most people away from or prevents people from wanting to have a relationship. And I think one of the things that's, you know, one of the most prevalent characteristics of dating modern

[00:23:21] dating today, lots of fuckboys, lots of ghosting, lots of, you know, what we would in the past not think of as good behavior to treat another person is now really acceptable. And I was thinking

[00:23:36] about how it ties back to the fact that people see this escalator and they think that this is the only thing and they don't want it but because they don't have context or framework to think about

[00:23:47] what else could there be and they know they don't want to have this path and they don't want to give this veto power to someone else. It by default creates a lot of this really for behavior.

[00:23:57] So I was curious, yours ought to on that. Do you think that that's almost a byproduct of the escalator being the predominant social norm and people not knowing how to do something different?

[00:24:11] I think that's a wise observation. Let me talk about the four types of singles and then I'll address it in the fourth type because I've talked about it slightly differently than you have

[00:24:24] and I think that you're, I want to develop my thinking about this as I talk about it. Yeah and I just want to say that I'm saying this in the context of I'm bisexual as I date

[00:24:36] women but I primarily date men. So this is primarily my observation of almost, I will say the majority of men that I have interacted with through dating apps are generally

[00:24:48] of the mindset of I don't want anything serious. I have a lot of ghosting I think occurs from that and so a lot of what I talk about this byproduct is trying to say why is that why is it so normalized?

[00:25:00] And I kind of came together for me when thinking about this, you're just discussed but. No I think well, what I would like to say is I believe I have a different playbook

[00:25:11] whether be for men, women, straight gay or otherwise but it's a very vulnerable playbook to play because it demands a lot of honesty and it demands, well, it demands honesty with one's self about what you want and then it demands honesty with other partners. And I think what's

[00:25:35] sorely lacking is certainly the honesty with other partners. This is what I think a lot of your listeners experience has been in a sense and then and then associated with other also bad

[00:25:47] behavior on top of it which really is very painful. So the four types of singles, the first type I call some day singles. These are people who very clearly want to ride the relationship

[00:26:01] escalator they want to ride until the end. You know they see that as a path to a fulfilling life to a good life and in some ways a righteous life. I mean this is a morally charged relationship. It is a

[00:26:15] high status relationship not just within your life but within society. It receives thousand plus legal benefits. It receives the approval of friends and family and it's a desirable state. And so the some days are waiting and hoping sometimes hopelessly for this to happen and they're striving and

[00:26:39] struggling to make it happen. So like Charlotte on sex in the city is very clearly a someday single. She only dates men who she sees there being some future possibility with.

[00:26:55] And I think the average person is a someday, you know they don't have any other other way to think about it and they're just sort of doing best they can. Yeah it's all almost on my single female friends

[00:27:12] or some days. Okay yeah well let's see if we can convert them into just maze which is the second category. So now once we move into the second categories now we're talking about solos. Now we're

[00:27:27] not talking about relationship status per se we're talking about identity and I like to say that solos have three elements to their lives. The first and most important is that they see themselves as a complete

[00:27:42] person. I say they're wholehearted. They're not they don't feel like half a person they don't feel incomplete till their better half comes along. And I look I remember the moment I became wholehearted.

[00:27:57] I was going through a very upsetting breakup. The woman I didn't do anything wrong per se we just wanted to be together but couldn't because of our mismatch goals. And I remember exactly where

[00:28:13] I was standing in my apartment where I had this realization which was I'm happy when I'm single. You know that there wasn't this void that needed to be filled. And for as wonderful as she was I

[00:28:28] call her the fashionista as as wonderful as the fashionista was she wasn't going to solve my problems you know and I had plenty. I still do we all do you know but that was not her responsibility

[00:28:44] and that's not what she would have been good about anyways. And I I just remember thinking like I'm going to be okay my life as a single person is good it's healthy it's happy I love my work

[00:29:00] I love my friends I'm on a growth path you know you could just write down all of those all of those things so that's the first one you don't see yourself as incomplete. The second one

