The secret to lasting love | Eli J Finkel

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume.

Navigating romantic relationships amidst life's big decisions can be brutal. It's easy to find yourself in a bind. Do I choose me, or do I choose love? Maybe you've heard a friend vent about this, maybe you've felt it. Most likely, you've seen it play out in a rom-com.

Eli J. Finkel (0:30)

We see this assumption in the movie La La Land. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have a sparkling connection, and yet the relationship fails.

Elise Hu (0:40)

That's Eli Finkel, a psychologist and relationship expert who has spent decades studying what makes partnerships successful.

Eli J. Finkel (0:47)

Emma has this exciting opportunity overseas, and Ryan says, you got to give this everything you got. It's your dream.

But he tells her, I got to follow my own plan, stay here. This logic, as irrefutable as they find it, is flawed.

Elise Hu (1:05)

In his talk, Eli explains that investing in relationships doesn't mean divesting from yourself. In fact, he says this isn't the only popular dating myth we subscribe to. It's pretty easy to think of genuine compatibility as sharing hobbies, loving the same bands, watching the same shows.

But he also claims that genuine compatibility is so much more.

Eli J. Finkel (1:25)

It feels like we should be especially compatible with people who are more similar to us.

We aren't. What actually matters is something smaller and more profound.

Elise Hu (1:36)

And that small, profound thing may surprise you. At first, it seems trivial, but Eli says it's a secret ingredient to long-lasting, true-to-self relationships. We'll hear more right after a short break.

And now, our TED Talk of the day.

Eli J. Finkel (2:00)

Imagine you just died. You need to get your spouse a message that could save their life.

Here's the problem. The only person who can hear you is Whoopi Goldberg?

Yes, it's true. This is the plot of the movie Ghost. Patrick Swayze is trying to communicate with Demi Moore through a psychic. But imagine that's you.

What could you say in just a few urgent seconds that would convince your spouse it's really you? Patrick's first attempt fails. Tell her I love her. Too obvious. Too generic. But then he knows it's just one word, ditto. Because ditto was their secret code for I love you. Something that only made sense inside the private world the two of them had built together.

I think of that private world as a relationship's love motif. Just as a leitmotif is a recurring musical theme that identifies a character, a love motif is a recurring set of shared experiences and meanings that uniquely define a relationship. Your love motif includes the words that would pass your own version of the ditto test. But also your weird in-jokes, your distinctive moral code. It turns out love motifs matter a lot. I'm a psychological scientist who studied love for nearly 30 years. I wrote a book, The All or Nothing Marriage, to explain how the best relationships work. I co-host a podcast that analyzes romantic movies from the perspective of relationship science. It's called Love Factually. But it was only recently that I discovered just how important love motifs are. In fact, they matter more today than ever before because a love motif isn't just something you do.

It helps to define who you are.

These days, around much of the world, we feel increasingly responsible, obligated to be true to ourselves. And in almost any long-term relationship, you'll have moments where it feels like that pursuit of authenticity is at odds with your relationship commitment. How should we think about those moments? In the past, couples who got divorced felt ashamed for getting divorced. These days, it's increasingly the opposite. We feel shame for staying if it makes us feel like we're not authentic. But there's an assumption lurking here that in those moments, we struggle to be true to ourselves and true to our relationship at the same time. We see this assumption in the movie La La Land. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have a sparkling connection, and yet the relationship fails. Not because there's no love, not because they don't understand or support each other, but because in those me versus us moments, the relationship never gets a voice. Emma has this exciting opportunity overseas, and Ryan says, You got to give this everything you got. It's your dream. But he tells her, I got to follow my own plan. Stay here. This logic, as irrefutable as they find it, is flawed. That's not how authenticity actually works.

Before we unpack that, I'd like to call your attention to something kind of amazing that we often overlook. At the end of a dinner party with other couples, most of us feel lucky that the person we go home with is our own partner.