Dr Paul Eastwick

I think when people think about dating, they think about self-promotion.

They think about putting the best version of themselves out there.

But a lot of times coming across, again, this is going to shock a lot, but there really is research on this.

Like coming across as a little bit vulnerable, a little bit like you kind of are like needy is too strong, but like just a touch of openness to having somebody else do things for you, to learning from another person.

That's maybe a good way of thinking about it.

No, but I love this idea.

I think the age idea is interesting, or at least the idea that as people age and they have more experience dating, that they kind of learn from their past experiences and grow and change.

I think there's something to be said for that sort of maturation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm quite sure that study has never been done because it's very, very hard to track people across their dating career.

I could kind of one hand- What did you used to like?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And there's a tricky thing too about dating over time, which is that like what people are trying to do as they date is,

And this even goes, in your 30s, you get a divorce or two.

This is all part of the process, is that each next relationship is a little different than the one that came before, but it's also going to have some similarities.

It's actually very challenging to know, how can I be a new person in this relationship that's going to make this one work and not fall into the same pitfalls of the prior relationship?

It's a tricky dance,

Because there are some things that you were doing in that prior relationship that actually worked well and you should do those again.

And there are other things that you should totally scrap and go in a different direction.

And of course, all of this ends up being a dyadic give and take with another person.