When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Welcome to Love Factually, the podcast that analyzes rom-coms and romantic films using the science of close relationships. Where your host Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkl, Eli, what are we talking about today? Today, we are talking about when Harry met Sally, the 1989 Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan showcase written by Nora Efron and directed by Rob Reiner. For many of us, it's the movie that comes to mind first when we think of rom-coms. Some of the themes will explore our relationship trajectories, how to apologize, and of course, whether men and women can actually be friends. And fair warning, we'll be spoiling this movie today, so if you don't know that you really need to put the chocolate sauce on the side so the coconut cake doesn't get soggy, go ahead and watch this movie and come back. So Eli, who are the key characters and couples in this movie? Well not surprisingly, the film tracks the relationship between Harry and Sally. Harry Burns is philosophical and cynical, even offensive, but also funny and kind. She's convinced that men and women can't be friends because sexual desire inevitably interferes. Sally Albright is anal-retentive and optimistic. She's appalled by Harry's cynicism and gocheness, but her gentle disposition prevents her from fully condemning him. The film also features three notable supporting characters, Marie, played by Carrie Fisher, is Sally's friend. She's in a long-term affair with a married man. She somehow sustains hope against all evidence that he will leave his wife. Jess, played by Bruno Kirby, is Harry's friend. He's laid back and seems to have settled into a complacent long-term singlehood. The third notable supporting character, played by Estelle Reiner, yes, that's the director's mom, has no name. She's the customer in Katz's deli, who delivers one of the most indelible lines in the history of cinema. I'll have what she's had. So, definitely does. Those are the chess pieces. Are you ready to give us one minute on how the film moves them across the board? I'm ready. Count me down. OK. On your mark, get set and go. In 1977, Harry and Sally meet for the first time on a drive from UChicago to New York City and they mostly irritate each other. Five years later, they meet for the second time on a plane, mostly irritating each other again. Five years later, they meet for a third time in a bookstore after recent major breakups. And now, we have the beginning of a beautiful New York friendship, where they become each other's confidences they get back into dating, and Sally memorably teaches Harry how women fake orgasms at Katz's deli. Harry tries to set up his friend Jess with Sally. Sally tries to set up her friend Marie with Harry, but on a double date for the ages, Jess and Marie fall immediately for each other instead. But one night, when Sally is distraught upon finding out that her ex is getting married, Harry and Sally sleep together now. Things are genuinely awkward. Neither can move past it. They have a huge fight at Jess and Marie's wedding and the friendship is starting to fray. But Harry gets his act together, runs to a New Year's Eve party and convinces his love for Sally. She's skeptical and then she's overcome and they get married 12 years and three months after first meeting. Oh my goodness. Right on time. You have perfected the, like, speed up in the last 10 seconds and you're all in a nice job. Wow. Wow. So he, like, tell me, what is your relationship to this movie? You know, it's bigger than I really realized. It's become like a big part of my own marriage, right? So, so regularly, I don't know why, you know, my wife and I will turn to each other and talk about having too much pepper on my proper cash. Sure. And we'll do it. Who does it? And it really, and we use the Billy Crystal accent when we do it. Also, my wife is really fond of telling me that I'm the worst kind, right? There's this line that you're the worst kind. You think you're low maintenance, but you're actually high maintenance. And the reason why she, she accuses me of this is I really do think I'm low maintenance, but I'm very compulsive about time, like using time efficiently and she's right that that she's right. Oh, that's right. Yeah. That's right. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's like I never realized that. And I'm happy to go anywhere on vacation and like I'm fine with all of it. But yeah, it's true that I'm high maintenance about time. And that is very high maintenance in general. Yeah. How about you? Is this a classic for you guys as well? So, I definitely have a very, very soft spot for this movie. One of the scenes that really hits me every single time is actually, it's not necessarily the last scene of the movie, the last scene of the movie is great. Yeah. Or that when we are seeing Harry struggle with what he wants. I just find that to be beautifully depicted. And in many ways, antithetical to the typical romcom arc, which is like lightning bolts. And I knew immediately, and you know, all these stories we get from these other couples throughout the movie, a lot of them have a lot of lightning