[00:29:12] is that solos tend to embrace their autonomy their self-sufficiency. That is they seek to solve their own problems I like to say they're a good parent to themselves they don't need someone to

[00:29:24] take care of them or at least they're striving to do that it's not easy you know I mean I certainly wasn't there early in my life I had a great deal of financial and housing insecurity as a young man

[00:29:38] and I understand why coupling up can help solve that problem you know you share expenses and so on you have a second income as a hedge if someone to support you and so on so solos seek that self-sufficiency but they don't seek to isolate themselves

[00:29:59] they're often building a community around themselves in order to support themselves friends family chosen family and so on and then the last one is that solos tend to be unconventional thinkers they they recognize the escalator they see its pluses and minuses they question the rules

[00:30:24] you know just they question the rules about is this right for me and and by extension they tend to question the rules more generally you know so the world wants us to behave in certain ways

[00:30:38] and in many ways the rules benefit society more than the individual right the invention of marriage was not invented for personal fulfillment it was invented to try to create a stable society it was invented for because of land ownership it was invented to create alliances

[00:30:59] and in many ways it made especially women's lives worse off they returned into property so recognizing that the rules aren't always designed for for you in mind can be very liberating so just may a solo may want the relationship escalator

[00:31:23] they just don't feel less than until it happens they're not living in this liminal temporary world waiting hopelessly they're getting on with their lives a carry a Miranda from sex in the city are are kind of just may's they're open to this partnership but they are not

[00:31:45] waiting around for it to happen and so even just shifting folks to that mindset even though their goal remains largely the same I think is a really liberating place to

[00:32:00] be in part because you don't know if it'll ever happen and it may take years and who wants to live less than for all those years and for anyone who's ever gone into a relationship good batter ugly

[00:32:14] you recognize that you give up stuff in order to do it and everything you give up is not always something you want to give up and so see it as a different path but don't see it as better or worse

[00:32:28] the takeaway the next group are the no ways and this is a stunningly large group I like to say I'm 20% no way I'm not always dating I'm certainly I'm rarely in a I would say in a

[00:32:47] steady relationship at least a steady romantic one Pew Research Center finds that so as I said earlier half of American adults are single Pew Center finds that half of them are currently not interested in dating or a relationship at the moment so that should be

[00:33:10] really heartening to some of your listeners which is that it's just as typical it's just as normal quote unquote to want a relationship as it is to not want one and what's fascinating about this research it shows that the reason that people don't want it is largely positive

[00:33:34] that is that they're working on more important things in their life they're busy relocating to a new city they're starting a new job they're in a graduate program they're building a business they're working on themselves they're they're just doing other things that they deem more important

[00:33:52] than dating and their pursuit of a relationship casual or or the escalator and I think that's there's almost no conversation around them right they're not portrayed in movies they're not love songs about them and so on and so if you're one of those no ways you can feel

[00:34:13] like there's something wrong with you but it's actually really quite common and I think it's actually a lot healthier to acknowledge you're not ready or don't want a relationship then to try and be in a relationship when you probably shouldn't be because you're doing

[00:34:28] self work or that's not your priority yes I'm working on an episode I'm really going to take my time with it called so you're divorced what's next and a lot of that conversation is going to be built

[00:34:45] around don't default into looking for a relationship right away this is a wonderful opportunity to reflect to make change to pursue growth and if you want to have another relationship to be

[00:34:58] better prepared for a new relationship but I think a lot of divorce people just re-up so to speak and they get back into the dating world and it's overwhelming because they'd been out of it for so long

[00:35:11] and suddenly you know what worked back in the day when they were in their 20s and 30s doesn't work now and they're 40s and 50s and you know it's quite culture I can personally

[00:35:22] attest to them that was me when I came out of my 12-year relationship which was a marriage I immediately what thought I needed to jump into a relationship and I had a lot of sort of painful lessons

