Relationships 102 - How To Find & Maintain A Happy Relationship - #036

**Jonny** (0:00)
When you said relationships, I imagined a galleon, because you went, are they on relation ships?

**Chris Williamson** (0:05)
Like, with a captain, like, yo ho. What's a relation?

**Jonny** (0:10)
Ship.

**Chris Williamson** (0:11)
What's a relationship?

**Jonny** (0:12)
Like a vessel that travels across the ocean.

**Yusef** (0:15)
But people have relations on them.

**Jonny** (0:16)
There's just loads of relations. So like uncles, aunts, dads, sisters, just all of them on there. But there's never the person that all those people relate to.

**Yusef** (0:27)
That needs to be the beginning of the podcast, I think. What is a relationship?

**Chris Williamson** (0:32)
Hi friends. Relationships 101 was one of our most popular episodes so far. I think it really resonated with a lot of people, which was pretty cool. I'd spent quite a bit of time thinking about a framework for how particularly girls can discern between good and bad potential partners. And today we are seeing the sequel, Return of the Relationship, as we try and delve into just how you set the tone correctly as you move into a relationship, how important truthfulness is, and a whole bunch of other principles of how to actually establish and maintain a successful relationship. I also want to give a massive shout out over the last couple of weeks, me and Video Guy Dean, Jonny and Yusef, Jordan and George and the rest of the guys that are helping me behind the scenes have really put our foot to the floor with uploading clips and extra bits on YouTube and through iTunes and Spotify and stuff. And the response has been fantastic. So thank you very much for that. Coming up soon, we have got the long-awaited super podcast, myself, Jon and Leon from The Lean Machines, Zach George and Sonny Webster sitting down to do a Q&A in a random restaurant in the middle of London. We've also got Life Hacks 106 And this week, I'm sitting down with Robin Hansen, the author of Elephant in the Brain. This guy is an absolute monster of an intellect, and I can't wait to hear what he's got to say. But for now, we're going to optimize some relationships and hopefully not get ourselves in too much trouble with our exes. Enjoy.
So, Relationships 102 Where did we leave off last time?

**Yusef** (2:35)
We talked about the initial phase of having met someone to beginning something.

**Chris Williamson** (2:43)
Something slightly more exclusive. Yeah. I think I'm gonna delve straight in. I don't know whether you two, because both of you are kind of like serial monogamists, right?
Ish, like at least in recent memory as well.

**Jonny** (2:59)
Certainly recently, yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:59)
Yeah, and I think for anyone who's listening, who's been used to being single and hasn't been in like a proper, proper relationship for a little while, you will know the no man's land of emotional turmoil that is seen somebody. I think that that is just an absolute barren wasteland of nothingness, meaningless. Like it is one step above having sex with, being friends with benefits and everything below being exclusive.

**Jonny** (3:28)
There's a bit of commitment, but no reward.

**Chris Williamson** (3:30)
So I think anyone who's seen somebody, unless it's mutually and absolutely transparently explained to both parties, just needs to give up on it now. You need to either step forward into a relationship or step back into having sex with other people as well, and I'll explain why.

**Yusef** (3:51)
You reminded me about the friends with benefits things, and David was talking about this too, that I think if you're just nice to someone who is a friend with a benefit, their assumption, because they're on the defensive, is like, whoa, don't fall in love with me now. And you're like, all right, let us have, I'm just being nice. But it's like the instant fear that the other person is becoming too attached.

**Chris Williamson** (4:18)
Yeah. So I think the reason that I don't like seeing somebody, and I can speak from personal experience on this, what you think you're getting when you start seeing somebody is all of the benefits of having a regular girlfriend or boyfriend with none of the, it's down the far side, make you drink enough to reach, with none of the disadvantages, with none of the justification for them to ask you where you've been or who you've been messaging or whatever. You want to be able to have your cake and eat it, and I think that people believe that that's- This is friends with benefits or this is seeing someone? No, this is seeing someone. I think friends with benefits, it just so quickly turns into seeing someone now. The way that you pull that back, the only way that you can do that and the only way you can fix it, is by being completely transparent about exactly what's going on and continuing to do it all the time. But what happens so much-