bolts. Oh, yeah. And I looked at them and I knew, and what I love about this movie is that Harry doesn't freaking know. Yeah. Right? It takes him a while to sort it out. And a lot of times these decisions are very, very hard. And you know, the knowledge about what to do, it doesn't just hit you for a moment one. Yeah. So, tell me, what does this movie get right about the nature of close relationships? A lot of fun stuff. Yeah. So let me start with one that I think you'll enjoy. So something I appreciate about the character of Harry is he's offensive and obnoxious, but he's really good at apologizing. Right? There's a couple points in the movie where, you know, he's sort of gone too far and he can tell us he's upset. And he really just stops the whole thing. He doesn't get into some story about how he was justified. He just says, can I say something? There's something I want to say. Yeah. I'm very sorry. It's the opposite of defensive. It's so great. I know. I know. And you don't expect it from him because he's so good. Goat should obnoxious. But the scene that I really loved is that Nora Efron, when she was writing this film, does it contrast between the apology on one hand, the sort of like generous, gentle way of engaging with a partner? And she contrasts it with what we now would call the NIG, the NIG from pick up artist land, right? And the listeners will be familiar with this concept. It's where you do these like backhanded compliments that are kind of insults. You know, the first time we met, I really didn't like it that much. I didn't like you. Yeah you did. You were just so uptight then. You're much softer now. You know, I hate that kind of remark. It sounds like a compliment, but really it's an insult. OK, you're still as hard as Niz. I just didn't want to sleep with you. And you had to write it off as a character flaw, instead of dealing with a possibility that it might have something to do with you. What's the statute of limitations on apologies? Ten years. Ooh, I can just get it in under one. Would you like to have dinner with me sometime? And I just love this. This contrast between like two visions of how a man should hit on or try to seduce a woman. There's the neck and pickup artist world that's like, well, you'd be kind of nasty, so you can lower herself a steam and then sneak in for the kill. And then there's this one that's like, no, that's horse shit. And she knows it. And she's going to call your ass on it. What you should do is be kind and gentle. And then she says, want to go out sometime? Yeah. It's beautiful. And it really does lead into the broader relationship trajectory issue that I think this movie just nails. Yeah. Let's just talk about what the typical relationship trajectory looks like. Because it looks a lot like what these two experience. Interesting. You know, a lot of research in social psychology on close relationships kind of assumes that it takes that bolt of lightning approach, right? People meet bang, they're into each other, relationships form, or they don't. But what Daniel Stinson and her colleagues point out is that we all have underappreciated how central the friends first form of dating is to the way that people actually form relationships. So in her work, what they generally find is that about 70% of relationships were friends first. Interesting. And that that friendly period is like the median is like a year. Okay. The average is like two years. And if we don't count the 10 years where these two weren't really friends, that's just spot on. Yeah. Exactly what happens in this movie, right? That your friends for that period of time. And this is a real friendship between these two, right? They are confidence. They are relying on each other. They're going to each other for support, they're going to each other to build each other up, right? You certainly get the sense that they're doing all of these sort of core attachment kinds of things. Yeah. The late night conversations on the phone. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly, right? And this is a depiction of how it commonly works, not all the time. But what is fascinating to me is that even though this is like the movie that sets It's the standard for the modern rom-com. It's not the modern rom-com trove of bolt of lightning and we immediately knew. And it is closer to the way relationships actually work. I just, I, I, it's one of the reasons that I absolutely love this movie. Can you say a little bit about the role of sexual contact in the relationship trajectory sequence? I have this memory that you have some work that basically tracks trajectories. Like, okay, like they meet and then they like say hello and then they go on a date and then they, you know, go to a movie and then whatever after that. And then eventually they start like kissing and hooking up and doing this sexual activity and that sexual activity. And my understanding of your research is that it's really at that point once things start getting physical and really once things start getting sexual that people start to figure out there's potential here or there isn't. Did you think that was relevant in this case or was this such an unusual situation where they'd