[00:35:34] around that not working out for me that led me on this journey of discovering at the end of it relationship design and realizing that that's actually not what I want but it took

[00:35:45] me a long time to shift my own mental landscape and focus and just understanding of how people connect to get there yeah wonderful and also you know if you've been living in a monogamous life

[00:35:58] you might be excited for some non-monogamy you know I get the I get the reasons that people do it I just wanted to take a deep breath and know what they're getting into and to take care of

[00:36:08] themselves first so the last group there they're the smallest group arguably the sexiest group certainly the fastest growing group is the new way solos so let's back up and we'll talk about

[00:36:27] me for a moment because I'm I consider myself a new way I suspect you are a new way that is that there are many people who struggle dating they have difficulty dating because they don't want the full escalator experience so for me I've never wanted children for example

[00:36:55] that has gotten the way of a lot of relationships but not nearly as much as the fact that I I realized that I don't want to live with someone so I I had a couple and my late 30s early 40s

[00:37:11] painful breakups with really wonderful women who we had healthy happy relationships where one day about a year and a half into the relationship they said this is separately not together

[00:37:23] separately Peter I want to move in and I did not want to lose them but I also didn't want my partner to live with me I don't foresee that happening in my life things can change but

[00:37:42] certainly right now I don't want to live with anyone I don't even have a living thing in my apartment I've got a plastic plant so I want to be able to leave the house and not have to come back

[00:37:55] is you know I fly on one way tickets now it's like one of the things that I really enjoy doing as a solo and for many years many many years I thought there was something wrong with me

[00:38:11] because I couldn't make the escalator work and by the way lots of things wrong with me but when I looked at all my other relationships in my life when I realized it with colleagues and I realized it with family my relationships with friends these are long-standing, healthy,

[00:38:30] good relationships like I wasn't broken as a person and it wasn't even the case that I couldn't quote unquote commit I mean I could I could do that I just didn't want the same thing and what

[00:38:45] the big realization and there may be people listening to this right now who are realizing this is like oh there's nothing wrong with me there's something wrong with the escalator there's something wrong with merging there's something wrong with the hierarchy there's something

[00:39:02] wrong with monogamy there's something wrong with the consistency whatever that thing is and you live in a world as as you talk about where most people want this thing they don't even question

[00:39:19] the rules of it and that creates a lot of friction when you go out on dates with them so I think that for me was incredibly liberating and relationship design in many ways flowed

[00:39:34] from recognizing that if you're going to have an unconventional relationship you need to have a model by which to talk about co-creating that creating that container together where your unconventional relationship is unique rather than picking from a menu what you've identified

[00:39:52] which I think is very interesting is that some of the bad behavior that happens in the world of dating is that someone portrays themselves as wanting the escalator and misleading someone and then stepping out stepping away wanting to change the rules whatever that is so for

[00:40:21] someone who just wants a casual sexual relationship which by the way I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a casual sexual relationship as long as you don't say to someone I want a serious

[00:40:35] relationship use that person for sex and then disappear on them that is I don't even kind of think of how the worst word I can think of for that it's you know it's completely inappropriate

[00:40:52] it's awful it's unethical behavior it's a moral you're causing harm when you do that and so to me the solution has been first of all don't assume that everybody wants the escalator unless they

[00:41:09] tell you they want the escalator you're gonna have to get really honest with yourself about what you do want and then you're going to have to get honest with your partners so for example

[00:41:22] when I go out on dates or in my dating profiles depending on what the the nature of it is I'm very clear I don't want to have children I'm very clear that I that I don't want to live with a

[00:41:35] very clear if I'm having sex with other people and so on and so forth and I find that a I'm heterosexual the women I go out with are the real to hear someone be honest with them

[00:41:55] even if they're not happy with what I have to say right even if they want to ride the escalator they they may not agree that that's what they want they're they're appreciative of the honesty

[00:42:07] and I think a lot of times people will surprise you because they'll say I'd rather go out with you want to ride a night and sit home alone so one of the things that I've struggled with I'm

