We return, after a short break so I could wrap up professor-ing Cognitive Psychology. Thank you for the grace. And if you’re concerned that the youth are getting dumber… yeah.
But let’s acknowledge all they’re going through, how they were raised terribly in a digital social bubble, and call it a symptom of the times.
And with that, a definition central to this show:
A dystopian world is a nightmarish, oppressive society where life is terrible, often controlled by a totalitarian government or powerful force that suppresses freedom, individuality, and happiness, serving as the opposite of a perfect, ideal world (utopia). From the Greek dys- meaning "bad" and topos meaning "place,” it is a “bad place” where citizens live in fear, dehumanized and controlled through propaganda, surveillance, or technology.
Yeah! Life, in 2026!
Half of us are living in it and maybe have been seeing it escalate for years.
Half of us… same, but don’t acknowledge it.
And, as we’re here to examine in this series… what does that mean for our dating lives?
For starters, in my estimations 20-30% of men in the apps claim they’re planning to buy some land and start homesteading. Could be a side effect of where I live and who I scroll down on, but it’s notable.
And follow up notable: no, if you ask, they aren’t doing any of this. But they’ve seen Doomsday Preppers and chicken Instagram, and this is an edgy way to demonstrate a progressive attitude. We’ll hit this point again later.
But besides this fantasy of “I go hiking sometimes” boys, what else might be going on in response to dystopian surroundings?
Well, I recently found this article:
Meaning-Making With Romantic Partners: Shared Reality Promotes Meaning in Life by Reducing Uncertainty
Where they say
We propose that, although deeply personal, meaning is facilitated by interpersonal processes. Namely, we theorize that experiencing a sense of shared reality with a close partner (i.e., perceiving an overlap in inner states about the world in general) reduces uncertainty about one’s environment, which in turn promotes meaning in work and life.
In the current research, we test this hypothesis across five mixed-method studies (e.g., longitudinal, experimental. …This work suggests that shared reality with close partners has real-world benefits, reducing uncertainty and promoting meaning. In addition, we show that experimentally heightening shared reality, by reducing uncertainty, can promote a greater sense of meaning in life.
This made a lot of things fall into place for me, thinking of being in a close relationship versus single.
Even at a basic responsibility level during positive times, having a (functional) romantic partner is like splitting the mental work of staying alive by 50%. Someone else is aware of deadlines, problems, plans. It’s like having another set of eyes and brain cells, which hopefully result in another set of busy hands. It’s a huge relief.
When folks suggest it must be easy to live alone, I want to shake them. Yes, there’s only one person to care for. And also, there’s only one person to provide any care, for everything. To meet any needs. The responsibility and weight of it is larger than one might think.
And that’s just on a simple physical survival basis.
Now let’s consider how it’s mindset relieving, too.
Ever see something and need to turn to the person next to you to confirm “that just happened, right?”
Right.
Ever feel something and reach out to a trusted loved one to ask “does that seem appropriate to you? Could you imagine feeling that too?”
Right.
Ever have a thought – an inkling, a theory, a big or small idea – and go to your relationship bestie to say “Does that make sense or am I having a stroke right now?”
Right.
Now, if you have to, imagine the usefulness of that, every moment, of every day, when the mind is having a hard time believing what it’s seeing in the headlines or making sense of the nonsensical chaos, through means of a dedicated life partner who shares the same outlook, observations, and assessments as you.
So, you never have to wonder. You never have to feel alone, foolish, or unsure. You’re both in this reality – committed to it, through each other – and it can lay unpleasant brain behaviors to rest.
A partner has the amazing capacity to act as a rumination ender. If someone confirms what you’re thinking or validates what you’re feeling, what happens? The mind can stop cycling. The emotions can settle instead of being questioned. A sense of definitive understanding and correctness can be obtained.
We cannot underestimate how important that is. How many mental and emotional issues that, alone, neutralizes. You don’t have to have high self-esteem, or any self-esteem, or even a sense of self, if you have other-esteem and a sense of trust for your partner. They act like a proxy, filling in.