known each other so long before they had sex? Did you find it relevant to understanding Harry and Sally? Yeah, I do think it's, it's relevant. And again, some of the data we have on this, it's a, you have to kind of make a little bit of an inference. Like what we see is that relationships initially go through this great period of uncertainty where people are like, I don't know what this is, I don't know what I want it to be. Will it be long term, will it be short term, will it be nothing at all? The first sexual contact is kind of where the trajectories of long term and short term really start to differentiate. And basically what I think is happening is that when it's good, people want to keep doing it and when it's not good, they're maybe like, maybe again or maybe not. So yeah, so it is in that sense. I do think when people have this like, I'm committed to a friendship with this person, then something happens, it is really rewriting the script for what the relationship is and does sort of require some reconfiguration and we, we see them go through that here too. Now there's the separate question of whether or not men and women can be friends when there is strong sexual attraction there, okay? And I think we are meant to believe in this movie that it's sort of a low simmer for these two. It's not powerful, but it's kind of there. Now it is true that many heterosexual men and women who are friends experience some amount of attraction for each other. In fact, it's like 70% of men and 50% of women say that at least, at least a little. Okay? It's very rare for them to say like, it's a lot, right? But at least a little, it's the majority of the time, right? And I think that's also why too that when you ask people who were friends first and then get together and form a couple, how exactly did it happen? It's usually a, you know, it just kind of happened thing. It's very rare that people say, oh, I was super into her from the beginning and I just like used the friendship to wear her down or something, that's not out. That's not it. It's there. You can't really use it as an intentional strategy. It really is like, there was something there and we didn't quite know what it was and we couldn't really identify it, but we liked being friends and then all of a sudden, it sort of grew from there. Again, that is the most common case. Yes, but you're talking about the case where people shift, you know, upshift into like romantic involvement, but it sounds like there must be lots of cases where that upshift never happens, right? Oh, sure. So what that seems to imply is that, of course, men and women are able to be friends and I think we're actually building a stronger case here which is men and women are able to be friends even when there is some amount of sexual attraction and even when that sexual attraction is never consummated, is that your view of the literature? Absolutely. And there are other studies where you ask people like, oh, like what do you get out of your, again, with heterosexuals, what do you get out of your opposite sex friendships? And people are like, the camaraderie is great. Like, I really love having somebody to confide in, I really trust them. Like, I learn a lot about the other gender and it's like called a friendship and it's not complicated. Right. And the ulterior motive stuff is like way, way down the list. Yeah. Look, I had this under misconceptions. I think the movie does seem to imply that young Harry was correct, right? Because it's like there's this hypothesis that's out there the whole time. And then in the end, they end up together because the sex thing got in the way of the friendship or whatever became the more important thing. And I just find that not credible. It's not credible. Not only for the reason you said, which is, why can't you be friends with somebody that you also find sexually attractive? I don't understand why that should necessarily be a problem. But also, it's kind of ludicrous to suggest that, I mean, I think there's a post to believe a gendered version of this that like a straight man has to be attracted to literally every woman that he knows. Every attractive woman, maybe every woman, like the movie's ambiguous about that. And I just find that ludicrous, like just because a straight man is heterosexual doesn't mean every single woman is going to be a source of interest. So both because he's not interested in everybody he meets and because there's no reason why you can't be friends with somebody that also you feel a bit of free song toward. I think the movie is wrong in a big way on that idea. That's really interesting. Well, what else do you have that the movie gets right? You know, I had a little thing that I appreciated about the movie, which is I think it sensitized an earlier era of Americans to the orgasm gap, right? The idea that some women are faking this stuff, of course, men sometimes fake too. We don't want to overstate it here. But in general, faking orgasm happens a lot more with women who are having sex with men. And for me, one of the things that I found relevant is there's a large literature now on this idea of the orgasm gap, not exactly on faking orgasm, but on like what percentage