Dr Paul Eastwick

I don't encode it as flirting.

And I certainly wouldn't care if they were because they seem less appealing to me than they would if I were single.

It's this really critical bias that people have.

And look, I often talk about this like it's a good thing, OK, that we need that to sustain our relationships because relationships are hard and there often are temptations out there.

And so if we didn't have these biases, it would be the horror show of of always feeling like you're trading up.

But luckily, we got these biases that tend to keep relationships moving.

OK, so.

But at the same time, sometimes relationships are actually toxic.

They're actually bad for people.

And this also explains why it can be really hard for people to snap out of this, why it can be really hard for people to see that they should probably get out of this relationship and look for something better because they've got these biases in place.

So it really does cut both ways.

It's really important that we have these biases for sustaining our relationships, but sometimes they make relationships like last longer than they should.

Yeah, it's a good question.

I think we're definitely, we're creatures that attach, right?

Like, I'm very careful in the book not to talk about monogamy, right?

Having one sex partner, because I don't, I think that's, it's like a little bit of a distraction.

So we're creatures who attach and we form attachment bonds.

Okay.

When it comes to sex specifically, I'd describe us as serial monogamists in the sense that we often move from partner to partner.

I think you can design a system that allows for attachments between people and also allows sex with multiple people, right?