And this adds a sense of safety to every second of being alive. When otherwise you would be trapped with your insecure, freaked out, spun out, exhausted and beleaguered mind. It erases so many fear spirals and second guessings. It opens up headspace and allows emotions to take place. It gives you energy to focus on things you actually enjoy, not only the terrors.
An uncertain mind is a scared mind. A hypervigilant and insecure mind that can’t relax.
A mind, falsely or accurately certain, does not suffer this fate.
So it makes a person wonder…
If, as the research states, intimate relationship calms us down through creating a shared reality that reduces uncertainty, a preferred state for the head because it allows for release and rest, through a shared responsibility holder and an illusion of correctness…
Then in times of crippling uncertainty are we more likely to try to relate?
To partner up?
To engage in intimate relationship for not only the creature comforts of it, but the cognitive fuzzy blanket of having a perception partner and therefore doubting our views and responses to reality less?
During tumult, such as we find ourselves in via this dystopia, do we try to kickstart and DTR to confirm our experience is real and have a processing person by our side, in it?
…
And might that drive be amplified when we don’t have other shared reality options, such as close friends, family, or a similarly minded social environment? As many of us experience.
….
And might that motivation for someone to rely on, rapidly (as the news is worse all the time and the outlook for needing to homestead to survive increases) promote chemical and survival-based relationships rather than ones built by connection?
…
And could this be something that we need to watch out for as bombs are falling? So, we don’t wind up in situations that are temporarily comforting but long-term terrible? Perhaps even deepening the dystopia as we become chained (mentally, emotionally, legally)?
….
And also, a special Q for the CPTSD crew. Could this be something to consider across a lifetime, since for some of us, real and metaphorical bombs have been falling since the day we were born?
Some might say that they’ve ALWAYS been dating in dystopia. But it was more personal than planetary before.
How many of our worst romantic relationships and otherwise were caused by the instinct to partner up for a sense of mental clarity – for a shared experience and analysis of reality – when times were the worst and we couldn’t trust what we were seeing, or ourselves, to get through it?
…
This article caused some thoughts.
And here they are.
First of all, let’s think about “shared reality” couples. They’ve always existed.
Under normal “uncertain” conditions, some common ones are:
- Hating or villainizing a particular person or group together; family members, ex-friends, ex-lovers, neighbors. It feels so good to shit talk them, internet or otherwise stalk them, plot or pray against them, dream of the day you will behold their demise. And it tells a brain “you’re so right, they are awful.” So it never has to reflect on itself. Please see my favorite (least favorite) example: the bitter divorcee in a new relationship, where the main focus becomes trying to ruin the ex-spouse. Especially if shared children are involved. Seems like they live in their own little spiteful world, doesn’t it? But to them all the negativity feels positive, because they’re so deeply in it together.
- Adhering to strict lifestyle rules; religious, health, hobby, activity. What makes a diet or exercise or personal interest more solid? Having someone around you who becomes equally or more obsessed with it. Everything is validated, there’s no need to compromise, every moment can be dedicated to the cause. And when joining up with OTHER people who are equally interested, it becomes a separate niche population. A clique, where, as we learned about peer pressure, requires everyone to think and behave the same.
- Immersing in fantasy escape; Disney adults, superhero nerds, anime folk, cosplayers, gaming couples. A partner in crime is available for validating that it’s A-OK to stare at a screen, take expensive themed vacations, ignore the real world problems that are distasteful… and all the people who (sorry) think you’re losers because they don’t get it. Get rejected from the real world together? Create a fake one together and forget about it.
These are just a few obvious examples. Let your mind wander.
We can probably all think of a couple or friend pairing or family that this applies to. How do we describe them? They’re kinda weird, they’re characters, they’re cool or fine or good people if you overlook (blank). If you don’t have to talk to them about (blank).