of the time do you have an orgasm when you have sexual contact or in your most recent sexual contact, did you have an orgasm, and what's kind of wild about that is, yes, there is a difference between men and women. You look at, say, a man and a woman having sex together or hooking up together early in the relationship, and men are indeed significantly substantially more likely to have an orgasm than women are. And there's a lot of explanations for this that rely on, well, it's sort of easier to get a man off than to get a woman off. And I'm not denying that there's some validity to that. But then, of course, you can look at women with women, right? I think it's like how often do women have an orgasm when they have a first hook up with a woman relative to with a man and low in the world? The gender difference goes away, like women have orgasms at the rate that about the rate I think that men have orgasms when they are with a woman, just not when they are with a man. And Harry, to some degree, like deserves to be called out in the way that she calls him out when she's faking that orgasm because we got to just acknowledge the sort of straight man of the world, or at least the men who have sex with women of the world need to acknowledge that there's a math problem, and that some of us are being duped and that some of us are probably not being sensitive enough lovers to want nothing to do. That's a great way to put it. So Paul, I'm interested. I've talked a bit about stuff that I'm excited about, that the movie gets right. What else did you have in mind? Okay, so I do think that there's some great motivated reasoning that we see throughout this movie, and it's really captured by at first, the scene where Harry and Sally are discussing what it means to be high maintenance. Oh, Ingrid Bergman, now she's low maintenance. Low maintenance? There are two kinds of women, high maintenance and low maintenance. And Ingrid Bergman has low maintenance? And L.M. Definitely. Which one am I? You're the worst kind. You're high maintenance, but you think you're low maintenance. I don't see that. You don't see that? Where to? I'll begin with the house salad, but I don't want the regular dressing. I'll have the ball slamming vinegar and oil, but on the side. And then the salmon with the mustard sauce, but I want the mustard sauce on the side. On the side is a very big thing for you. Well, I just wanted the way I wanted. I know. High maintenance. Alright, so this is clearly something that, I mean, he's sort of, you know, teasing her about it. Yeah. It's seeing this as something of a character flaw and I believe that we, the audience, are supposed to think she's a little uptight. Right. She's a little much. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But at the end of the movie, okay? Oh, I know where you go. You get one of the, one of the great lines, which is I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Not tolerate that. No. Not I have decreased the much, how much it bugs me. I love that. Okay. And furthermore, it's not just that he likes it in her. He's starting to take it on himself because we see in the very final scene of the movie when they're describing their wedding cake that he's like, you know, people don't always want the chocolate on top. Sometimes you want it on the side. Fascinating. It is fully on board with the high maintenance approach that she has and he loves it. And there you go. That's motivated reason. Wow. And that's how relationships work count it. Actually, you know, look, I, you know, put one on the board. I'm with you there. But you know what's interesting about that is that's what I think art is. and people who study self-expansion theory mean when they talk about inclusion of the other in the self. And I didn't really register what you're saying here about how he has really internalized it. But you're right, in that final scene, they've got all these interstitial parts where they're interviewing couples. And the final couple being interviewed is actually Harry and Sally, and they're talking about their wedding, and how wonderful it is, and you're right, is totally into the idea that, of course, you have to have the chocolates on the side so it doesn't get soggy. And I encoded that as him being very tolerant of her, but you're right, I don't actually think that's the vibe. I think he's all in. He's like, you're right, I've internalized that for myself. He's incorporated part of who she is into his own identity. It's cool. Put it on the side. What's wrong with putting it on the side? Just put it on the side. That's right, that's right. You know, again, I could keep going. There is one other thing that I really like that speaks to, like my, like, you know, research worldview of relationships. And it's in the double date, right? Where they're trying to set up Marie with Harry and Jess with Sally, and everything gets twisted up, right? So clearly the matches they intended aren't going great. So what are we going to order? Well, I'm going to start with the grilled ridiculous. Jess, Sally is a great order. Not only does she always pick the best thing on the menu, but she orders it in a way that even the chef didn't know how