[00:42:18] currently in a place where I am actually only looking for casual relationships or play partners so I have a few people in life like that and I've had a couple of relationships like that with men

[00:42:31] and what's been interesting to me is even when it starts off that way and I think I think the answer to this is relationship design but because it's not a you know well-known

[00:42:40] concept people don't really know how to go about it is that I feel like when you go out of the escalator and you even start up front with saying this is going to be a casual relationship there's

[00:42:52] kind of almost like no rules and so to a lot of people that kind of means well I can treat you however I want because it's casual so I don't need to you know make plans with you in the future

[00:43:05] or I don't have to have you know consistent communication with you so for me personally the way I saw that is that I tell people front I have correlation shift values which are you know you know mutual

[00:43:17] effort consistent does that be consistent communication like all the time but that there's effort back and forth communication the communication is clear especially around making plans and things like that consideration of my time so being consider my time taking my time to be as valuable

[00:43:32] as your time and then safety so you know that's kind of what I say up front that I'm looking for but you know I have before I was able to really articulate that I kind of struggled with like okay

[00:43:41] we're outside the escalator but we didn't know there was an escalator and so you know kind of how do we how do you treat this and and are we playing from the same you know book of rules

[00:43:51] yeah well first of all I want to compliment you on having such clarity about what is important to you in these because to me casual does not mean not an important

[00:44:04] actually don't like the word casual I agree but I think it does do a lot of other people yes I think casual and serious I mean I just I really dislike that language I sometimes use it because

[00:44:19] everyday peep normal people not people like me who've spent thousands of hours thinking about this stuff they get it but I think that that conversation and and being very clear so not only

[00:44:36] clear about what you want you're very good about articulating it and and having that person agree that they will do that is I think very important in part because it provides clarity should they be

[00:44:53] unable the sex may be great but they're poor communicators the sex may be great but they cancel last minute on you you know these kinds of things that are sometimes really hurtful sometimes just

[00:45:07] annoying or it even just suggests that that person's not as committed to the relationship as as you are I certainly involved in regularly revisiting these kinds of conversations I often do them

[00:45:26] by checking in which is how are you feeling about this it's funny because some people are not used to that right so they're like is everything okay right I'm like so how are we feeling about

[00:45:40] about us they're like is everything okay you're gonna break up with me what's going on you know kind of thing because people don't talk about things when they're good often I certainly had a conversation

[00:45:52] along the lines with a partner who I would say is tough to wrangle you know doesn't always respond to text messages and I have kind of come to the we've come to to the place where she sort of knows

[00:46:10] anytime she wants to propose getting together I'll do my best to accommodate that occasionally I'll reach out to see if she's available but I just find that that sometimes I just don't hear back and it's just her style of communication with a phone the nature of her lifestyle

[00:46:31] but I really adore my time with her when I'm with her she's 100% present like you know I just she's just such great company but at one point of time I said to her I said listen you know

[00:46:45] I'm this was in person I'm I'm thrilled to see you today you know I'm really excited to see you today when you I have a request for you and that's this if you ever decide that you don't want to see me again

[00:47:01] will you agree to tell me and I promise you I won't try to talk you out of it I won't be mad thank you for it we can reminisce and so on and but I want to know that because if I send you a

[00:47:16] text and I don't hear from you for 10 days I don't want to be wondering will I ever hear from you again you know and she was so wonderful about it she said actually I was talking to a friend of mine

[00:47:29] about you the other day and I said at some point when this relationship ends I expect to be Peter's friend I think we'll always be friends and I was I was so moved by that you know I mean like I was so

[00:47:47] touched by that sentiment and she said yeah I will let you know and I was like wonderful you know and so if I hadn't had that conversation if I hadn't had that vulnerability we would have just kept

[00:48:02] playing out this situation where I'm kind of waiting and hoping for her to respond to my to my text messages that are there and I've actually talked about this a lot on other