And we can probably all agree that doing so can be quite difficult, due to their focused dedication to their chosen reality. It’s not just a piece of them, it tends to be a dominating force.
Often each shared reality attentional suck, group opinion, or lifestyle isn’t just a characteristic of the relationship, but a key component that supports it. Living in a world, perhaps influenced by but apart from the rest of the world, due to attention, communication topic, behavioral pattern.
Like creating an intimate pocket – a sweet little pea pod for two - separate from the rest of the population, with obsession and devotion to the cause.
And it makes some of them cagey. The reality pocket that’s shared is more like a kennel they’ve crafted together, keeping them separate from everyone else - creating distance, causing suspicion or outright aggression if they egg each other on as such.
But from the inside? Even the anger and isolation are comforting. Because they re-confirm the shared reality. Which reconfirms the utility and knowledge of the mind, to the mind.
If you’ve ever had a mindset of “us against the world!” you may also have experienced this. “Fuck everyone, we’re right, and I’ll burn every bridge because I know it’s true!”
If you’ve ever had a romantic fantasy about the idea… well… maybe reconsider the health and lasting implications of a relationship that’s created to establish thicker boundaries between you two, and everyone else on earth.
And… also consider how this “regular relationship problem” of choosing a partner for our own confirmational bias might become extreme as the uncertain world conditions do. How it already has.
Of course, we’re speaking to shared reality gone batshit MAGA couples.
But let’s also not discount the exact opposite (and therefore the same). Anti-MAGA couples. Doomsdayers. Internet social justice warriors. The response to the oppression can be as addicting in a shared mental-emotional space as being a part of the aggression.
Right now, reality is a bit much. And the shared realities that it can generate are radical.
Let’s talk about how we’re at an increased risk of falling into delusional relationship in this unstable dystopian world promoting violent tribalism and extreme opinion, all around.
Let’s talk about the dangers for creating false reality through means of modern dating:
We self-select (familiar, same views) with apps
I promise we’ll move away from this point, but if we’re normally seeking someone who’s similar to us and in times of uncertainty, especially, also holds a similar world view… who is that usually?
Our family members. Our friends. Our communities.
Things that have all been dissolved or loosened in the past decade, as a sign, symptom and byproduct of the societal downfall.
Doesn’t this set us up for attraction and resulting relationship nightmares where we accidentally choose someone as neurally comforting as mom or dad or bestie for dealing with the end of the world, without knowing more about them?
We’ve learned that’s who we’re attracted to in physical ways. Now apply that to ideas. We want someone who sees news events the way that we do. We’ve grown so polarized that it feels dangerous, gross, and repulsive – like dealing with another species – to consider otherwise.
Mismatching worldviews haven’t been overcome by love in the last ten years or so. A similar political, social, and ecological philosophy has been a requirement for most of us. And as things deepen and get more frightening, that’s only going to intensify.
No one has time or want to debate events as boots hit the ground. We want to be on the same page. We need to be, it could be the difference between surviving.
So, we only choose people who have roughly the same perceptions as we do. Which is, in most cases, expressly stated right on a dating profile. If not, will almost unquestionably become a point of conversation on a first date.
And as we choose someone who validates our already established outlooks, we feel an amplified sense of unity with them. An artificial sense of belonging with them.
Something that would be useful, maybe, if it wasn’t split down the middle. If 50% of people didn’t fall into the same category….
But with the current divide, depending on where you live, roughly 1 in 2 people probably speaks to your mind in a security-instilling way that bypasses logic, tickles your survival instinct, and gives the impression that this is a safe and viable love partner.
An immediate 50% chance of developing love interest isn’t a very good filter for finding real compatibility. It’s a dangerous potential relationship accelerator that’s rather indiscriminate.
And when danger really feels like it’s upon us, this will only be an ever-more influential subconscious tether to people who might otherwise be living nightmares, but at least they agree (or say that they do now) that nazis are bad.
So they must be good people like we are, right? At least it’s a step in the right direction, we think, towards a relationship we’re being shuttled into by our validation- and safety-hungry mind.