good it could be. I think restaurants have become too important. Oh, I agree. Restaurants are the people in the '80s with theater was the people in the '60s. I read that in a magazine. I wrote that. Get out of here. Oh, I did, I wrote that. I've never quoted anything from a magazine in my life. That's amazing. Don't you think that's amazing? And you wrote it? I also wrote Pesto's Kitcheneris. Get over yourself. Oh, I did. Where did I meet that? New York magazine. Sally writes for New York magazine. You know, that piece had a real impact on me. I don't know that much about what. Writing, look. It spoke to you, and I'm pleased to speak. I mean, I really had to admire people who can be as that are taking away. Nobody has ever quoted me back to me before. And again, we're off, right? The relationship is off. And what a random conversational nugget to find in that interaction. And from there, it's all sort of golden between the two of them. And that to me is, it really captures the randomness, but also the magic of hitting on something like that. Yeah, the relationship is off to the races. The relationship is on. Right. And you're exactly right. Like, she could have said any other thing and the entire evening would have played out differently. They just stumbled across something that happened to be like enormously exciting for the two of them. Yeah, yeah. What are some misconceptions you identified? I mean, we talked about it a little bit. Yeah, we did. The men and women can't be friends, think. Of course they can. But other things in here that struck you as not really the way relationships work. I'm not sure this is something the movie gets wrong exactly, but these characters live in a sort of fantasy land, right? Like, the money is gone to full city in late '80s. Yeah, yes, but a certain person, a certain type of person, right? Money's plentiful work is in stressful. There are no political injustices. So I think that it's like, you know, I'm not saying that every movie has to like, you know, represent the world perfectly, but it's doubtful that the experience these people have is particularly representative of how the average couple, the average person experiences life and love, just because they don't, regular people don't live in this sort of like fantasy land where there aren't external troubles about things. And so I don't think it's, I don't think the movie got it wrong in terms of Harry and Sally's relationship, but I do think it's a limit on how broad the lessons are that we can take from the movie. Fascinating. Are we okay with everything that happens in this movie? You know, I'd more or less, but I have some concerns. Do you want to start us off here? I think it's interesting, again, to delve back into the question of the sort of moral issue of being friends with somebody, if you're heterosexual, being friends with somebody of the opposite gender, if you are romantically attracted to them, right? So is there something wrong with that, keeping other gender friends around for like, when the day comes that you're single again, that that's kind of gross. And I think in order to address this, it's important to pull apart why people have friends in the first place, right? We have friends because we are creatures who need to attach, who have a strong need to belong, and we need to feel like we can confide in people. We need support from people, but we also get a lot out of supporting them. We like to be celebrated when we have success, but we also like to celebrate other people. But my feeling about it has always been like, if we're actually talking about friendship, then it's fine. But I have known people too, who do that sort of collecting thing, and that's a little gross. So we don't need that. I agree. I have three things. Let me do one very quickly, one kind of quickly, and then I'll focus on the big one. So the very quickly thing is, I sort of keep track of ways in which content has aged badly over time. And there was that joke about like Ethiopian starvation, that was the famine. And I'm old enough, I was like a kid in the 80s, and I remember like Ethiopian famine jokes, and for the life of me, I can't know why. I don't know why we ever did this. Another thing is, she slaps them in the face, Sally like slaps Harry in the face for reasons, but I mean, I'm not sure that it's ever acceptable, but it's like one of these like rom-com gags that like the woman slaps the man in the face. And I just like, eh, don't love it. This is not a great gag. Not a great gag, really. But in terms of like, are we okay with this, there's the big one, which I think we can rest at the feet of all rom-coms and romantic movies, or at least most, and we can think of this as the Bella DiPolo critique, right? And this is the idea of singles and the idea that everybody, of course, wants to be in a one man, one woman romantic relationship, and maybe people sometimes expand it out to be, you know, same sex relationships as well, but I think this movie is guilty in a big way of making it seem like life without a romantic partner is bereft and hollow. I mean, everybody wants to have it. So we follow Harry and Sally, of course, like I said before, they don't have fleshed