[00:48:13] episodes too and I think part of the issue is that there's no education around how to have these kind of conversations there's no there's nothing we learn that this is how to be a good partner

[00:48:25] this is how to show up in a relationship for someone else and everybody has a different definition of that but I think the truth is people are just really bad at it because they don't practice

[00:48:34] doing it and so it's like the default to not talk about things and to not have clarity and everyone kind of has their own thing in their head and you have no idea if you're things match up or an

[00:48:46] alignment unless you actually talk about it. Yes I mean I think we are what we are doing right now is that we're helping people learn that there's a different set of scripts that are out there

[00:48:59] I mean I'll be very clear I mean here's the problem is that the the people who are behaving this way aren't listening to your podcast but maybe people will send this on to someone who

[00:49:10] behave badly but the issue is this is if all you want is casual sex right if all you want is a play partner if you only want friends with benefits or if you only want to be able to bootie

[00:49:23] call someone you need to say to them this is what I want what I want to be clear about is like as long as there's no harm and as long as there's consent two or more adults can do whatever they want

[00:49:37] with each other and I'm not going to put anymore labels on it as being right or wrong is being better or worse but I think a lot of people are avoiding those hard conversations

[00:49:48] they're they're not willing to be vulnerable they're not willing to as I like to say ask for what they want. Yeah I agree with you I make a lot of sense. I want to talk about this from a different

[00:50:00] perspective specifically around women who want children. Okay. Um I view are you familiar with the book, Data Nomics? I'm not. No. So I heard about this on a podcast I was into

[00:50:14] girls got to eat podcasts not sure if you're familiar with that but they um they had a woman on their podcast who wrote a book about why women freeze their eggs and she's done the largest

[00:50:25] anthropological study on this so she interviewed over 150 women and um she what she learned is that this stereotype of why women freeze their eggs is because they want to climb the corporate ladder

[00:50:37] and they want to focus on the career and she found without exception except for women who had cancer at a very young age 100% of the women were freezing their eggs because they couldn't find

[00:50:48] a male partner who wanted to have children with them. So then they started talking about this book Data Nomics I think I forgot when it was written but essentially that the dating landscape has changed significantly from an economic perspective where women are now more

[00:51:03] educated than men you know becoming more successful than men having better careers than men making more money than men and they're having a really hard time like economically finding a male

[00:51:13] partner that first of all is at the you know perceived level that they want them to be in terms of education success and career and secondly that actually want to have children and you know to me

[00:51:25] when I heard this and I obviously already have kids I don't I don't want to have more kids I never want to get married again but I do have a lot of single female friends who are in this place

[00:51:36] where they really do want to have children get married you know they're late 30s or early 40s and it's you know the chances of that becoming smaller as well. And so I think we're at this

[00:51:47] really interesting point in time where you know monogamy has been the social norm for you know hundreds thousands of years or however long you know since the first gotten reduced by the church

[00:51:57] by religion and people are saying to break out of that so they're trying to say what else is out there we're seeing a lot more polyamory you know ethical nommonogamy all these like keywords that we hear

[00:52:06] but we're not quite to the point where it's shifted yet to say what replaces that and again I think going back to relationship design is almost kind of the answer to this but because again people don't have the language or the the ability or the education to talk

[00:52:22] about this I think it presents a real dilemma for women who do want to have children you know and obviously women can have children on their own you know we all know that but it is really hard

[00:52:32] and I'm a single mom half the time thank god my kids are older time 12 but at the end of my week with my kids I'm always like I'm not meant to do this by myself like this is so much work

[00:52:43] so I'm just curious what your thoughts are in that. I don't know if I can as where do I begin I certainly have a lot of compassion for the single moms out there my mother was a single mom full-time

[00:53:00] incredibly challenging I have a lot of sympathy for women who really want to make this happen and are having trouble doing so I had Melanie Notkin on my podcast she has a book called

[00:53:15] Other Hood about women who want to be mothers but can't but they are serving that role in other ways as ants and community members and so on helping love lift children's lives