And then we go looking for evidence to make it true. And they know that.
Next issue:
We start it online
Assuming this is taking place on a dating app, as most of us are using for meeting people - all the information about this person initially comes from a platform where they have to spit out the most acceptable cultural opinions for friends and likes and shares.
Yes, that profile says Liberal or Progressive. I guess it could say Conservative, but I’ll be honest, you won’t find a shared reality with me if that’s what you’re looking for.
But if it didn’t say that… if they didn’t politically identify in this way…
Well, consider that they might not match with their preferred “type” of person. Or they might limit their potential drastically, depending on the area they live in.
Metropolitan men were forced to say they were feminists and allies in the last 20 years if they wanted to get laid. That doesn’t mean they understand anything they state they support.
Like the homies promising homesteads, beware the lure of the performative profile. Consider what social utility it has. How many matches have been lubed by this identifier.
And if we did or didn’t meet on an app, early relationships are still marred by checking out social media to get an idea of who this person is (stated reason) whilst fervently emotionally masturbating (real reason for scrolling through 6 years of post history).
So, we leap into the societally rewarded realities and personalities that they lead with. The ones that benefit them the most. The ones that have greased wheels up until this point.
Which says absolutely nothing about who they’ll decide to be when different wheels are being delivered different lubricant. When the ole progressive wheels are no longer being oiled.
But, now, we might decide we like someone because they’ve been a feminist, liberal, minority ally with all the associated traits one would assume. This confirms our view. This makes us feel safe, by being in the presence of a non-threat and by having our thoughts reflected back at us…. Without considering the reward and reinforcement they’ve received for cultivating and sharing these opinions. Which might be far more powerful than the thoughts or beliefs behind the statements.
Just because a person states that they have your same world view and has some pics from Pride… it does not mean that the understanding goes deep or is authentic to them or is indicative of their personality.
So although it might feel relieving, self-supporting, and courage-enhancing to a human mind to “gang up” together in an unsafe time, the relationship being established isn’t necessarily based on similar moral compasses. It’s probably based on cultural pressures. Which will be on full display if you’re trying to get to know them on the internet, without hearing the things they mutter under breath day by day.
And then, the next confirmational danger comes:
We keep it textual
We conduct relationships on phones and computers, even after they’re established.
And you know my stance: words are the mechanisms of lies and illusions. Not purposely, necessarily. But innately.
The mind has to have a story. About everything. That story is often false. The acknowledged variables add up, there is logic to it, but the conclusion or the unacknowledged variables might not fit.
Our stories are our best effort at comprehension. And often we have to twist things around to make them fit, because comprehension – making meaning - isn’t always possible from our small human outlooks.
Then the limitations of words create more falsities. We only have the language and vocabulary we’ve been taught, with the thinking and expressing patterns we’ve developed, which only work if the other person has been similarly trained.
So when we text each other rather than being with each other, which is fundamentally required for most of us and the primary preferred mode of communication for another large swath… we lie to each other. And we, together, create a new, fake, reality, through those lies.
I think most of us have probably experienced this, right? There’s dealing with real life… and then there’s the oasis of fucking around on a phone, only engaging with what each person WANTS to. What the partnership centers around. Excluding all the surrounding unpleasantries or using them for conversational fodder which also feels exciting.
And none of what’s stated by the fingers has to genuinely reflect what’s happening inside the being. The more important part is keeping the conversation going. Passing the vibe check over and over.
My point is, we can’t trust the version of reality that’s created in digital words between people.
Or in-person words, really… but at least those provide a lot more context, clues, and connections to material reality.
Screens are entirely distinct from that space.