out lives, so all we know about them is their romantic lives. And then the friends, you know, so there's the Carrie Fisher character who's dying to have this man leave his wife. And even when the other friend couple gets together, they say, please tell me I'll never be out there again, because obviously the be-all-end-all is to be in a committed romantic relationship. And again, where the movie really, I think, jumps the shark on this, or at least goes really extreme on this, is you see when Harry and Sally are good buddies that they buy a Christmas tree together, and then, like, carry it home together, and it's this lovely, beautiful thing. And the next year when things are sad and bereft, she buys the Christmas tree herself, and she can't really get it to her house. It's like heavy and complicated to carry, and she's dragging it through New York and it's miserable. But what the hell? I mean, people who don't have romantic partners still have friends, right? They're not totally isolated, and if I don't have this romantic partner, then life is bereft and hollow. People can have fully meaningful lives, and they can go shopping with a friend for a Christmas tree. None of this is to say that people don't care about being involved in romantic relationships. The large majority of people do care. They want that for their lives. But the movie, and again, the genre, more generally, sort of, I think, exacerbates the feeling of, like, loneliness or stigma associated with not having a significant romantic partner. All right, I think this is fun, 'cause I think I, 70% disagree. Interesting. I think what the movie is trying to say is that being in a state of singlehood and searching is an exhausting drag. - Yep. - And there are a few ways to not experience that drag. One is to have a friend you go Christmas tree shopping with, even if that friend is somebody of the other gender, even if that friend is somebody that you will get together with one day, and I understand that as the audience, or kind of rooting for that, but technically speaking, they are friends when they get the Christmas tree, and that is a message of need to belong and togetherness and people being with people. I don't see that as an anti-singles message. - No, that's a good point. If we stipulate that this isn't a rom-com adhering to all the tropes of a rom-com, then this is one step on the way to the actual meaningful end point, which is of course not the friendship, but the love. than the, sorry, not the love, but the romantic couplehood. Then I agree with you that if we stipulate that that's just a friendship thing happening, then it would be a counter example. That's not the way I read it, but that would be a counter example if you read it that way. I think this movie breaks so many of the tropes that it is a fair reading in that way. Yes, they end up together. Yes, they end up getting married. But I think there are enough moments that break it, that the movie is giving us a real depiction of friendship. Fair enough. Yeah. Quotes that struck you. I mean, should we just start with obvious one here? Yeah, hit me. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. Yeah. I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees now. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. Yeah, you know, you wanted to start right away. Once you know, and again, I'd said this up at the top, but one of the things I love about this movie is that he doesn't know right away, takes him a while to figure it out. I find that very realistic and very compelling. Yeah. Do you have any others? Well, I mean, I did love that one. Yeah. Honestly, like, it's just so good, and I really remember it, right? Like you see the movie one time in 20 years, you still remember that one. Another one that I liked is when Harry and Sally are having their big fight when she's very angry with him for the last, whatever it is, third of the movie, and they're having a fight about how they reacted to the fact that they had sex and then didn't connect that well about the fact that they had had sex and, you know, he says, I'm not saying it didn't mean anything. I'm saying, why does it have to mean everything? And it's an interesting perspective. It's an interesting point that both people might look back and say there was an event and it's meaningful, and what he's saying is you're allowing this to color everything. And I get the point that there's something distressing here and that we need to work it through and that there are implications, of course, but that there's a whole lot more here than just that. And so, why is it that we're letting this color everything? I think it's an interesting observation and it's clear to me why there might be two perspectives on that issue. