The Social Connection Chronicles

USA Today ran a piece on dating trends hitting new lows, with five terms in it that were new to us. We went through all five and disagreed with the article on at least one.

Throning is dating someone to borrow their social status, which we agree is a bad idea but doesn't strike me as new. People have married upward for centuries. What's new is that the status being borrowed is a follower count.

Shreking is dating someone you're not attracted to on the theory that they'll treat you better. The logic fails on its own terms, and I explain why: if the premise is that attractive people are careless because they have options, then the people you're switching to have spent years being rejected, and some of them are carrying that. You've changed which pool you're shopping in, not whether the pool has a problem. This leads into the part of the episode I care most about, which is why men are so angry about online dating and why aiming that anger at women is both wrong and useless.

Banksying is quietly withdrawing from a partner before ending it. I'll defend half of this one. A breakup that arrives with no warning maximises the damage, and adults handle divorces with months of notice all the time. What I object to is doing the withdrawing in secret so your partner is still blindsided at the end.

Then zip coding, setting your dating app radius so tight you only meet neighbours, and monkey barring, lining up your next partner before ending the current one.

Links referenced in this episode:

• coachJohnbush.com
• ssm.coachjohnbush.com
• Social Connection Chronicles on Instagram

Five things worth noticing in the first few months with someone, before you're in deep enough that noticing gets harder.

We start with the one that does the most damage: a partner who won't take responsibility for anything. I make the case that the healthiest version runs the other way, with both people defaulting to "I could have handled that better," because two people like that never build resentment against each other.

Then words that don't match actions, which is really a problem of expectations. If you tell a partner what you need and they say they'll work on it when they have no intention of doing so, you'll wait years for something that was never coming. I'd rather be told plainly that it's never going to happen, so I can decide what I want to do about it.

After that, needing constant validation from outside the relationship, avoiding conflict by walking away from it half-finished, and rushing intimacy, including where the difference sits between love bombing and somebody who genuinely falls fast. Robert tells the story of how his grandparents got engaged on the fifth date and stayed married sixty-seven years.

We finish on why having hundreds of options makes people less happy rather than more, and why your brain was never built to pick a partner from five hundred applicants.

Links referenced in this episode:

• ssm.coachJohnBush.com

Most advice for social anxiety comes down to going out and talking to strangers, which is useless if that's the thing you can't do. This episode is about what the first step actually looks like when the obvious one is out of reach.

I go through why social anxiety feels worse than it is, since nearly everyone in the room is too busy worrying about themselves to be watching you, and why people who were always naturally good with other people tend to make poor teachers of it. I explain how I built the exercise list in my course so that nobody says a word to anyone until step five, and I walk through the eye contact drill in full, which is the one you can practice a hundred times in an afternoon without anybody noticing.

My co-host Robert came at it from the other direction. He was fearless at twenty and finds it hard now, so he can describe both sides, which most people can't.

We finish on the four approaches worth knowing about: gradual exposure, cognitive behavioral therapy, social skills training, and medication.

Links referenced in this episode:

• coachjohnbush.com
• ssm.coachjohnbush.com