So, so far, taken together:
We might be magnetically drawn to someone for their capacity to confirm our world view, go searching for more information online and find what we wanted to because we’re in the same culture where – in part – social and romantic reinforcement like the prospect of matching with someone on a dating app has shaped their stated philosophy, at which point we’ll likely emotionally masturbate viciously on what-ifs and sentiments of feeling safe (a fundamental need that allows our other masturbatory feelings to flow), and then we might keep the relationship mostly digital due to necessity and communication comfort, deepening the felt connection and sense of security, where none may actually exist or exist for long once societal norms start shifting.
Landing ourselves in a shitty relationship that DOES become a shared, separate reality.
Of living hell.
That no one else can possibly understand from the outside.
…. Just the way that we (accidentally) crafted it to be, from the inside.
Like building our own jail cell.
We end up tethered to someone who isn’t the person we needed them to be, who doesn’t necessarily see things our way on any significant level, and become unable to disconnect from them due to all the events that unfold in a relationship that forms too quickly and addictingly.
But let’s not stop with this worst case scenario:
Even if we DO REALLY AGREE?!
If we are on the same page, with the same understanding of life and moral judgments?
We’re still fucking ourselves over.
Because together we’re only seeing our side of the events. We’re only discussing our shared views to reduce our uncertainty and have a more comfortable brain space.
In doing so, creating a limiting, preferred, life experience, where everything we think is all there IS to think. Everything we feel IS the way to feel.
And it’s comfortably removed from opposition. Other voices can’t interfere.
And the escape is available 24/7 in our pocket robots, so we don’t have to engage with the full breadth of everything and everyone else, we always have a route back to validation of our own mindset.
…
When two thinkbags come together to validate each other’s perspective? We’re creating a dangerous trap of other-confirmational bias, because the other implicitly knows that agreement is part of the relationship workings.
We agree. Then we sway each other into agreeing on more.
In doing so, establishing a small, separate world, together, from the vast one that surrounds us.
Maybe consensus reality is the jumping off point. But the shared perspective can take over and obfuscate or skew it.
Coupled doomsday preppers? Ignorant Christian nationalists? “It’ll all be fine, nothing ever changes” wishful thinkers?
Live in chosen realities, together. Delusions or extreme versions of what could be. Reactions to the world, that they validate to each other, since the moment that they matched by self-selecting from the crowd. Through choosing someone to support the already-existing perspective, for the comfort of the mind. And then through the dynamics of social reinforcement.
So that the relationship has its own perspective, which must be agreed to. And its own gravity. Which probably tugs harder than what’s available these days to hold us onto earth in material reality.
And the problems don’t stop there…
Let’s think about how dope and behavioral science play in.
Behavioral socializing
A conversation in person or online isn’t a behavior.
Every word, grunt, sigh, eyeroll, head nod, response or non-response… is a behavior. Meaning communication is composed of infinite information gathering and behavioral conditioning opportunities.
With every statement made, the other person either reinforces or punishes the assertion. The opinion. The view of reality.
Do they smile, nod, grimly agree, scoff and look the other direction, say nothing, change the topic?
This information tells us who they are. As we tell them what we expect them to be. How we anticipate and desire for them to respond. What opinion we wish for them to have.
And in this way, we find out very quickly who agrees with us (or will pretend to agree with us). Through all those micro opportunities to gather evidence.
And the other person is trained to agree with us for maximum benefit to both. Through all those micro opportunities to let them know that we approve of how they approve of our perspective… or not.
It’s a two-way conditioning experience, with each party subtly or aggressively influencing the other.
This causes a perspective to become shared.
Whittled down. Focused. Simplified.
And extremized.
All because we’re being rewarded by? I hate to keep saying it, the word has lost its meaning…
Dope.
Which functions to do what?
To tell us we’re on the right path. We’re headed in the right direction.
So that the creation of a shared reality feels correct on top of bringing senses of security and clarity.
Meaning.
Bringing it alllllllllll together.
We limit ourselves as we create fake codependence.
While dating in dystopia, when the mind is belabored, scared, uncertain, due to the world around it… grasping at straws for security or a sense of understanding…
We’re unlikely to mentally expand in relationship.
More likely to cognitively contract, through repeat interactions.