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a great one for that sort of subjectivity idea in here. I've got another one that I love, and this is when she's distressed about Joe. All this time, I've been saying that he didn't want to get married. But the truth is, he didn't want to marry me. He didn't love me. And boy, I think this is probably a very common experience where a relationship breaks up and we tell ourselves a story about the other person and where that person was in their life, oh, they didn't want X, Y, Z, and then lo and behold, they get into another relationship and now they do want X, Y, Z. And that is a really upsetting because you think, like, why couldn't I have been that? Here I was ready to deliver that. It must have been about me all along. I mean, that's kind of the worst kind of break-up of rejection. This idea of the commitment readiness, so yes, it could be that it's not about me, but it could be the idea that, well, he wasn't ready when he was with me, and for various reasons, one of which could have to do with my personality, but he might be in a different state of his career, a different state of circumstance. And this idea of commitment readiness is something that comes up throughout the film. So when he's talking in his "Popper Gosh Voice," and he says, "I am not ready yet," and are not good for anybody now, this is one of the things that I sort of wish we knew right in the category of, like, what do I wish we knew about relationships? There is a little bit of work on commitment readiness. It's hard to study really rigorously because you can't take people outside of their social networks. And as you've observed, it's quite common that we end up with a relationship with someone in our social networks, so maybe I feel ready for a relationship because one of my friends is really appealing to me. But if I don't have a friend who's appealing to me, I feel like I'm not ready. But that's one of the things I wish we knew, and I think there's a few other ideas in here. Did you have thoughts about things that came up in the movie that you wish relationships scientists knew more about? Yeah, so I think the big one for me is wanting to know how much online dating is changing. Here I say, wrecking this, right? I mean, sort of, is it changing the tendency for people to be able to form long-term friendships, whether those friendships are more casual or very meaningful, like we see in this movie, and can we turn it around? I mean, this is something that I worry about. I worry about online dating, turning the whole enterprise into a consumer mindset, you know, what am I worth? What are you worth? What is the best I can do taking the attachment out of this? And I would like to know what online dating is doing to these sorts of trajectories. It's possible it's not doing much. I mean, that's my hope, is that the reality is you meet a lot of people online dating, you click with some, you don't click with others, maybe you remain friends with some, they introduce you to other people, and networks still grow and change. But I worry that we're just kind of dating in tiny two-person bubbles now and not in networks over time, like we see here. Yeah. Another question the movie raised for me is, what are the implications of having sex with a friend? So when Harry and Sally have sex, it's basically friendship ending, right? They eventually reverse it into a romantic relationship, but it pretty much ends their friendship. And people talk about this idea, this phenomenon exists of friends with benefits. But in general, I think this is viewed as sort of a weird, fringe thing that maybe people do early in life, but you really wouldn't want to have because it's sort of weird and strange. But of course, we do withle ball with friends and we go to dinner with friends and we have deep emotional conversations with friends. And in general, the literature doesn't seem to have that much to say about, is it ever a good idea or a relationship benefiting to have sex with a friend and what are the risks that might be involved? I think that's right. It's hard to bring the data to bear on this exactly, but I don't think it's just sex. I think it's a lot of the things that come with attachment. So yes, it is true that friends can be very close. But you often see a lot of jealousy, too, when one member of a couple gets very emotionally close with somebody else. That's also something that can push the boundaries of what's considered acceptable. So I do think that the whole suite of sex and attachment is for people who follow monogamous norms. We expect those to be bound to one relationship, unless you have worked out arrangements to the contrary. That's true. Yeah. Any of that bleed there can present challenges. Yes. You're talking about people who are in a relationship. So in a primary, so to speak, relationship and like, what do they do on the side? I'm just sort of, I'm so also interested in this, like, you're saying, you're like not involved in a relationship, but you have this close friend and you guys kind of find each other attractive, but don't want to be in a serious romantic relationship or a serious romantic relationship with this person. I just don't think the field knows that much about the circumstances under which, in addition to like, all these other activities we enjoy together, like throwing this one into the mix is a good idea or a bad idea or even why. I don't think we have strong theory or evidence about when and why this is likely to be a good or a bad idea. Right. Because if it were just about like deepening the attachment and be like, well, what's wrong with that? It's