Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Libraries Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Blog Pricing
Podcast Image

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks

How to Stop Dating the Wrong Person

08 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 18.461 Arthur Brooks

Every romantic comedy ever made, practically, has the same premise. There's these two people who really like each other, but they're terrible for each other, they're not suitable for each other, but through a series of errors and misunderstandings, et cetera, et cetera, they suffer a lot, but then make it work, and they live happily ever after. I mean, that's kind of the whole premise.

0

18.481 - 27.451 Arthur Brooks

But that's actually a pretty dumb premise. Maybe you have found that you don't date the right person, that you date the wrong person, maybe over and over and over again.

0

Chapter 2: Why do people date the wrong person repeatedly?

27.511 - 48.212 Arthur Brooks

How come? What's going on? I'm all about complimentary. I love puzzle pieces that fit together in relationships. What I don't like are the ones where people are actually terrible for each other and trying to make something work that actually shouldn't work. What is today's episode? The three reasons you might be dating the wrong person over and over again and the seven ways to stop doing that.

0

54.537 - 57.039 Arthur Brooks

Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks.

0

Chapter 3: How do addiction issues affect dating choices?

57.6 - 76.856 Arthur Brooks

This is a show about love and happiness. And I'm going to talk, especially today, about love, romantic love and the problems in it. Now, this is a show that we run every single week about some of the biggest questions that people have ever asked me and how behavioral science and even some neuroscience can illuminate the answers to these questions.

0

Chapter 4: What is the Dark Triad and its impact on attraction?

76.896 - 84.342 Arthur Brooks

I hope you're finding it interesting and useful. For those of you who've been watching this show from the very beginning, thank you for staying with it. Thank you for sharing it with other people.

0

84.322 - 110.245 Arthur Brooks

whole idea is to lift other people up i want to help equip you to become happiness professors just like me in your own way in your own life and and sharing this uh this show with other people is a good way to do that so i appreciate that an awful lot if you like the show um please do let us know what it is that you like or if it's something you don't like let us know that as well we really like the feedback it's really important to us so do write in at officehours arthurbrooks.com that's the

0

110.225 - 132.09 Arthur Brooks

the email for the show itself um and if you want more content like this you can get it by subscribing to my newsletter that's at my website arthurbrooks.com newsletter and if you actually want to go a little bit deeper we're actually running a series of retreats And you can find out about in-person events where you can be talking about these things with other people and indeed with me.

0

132.33 - 135.958 Arthur Brooks

So go to retreats.arthurbrooks.com.

0

Chapter 5: Why do we ignore red flags in relationships?

135.978 - 144.517 Arthur Brooks

As always, please like and subscribe and leave any comments that you've got any place that you're watching or listening to this show. You're not broken.

0

Chapter 6: What are effective dating strategies to avoid past mistakes?

145.318 - 152.866 Arthur Brooks

You're meaning starved. I talk to people all the time who are, by any external measure, successful. They've built careers.

0

Chapter 7: How can expanding your time horizon improve dating success?

153.167 - 155.309 Arthur Brooks

They have families. They've checked the boxes.

0

Chapter 8: What should you focus on instead of looks and status when dating?

155.87 - 181.843 Arthur Brooks

And yet, something feels off. Life feels thin. Like you're going through the motions. Like you're watching yourself from the outside. And here's what I want you to know. That feeling is not a personal failing. It's not ingratitude. It's not something wrong with you. It's a meaning problem. And it's an epidemic. The modern world is extraordinary at giving us comfort, achievement, and distraction.

0

182.504 - 198.783 Arthur Brooks

It's terrible at giving us meaning. And no amount of success will fix that. I've seen it in my research, and I've seen it in my own life. That's exactly what we work on at MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, in a program I've developed called The Meaning of Your Life.

0

199.705 - 211.748 Unknown

It's not a lecture. It's not a quick fix. It's several days of real work in a small group on the questions that actually matter. If what I'm describing sounds familiar, I hope you'll come take a look.

0

216.537 - 234.651 Arthur Brooks

As I mentioned at the outset, today's episode is about falling in love and staying in love. That is the number one topic when I teach my class to my graduate students at the Harvard Business School. I have a unit, a module in the class called falling in love and staying in love. And quite frankly, they would keep me on that topic the whole semester. It's utterly baffling. It's very mysterious.

0

234.671 - 254.005 Arthur Brooks

Such a complex thing seems so hard and yet so unbelievably important. for most people so they can live a happy life. And it seems like it's getting harder in modern life, which indeed it is. And I've talked about that in all the episodes that I did about the meaning of life and the overuse of technology. I talked about how it's just it's a difficult thing.

254.065 - 267.086 Arthur Brooks

I'm not going to complain about technology today, about how the way that we disintermediate our relationships technologically, how bad that is for actually falling in love or making friends or anything. I've done that ad nauseum. I will do that in the future.

267.126 - 285.648 Arthur Brooks

Today, I want to talk about more eternal problems that people have, some of the chronic issues that people have in finding the right person. Maybe you have found that you don't date the right person, that you date the wrong person, maybe over and over and over again. How come? What's going on? Well, I'm going to give you some information that you can actually use.

285.688 - 304.132 Arthur Brooks

If I do my job, you're going to see yourself. You're going to be able to break out of patterns because I'm also going to give you a whole bunch of solutions. What is today's episode? The three reasons you might be dating the wrong person over and over again and the seven ways to stop doing that. It's a very practical episode. So do feedback.

304.192 - 324.365 Arthur Brooks

Let me know how you think about this topic and do you want me to talk about this more on the show? I really find this interesting and part of the reason is because I want you to find love if you haven't found it yet so that you can live a happier life. I'm a big fan of relationships that really work. Now, let's begin with a little bit of data.

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.