And this contraction inherently? Brings us closer together in a codependent, enmeshed, way, that we don’t estimate we can exit… because of the fake world we’ve cultivated together.
At the expense of living in the real world, with others.
Leaving the ship feels impossible. The mind has no strongholds without the other person. and the individual would be forced to plunge back into an uncertain experience, of which particular paranoid thoughts have probably been dominating in our modern days.
It’s like leaving a rocketship, not a relationship, and being forced onto an unknown planet. One in which there’s no brain partnership to make sense of the new landscape.
When presented with dystopia – all the unknowns, oppressions, and terrors of it - the mind chooses and re-chooses its dopia. A shared reality with another person that rewards it through mental and emotional relief. For as long as it can.
Until someone busts their way in or one of you busts your way out of the two party prison.
Like we said, the pocket – the bombshelter – that we create together, innately means we’re apart from the herd. When we hunker down, we may feel safer, but we’re living underground, walled off from society.
We’ve specialized our world view, made a highly specific artisanal version through choosing someone like us, keeping our relationship digitally sequestered from physical reality, and imbibe in the infinite conversational doping reinforcement opportunities that move opinions closer and closer together. Then we’ve enjoyed and relied on the false security of a mind believing it is right, because another mind says so.
At no point inspiring the brain of either party to want to confront all the chaos it believes exists, outside, alone.
And to some degree, with the mind probably realizing that without this other person… its beliefs aren’t so immovable, either. They aren’t so solid or bulletproof, if discussed outside the echo chamber.
Interacting with other people probably doesn’t bring the same highly redundant one-note perspective or myriad chemical rewards. It brings more uncertainty and a sense of alienation over the extreme ideas that have been alchemized and self-through-other-validated minute by minute, day by day, for months or years.
To leave the relationship would not only thrust a person back into a difficult brain state, but it would also be lonely and erase the option of self-validating whenever desired, through means of another person acting as a mental proxy…
And it also might require reprocessing every aspect of that shared worldview, in light of the new observations and conversations that reflect a different reality.
The one that was “opted out of” in the name of the preferred, shared, self-stimulating and delusionally safe feeling, one.
Wrap
So, DnDers…
Be warned.
In this way, these times are potent for:
- hooking up quickly with someone very similar to ourselves, our families, or our prior relationship comrades…
- losing or extremizing our authentic opinions through nonstop communication reinforcements and punishments, often conveniently relegated to digital means so that those conversations are extensions of our algorithms; these relationships are extensions of our algorithms…
- creating limited, niche, distinct micro worlds that tend to be quite black and white…
- and becoming codependently enmeshed with our fellow citizen for a sense of safety and sanity as the world feels like neither one…
- so that we honestly estimate that for survival – not just mental comfort, which is already an enormous influence that’s not given enough credit – we have no option but to stay.
- and we will try to.
Forever.
Or until the fake world implodes.
Or… ya know… the real one does. And forces a mind to pay attention to what’s really going on.
….
And to harken back to a point thrown out at the beginning:
This might also help explain a lifetime of relationships. If your experience of life has been personal war, propaganda, poor health, deprivation, financial and other abuse… there’s a good chance you’ve fallen into this pattern before. Only, then, it was your personal world under constant threat of nuclear war, driving you to craft an alternative option with people who seemed safe.
So if you’ve ever wondered, in general: Why do we get sucked in and stuck in relationships?
Because they create reality-distorting perspectives that allow us to function and feel better than making accurate observations alone.
They’re like discovering escape planets that feel so comforting, at first, when shared between two brains.
… until we realize we’ve shipwrecked ourselves in outer space, now without a crew to help us navigate back home.
If that home even still exists after so much time living in preferred, shared, delusion.
…
My message this week is this.
Be careful of falling for a sense of safety, rather than a person, in times that suppress freedom, individuality, and happiness… in a “bad place”… as you courageously continue…,
Dating
In
Dystopia.
And I’ll talk to you soon.