Wishing that your partner were more like you is just a form of egotism.

The biggest mistake that people make in dating is they look for their doppelganger.

They look for their clone.

You shouldn't look for your clone, you should look for your complement.

Why?

Because you'll be happier when you complete each other.

That's when people who complete each other, you find that very happy marriages often happen between an introvert and extrovert, if they learn to appreciate each other.

So it's not hammer and tongs all the time for the differences.

For example, one of the reasons that dating apps are so unsuccessful for giving people, you know, satisfactory dating experiences, people have more and more and more choice, but they're more likely to say they're not satisfied with the people they're dating and not attracted to the people that they're dating.

It's because they'll set up a dating profile saying, I vote this way, I like this music, I live here, I like these things, I want somebody with these preferences.

And they get somebody who's their sibling, which is, as my adult children will remind me, is not hot.

Difference is hot.

It's so true because I never would have said, I want someone that is really involved in spirituality and believes in things that you just can't see.

And it's funny because I never would have said that's what I wanted, but I absolutely love it.

She's actually pulled me into her world.

She's made me more spiritual.

She's made me believe in things I never would have believed before.

And she's completing me in that regard.

It's really great.

It's really great.

I mean, you've cracked the code in that way.

And finding all the ways that you're different and celebrating those particular differences is really key to a good relationship and not wishing the person were more like you.

This is very important that this is relationship killer.

Wishing that your partner were more like you is just a form of egotism.

Everyone tries to change their partner, don't they?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's interesting.

It's like there's the old axiom that women are frustrated because they thought they could change their husbands and they can't.

And husbands are frustrated because they thought their wives would never change and they do.

There is truth in that.

This idea in chapter four of your book of focusing less on yourself leads to happiness.

How can you prove that's the case?

One of the classic experiments is these guys at Northwestern is a fabulous social psychologist named Adam Waitz.

He's a really impressive and innovative social psychologist.

He did an experiment where he took the undergraduate students.

You always use the undergraduate pool at your university because they'll do literally anything for 20 bucks.

And he put them into three groups.

One had to do moral deeds.

They had to do random acts of kindness.

One had to do moral thoughts.

They had to sit and think beautiful thoughts about other people.

And one had to do sort of self-care things.

Go do something that really makes you feel good.

And they looked at their happiness over a series of weeks and they found that moral deeds were happier than moral thoughts and moral thoughts were happier than self-care.

That's what they found.

You know, I did research for years and years and years about happiness and charitable giving.

If you're lonely, the most important thing you can do is volunteer.

It just is.

If you give money away, statistically, you're more likely to make more money next year.

The reason is because you see yourself as an agent of positive change.

You're empowered when you're helping other people.

When you give love, you get love.

That's the bottom line is what it comes down to.

And so all of these experiments find kind of the same thing.

If you put two groups randomly selected of people, one group is playing board games and the other is helping, you know, sixth graders with their math.

The ones helping sixth graders with their math will have a mood boost for days afterward.

I mean, this is just helping other people.

Helps you not focus on the psychodrama inside Steve's head.

And it makes it so that life actually has a transcendent aspect to it.

You get perspective.

You get peace.

And furthermore, you get empirical confirmation that you are that person that you want to be.