[00:53:32] and how just painful how awful that must be to have this thing that you want to do and be unable to do it how heartbreaking it is with this you know metaphorical clock

[00:53:47] you know ticking loudly and I think a lot of these women are I suspect from this interview if you have the means by which to freeze your eggs you are you're often winning at life in every

[00:53:59] other way and and for a lot of these women the more they're winning at life the more difficult they're having finding this partner I I've been paying more attention to this topic it's starting to bubble

[00:54:17] up women are starting to talk about the struggles of men I say you know that men are unpopular right now you know everybody wants to smash the patriarchy but they don't realize how

[00:54:33] the patriarchy is only beneficial to a small number of men that you know the average man is not living this wonderful life you know issues you know I can go through all the things home you know

[00:54:49] men are disproportionately homeless suicidal incarcerated deaths of despair are are overwhelmingly men and women are just outpacing men in all these ways educationally in a lot of economic ways and the world has not shifted you know in terms of economically manufacturing etc etc to let

[00:55:13] you know men find ways to thrive in this sort of new reality and it does have been help having pornography readily available in video games and living in a parent's basement I'll be perfectly honest with it and so I think it's a very difficult situation because there are

[00:55:37] a lot of men who would like to have a wife and can't find a woman willing to be with them because they're not appealing you know they haven't done the hard work and they haven't evolved

[00:55:53] and so we have you know in a heteronormative sense these genders who are sort of mismatched and a lot of suffering that's happening as a result of it I'm I'm trying to do my part

[00:56:09] into ways one is to point out that your single life should you you be single by chance rather than single by choice for example not be a life this less than right that you know that

[00:56:25] there that even if you don't end up becoming a mother or finding a life partner that doesn't mean that your life's not worth living that there are many ways to find personal growth to find meaning

[00:56:41] to the thrive as I say to live remarkably and that might be through art it may be through community involvement it may be through your family it might be as Melanie has done you know

[00:56:56] outside of the the norms of motherhood and so I want people to a realize that there's singleness provides opportunity and then point out that there are many ways to contribute to a world and find personal and professional fulfillment outside of this very narrow track which is

[00:57:16] to ride the escalator till death to you part yeah and the reason I say I think relationship design is an answer to this is because I think we need to get to the point where we look

[00:57:27] beyond the traditional family and I think you had a woman on your podcast who was planning to have a child in someone unusual situation and I think you can definitely design a relationship around parenthood that is outside of a traditional escalator and I think that

[00:57:49] that is what people who can't find you know who either don't want to be in the escalator but still want to have a family or you know people who have children already and are now divorce

[00:58:02] or single you know the idea of children and family is not readily fit into the model necessarily and I'm not I don't think that the way we boys on things is the answer either but I don't think

[00:58:15] there's necessarily you know a norm to replace it with yet. I agree you know these I think these new way solos are our best hope so it's very easy to pay attention to the ones who are doing polyamory

[00:58:31] or ethical non-monogamy or you know all this kind of stuff but but some of these people are doing platonic partnerships right so their life partner is someone that they have no romantic or sexual

[00:58:45] feelings for and they share the same house they might have hierarchy you know they've opted into these kinds of things the world's not built for them right so I say the world's built for

[00:58:59] too but it's really built for a particular type of two and so we're going to need to see changes to the law, to zoning healthcare regulations etc to allow these different types of permutations.

