- Here in London, we're going
to Westminster Abbey, that's Parliament
and I was reading a book, because it's 2017,
about, well I was thinking on New Year's resolutions
and then I thought of the subject of love
because for the New Year's
a lot of people get lonely.
I think the most suicides, the most breakups,
are all in December.
Now we're coming into the New Year.
I was in London for New Year's,
that's Big Ben over there,
Westminster Abbey, that's the church
where all the kings and the queens,
I think we can cross right here,
kings and queens are crowned.
Anyway, so I'm reading this book by,
or today's book of the day, Richard Sternberg.
He's a professor, think he was at Yale,
now he's at Cornell or something.
He came up with this theory that's really fascinating
called Love Triangle Theory, so if you wanna know
why relationships a lot of times
in the modern world fall apart,
why 50 plus percentage of marriages end in divorce,
this book tries to explain it.
I thought it was interesting, so Triangle Theory,
he came up with at the beginning
of his career, which is, is that it right there?
- What?
- Elizabeth is from Norway.
She's half American.
Dana, are you having fun?
- I'm having a lot of fun.
- Rome.
- I'm cold man, I'm just cold.
- (Chuckles) Rome's freezing.
Triangle Theory says there's intimacy,
passion, and commitment, and he has a whole system
of consummate love, companionative love,
fatuous love, but then years later in his career,
he realized or he thought there's a more complete theory.
His first theory he thought didn't explain it all
and he came up with this theory
called Love as a Story and he said there's 26 main stories
that people subconsciously act out.
It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They're things like horror story,
war story, garden story, travel story,
there's one called the police story, government story.
Each one's a metaphor for how people act
and I can sum up this whole book,
the reason people get divorced,
the reason people break up,
especially in the modern world
where you have more choice is that,
never date somebody who doesn't
have the same subconscious story as you.
That's the number one predictor
of failure in a relationship.
I think this applies to business too.
When you got different stories.
There's, for example, the fantasy story.
Some people think that love is a fantasy,
like Cinderella story.
You were actually just talking about this.
- Yes I was.
- And then there's other people
that have what's called the garden theory
which they think you have to cultivate love,
so somebody with a fantasy story
is dating somebody with a garden story,
they won't get along because the fantasy story person
will be like, why isn't everything perfect,
and the garden story's going,
well we gotta work on it, so they'll end up
over time basically naturally separating
or naturally feeling, what happens he says,
going back to Triangle Theory,
is intimacy drops because people don't feel connected.
You really have to find, he actually has,
I'll put a link below.
He has a link to a questionnaire,
you can try to answer these questions
and figure out which of the 26 stories you have.
I was trying to do mine, there's one called
the art story, where you see love as art,
there's one called the collector,
I thought that was interesting,
where sometimes people date people
just because they fit check boxes.
They don't really like them,
but they got the right job,
or they have the right look,
but there's not really that connection, you know.
You should take that test, I'll put the link,
it's on Richard J. Sternberg's blog,
actually it's on Psychology Today,
and you answer 20 questions, you try to figure out
which of those stories are yours.
One thing's interesting, most people have
more than one story.
You get them from childhood, usually you act out the story,
for example, the horror story is part of why women
stay in relationships that have domestic violence,
because their story is that's what love is like,
so they stay in that cycle
of somebody hitting them or beating them up
because that's their conception of love.
Obviously, it's not healthy, and he talks a little bit
in the book about how you can try
to change your love story
if you got the wrong love story.
Here's Westminster Abbey, here we go.
It's kinda cool, that's a cool church,
you can actually go to church here.
Let's go inside.
Oh no, this is Saint Margaret's.
No, this is the church, this is part of it.
Here we go.
Yeah, history here, this thing was built, what year?
- 1523
- She's got English major - Yeah
- English history major.
All these people, what percentage of people
have healthy relationships?
This book, I think statistically
it's only about one in five relationships,
maybe 20% that are actually thriving.
It's kinda cool, isn't it,
a lot of people got married in there.
I wonder what percentage of them were happy marriages.
What do you think's your love story?
Take the quiz and then come back and leave a comment.
I think mine's a combination,
there's one called the teacher student one,
there's different classifications,
there's, what did he call it,
can't remember right now, it's a fairly complex system,
but I broke it down relatively simply for you.
There's asymmetrical, that's what I was gonna say,
so that's like a student teacher,
where one person takes on the role
of teaching the other person,
there's the victim one or addiction one.
Look at that.
Leave a comment, I thought it was interesting.
I hope in 2017 you have an amazing new year.
If you're not already in love, I hope you find love.
If you are in love, I hope you enhance
what you already got.