Dr Paul Eastwick

We have some data that can speak to this.

And what I can tell you is that when you look at the trajectory of relationships that will become short-term or long-term, and I think this is how I like to think about short-term, long-term.

Short-term is, I liked you enough to hook up, but that was kind of it.

Versus long-term is like, I liked you enough to hook up and also please stay for breakfast because you're great and I love hanging out with you.

So when you line those things up,

The first like, you know, several events that happen, I meet you, I talk, maybe I meet your friends, we hang out one-on-one, even through like the first like hookup, make out, even first sexual experience,

boy, do those trajectories look similar.

People don't necessarily know where this thing is going.

And what we actually find, this doesn't get to your timeframe hypothesis exactly, but what we do see is that if you look at first sex,

The first sexual experience people rate as far more positively in relationships that become long-term than relationships that become short-term.

As if the good sex catapults relationships even higher, catapults them into the long-term.

The short-term relationships are the ones that are kind of like, eh.

There wasn't compatibility there.

Yes.

Now, what I love about all of this is that like it or not, through this conversation, I think I've got you thinking like a relationship scientist.

Not that you have dropped your evolutionary bona fides.

But you're thinking about, okay, I want to see these two people meeting and interacting on multiple occasions and seeing how these different behaviors and these different features affect what happens.

That is how a relationship psychologist thinks.

Show me these two people together.

Let's try to follow them over time and we'll see what happens.