[00:59:12] It's funny because these pro marriage advocates are like they're obsessed with this sort of nuclear family model but the nuclear family model is not a very good model it's really isolating it's

[00:59:24] incredibly risky right because someone goes away due to divorce or disability or death and now it's just fractures in some ways one of the things that is good about the good old days the good old days

[00:59:40] weren't that good uh is the sort of extended family models that existed that were um they were kind of tribal I mean we're tribal people you know most of humanity has been spent in tribes small

[00:59:55] groups of people that involve yes lovers yes kin but also friends you know you know that that everybody was united in a in a common goal and so being able to recreate a family structure

[01:00:13] is super important for these folks who can't find the traditional and I don't you know I know people like to point to this the this data they talk about like two parents in a kid and how good

[01:00:28] that is and so on it's not really about two parents in a kid it's about resources it's about parents it's about adults and stability that's what it really there's nothing magical about two parents in a kid it's about a stable healthy happy household that has adults

[01:00:52] there the kids are going to be able to find a way to thrive in and so to your point I think relationship design allows people it's not just about sex right you can use relationship design to create a

[01:01:05] golden girl scenario for you and your and your elder years it's about communicating in a green and committing to someone and having that integrity to do what you say and one thing I keep the

[01:01:20] evil is I have a friend who's poly he's married um they have a daughter he has a girlfriend his wife has a boyfriend he's by gender he does burlesce and one of the things he said to me is

[01:01:35] he's like I don't know how monogamous people do it he goes how do you commit to just one person for the rest of your life and I always think about that when you know when you're talking about

[01:01:44] like the new ways is why do people even want to do that in the first place right it's when you think about it from that perspective one person for the rest of your life well you know it's um

[01:01:55] it's rewarded you get to you know you get to celebrate it on Instagram it's it is socially acceptable you get invited to the dinner party is your part of the cool kids group um your friend sounds like a lot

[01:02:07] of fun um and and defies the stereotype of the selfish person who won't get married and settle down you know and um I'm a little exhausted by how much he gives to all these relationships right

[01:02:27] like he has a lot of intense emotional important relationships in his life um that's uh he is a live you know um I think a lot of people who just default into this relationship and then take their

[01:02:42] foot off the gas are living but they're not alive and I think that one of the really exciting things about designing your relationship and the way that we've been discussing is that you have to be

[01:02:56] vulnerable you have to take a risk but boy it gives you a chance to be alive with a partner and I think that's um I mean I I hope that's the future right where we can start to move past survival

[01:03:13] considerations which is what a lot of marriages designed to do to finding a way to to really feel not just like you're surviving but you're alive. Peter to wrap up I know that you

[01:03:26] have a personal story about being stood up and there's been can we talk a little bit about that before we and this episode sure I guess technically I was stood up and ghosted so I met a woman on a

[01:03:42] dating app and actually I think we had not yet exchanged numbers and I got a message from her this said nice hat and I couldn't put that together and I was like I don't I don't follow she

[01:03:58] had saw me out in the public and I had a coffee shop so I wear this steps in open road hat you know it's part of a personal transformation so I in Denver I stand out you know people people notice

[01:04:17] and I thought that was very funny oh what you know through happenstance we ended up meeting at that very same coffee shop two days later and she is lovely you know she's vivacious I found her

[01:04:29] attractive and she was like flirty and fun and I I think what ends up happening a lot with dating is you often play things safe because so often things don't go anywhere and so you don't you know

[01:04:46] there's sort of the the minimal investment available is what people often do at the beginning of something and I was I was excited I'll be honest I was excited by her and so I pitched some

[01:05:01] very fun dates for us to go on you know how to good feeling and one of those fun dates was to drive the peak to peak highway so this is very scenic highway to estus park and we were going to have a

[01:05:15] drink at the Stanley hotel the Stanley hotel is this old hotel in estus park and it was um it was the hotel that was inspiration for Stephen King's the shining and they do like ghost tours there

[01:05:29] and stuff like that and she was that sounds great we picked a date and then she sends me this text a very exciting text that said what time are we coming back the next morning I've got like a meeting

[01:05:45] or whatever and I thought to myself oh I didn't think it would be one of those kind of dates and I said we'll come back anytime you need to I'm completely flexible so I booked a room

[01:06:01] and then while I was booking the room I saw that they have a saience at the Stanley an expensive saience and I was like I sent her a text and said you know they have a saience

[01:06:14] would you want to go to that and she goes more than anything else so I booked two tickets for the saience and I was like all right we're going to live a little on a Thursday afternoon you know evening

[01:06:25] kind of thing that that day comes send her a text in the morning no answer I go to the gym I'm coming coming home from the gym I'm thinking like still no answer I call her said hey just checking in you

[01:06:42] I'll be available to leave as early as 1 pm never hear from her so I texted a friend and they're like how long's appropriate to wait you know before and my friend basically said

[01:07:01] it's already been too long you know it's already been too long so I ended up this was humiliating you know it was it was already within the window that you can't cancel the hotel room so I was

[01:07:17] going to eat the cost of the hotel I was already going to eat the cost of the say answers no canceling that and so I called the hotel and spoke to reservations I said listen I'm you know on

[01:07:28] a little bit embarrassed but I had a date planned for the night and I'm being ghosted is there any way you can refund this room I'm not going to need it and the the woman was very kind

[01:07:43] she said let me speak to my manager and I think he'd been ghosted before or something because she came back because I spoke to my manager he said it'll be okay I'll I'm going to remove the charge

[01:07:53] from your credit card and I said thank you so much and then I tried to salvage the sayons because I was curious about this thing I thought it'd be kind of fun kitschy at the very least kind of thing

[01:08:07] and so I ended up inviting someone else and we did the trip up and went to the sayons and then came back that day and you know we had a nice time it wasn't a love connection but it was

[01:08:18] a you know it was a little bit of a adventure to have in light of that but I was so affected by this I was so perplexed and puzzle because I sometimes when you look back you can have seen the warning signs

[01:08:33] but I had no warning signs associated with this so I ended up actually doing a solo thoughts episode actually didn't episode about getting stood up and what I said my conclusion and I'm curious

[01:08:45] maybe we can finish with your response to this maybe it'll help me is that I said that a lot of times when people behave badly what we want to do is say that they're a bad person want to say that

[01:08:57] they're an evil person and that they lack integrity and they're we want to diminish them in some way that it's been my experience in life that when someone does something like that or behaves badly

[01:09:09] it's often because it's because of their weakness that they behave this way they're not setting out to be mean they just are misbehaving because they don't have what it takes to do the right thing

[01:09:29] in that and that I found some solace in that idea that this wasn't a set up because she wasn't laughing with her friends about doing this awful thing how how dumb I was

[01:09:41] and how excited I was by the prospects of this and you know but rather she just for some reason got cold feet decided I wasn't the right man for her and rather than telling me that she

[01:09:55] just decided to disengage from it and it came from a place of weakness rather than malice yeah I agree with you I mean they're definitely our nurses is out there and part of the

[01:10:08] narcissistic abuse cycle is go sting love bombing and the ghosting cycle but I think that that is not the norm and I was actually just talking to my therapist about this last week because we were talking

[01:10:20] about the most recent person who goes to me which I talked to in my last episode and I said almost the same thing or I said I don't think he's a shitty person I said he's as what he does

[01:10:30] really shitty but I said I don't think he did it because he's a bad person I said he's immature extremely selfish and lacks the communication tools to have done what he should have done

[01:10:44] which was just to send me a text message and say he wanted to end the relationship and he didn't have the ability to do that and at the end of the day I feel like that's sad it's

[01:10:54] sad that people are so lacking in just what it takes to be a basic good person again I want to say their bad people but I guess basic I think it's almost more of it is like the ability to have empathy

[01:11:08] and think I think outside of your own uncomfortableness with having to take something back or say I made a mistake or you know backtrack on something they can't do it and so I feel like that's

[01:11:23] that's lacking on their end. Thank you. Well Peter this has been an incredible episode I am so glad that you agreed to come on the podcast so thank you so much can you tell our listeners

[01:11:34] where they can find everything about you including information about your podcasts and your upcoming book. Sure you go to petermergroud.org slash solo that's a starting point for the podcast some of my writing you can join the solo community the book is available for pre order on Amazon

[01:11:51] and with its new title solo building a remarkable life of your own.