clearly, there's more to it. That's right. I did have one other question that this movie raised for me that I wish we knew more about, which is, it's related to that part in the movie where Harry's talking to his friend, Jess, and he's, Harry's explaining, I think, while they're doing the wave at a sporting event, like his wife has left him, and Jess says, marriage is don't break up in account of infidelity. It's just a symptom that something else is wrong and Harry, I don't know if you remember the line. He says, oh, really? Well, that symptom is fucking my wife. Yeah. Right. It's a great line, but it does raise the broader question of the extent to which infidelity tends to be a cause or a consequence of relationship dissatisfaction and the literature, you know, I was reviewing this literature recently. Yeah, right. Yeah. The literature is pretty broadly consistent with the intuitive idea that, you know, infidelity is causally destructive, but only recently, like last year, the first really big, impressive longitudinal, big sample study that looked at this question that basically followed 14,000 people over the course of, you know, an eight-year period, and so they could actually track What was the trajectory of relationship quality before? or an after an infidelity event. And I don't think this is the final word. That's why I think we need more information to know, but I was surprised to discover that the relationship satisfaction trajectory descends sharply before the infidelity event, and there doesn't seem to be any exacerbation after the infidelity. So we don't see much evidence here that the relationship gets even worse after an infidelity, although it's a little complicated because some people break up right away. And so the story, I just don't think that the field knows the answer yet on the extent to which declining satisfaction predicts infidelity or infidelity predicts declining satisfaction. But it's kind of like if the relationship survives, that's the low point. That's right there. I think that's right, but then it's like, well, when and why do the relationship survive? And it turns out in fairness to the field, like it's sort of wild that we, you know, with this many studies that I actually don't think we know the answer here, but it is hard to do this, right? It is hard to have a bunch of, like, you know, you'd need large samples of relationships and then follow them over the course of years and keep them in your sample, like this is hard work to do. And I feel like we're just really starting to get the answers. But so far, the best evidence suggests that the causal effect of declining relationship quality on infidelity likelihood seems to be if anything stronger than the causal effect of infidelity on declining relationship quality. - Well, let's now talk about how many stars we give this movie. So on a rating of one to five stars, I'll go first with this one. This is a five star masterpiece. I'm not taking any further questions at this time. This is it. This is the one. - I'm literally sets. - Watching you drop your microphone. - This is changed, the genre. - You're not invent the genre, but it's certainly changed it. And how often do you get the writing and the chemistry between the two of them? - Yes. - And I think, like, it's enough of the typical romantic trajectory tropes that you understand what you're watching, but it's also breaking them in all the right places. Also, we even mentioned this. There are no bad guys in this movie. There's no bad guys. - That's a good point. - How awesome is that? - Five star masterpiece. This is one of my favorite movies of all time. - I also like the movie. I'm a little nervous here. I give this movie four stars. I think it is. - I like to live. - Yeah, I mean, right, if I'd gone to three, this could have been the end of me. It is funny and it is totally delightful. I have some of the concerns I raised above. And also, you know me. I tend to like movies that are more thought provoking that don't sort of reveal all their secrets on a first watch. And so it's sort of a genre preference. And so the movie is wonderful and delightful and a pleasure and a joy to revisit. I don't think it's especially deep or thought provoking. - We also award rust bolts on this podcast. Now the rust bolt is named after Eli's advisor, the late great Carol Rustbold, pioneer of close relationships research with five stars indicating a near perfect depiction of the nature of close relationships. Eli, how many rust bolts do you give this movie? - Well, I live in terror of you as I speak here. I give this movie three rust bolts. And look, to be honest, I would have given it a higher score if my job were to assess how accurately it captured 1980s relationship dynamics among the remain and highly educated. But you're asking me, I think, and the rust bolt measure is assessing like how generally insightful do I think it is. And I think that's a three out of five rust bolt movie. - Fair enough, I give it four rust bolts. I ding it a little bit for the, you know, it had such a long tail with the, oh, Ken men and women be friends thing. - Right. - And in some ways, that was not the point that I think the movie actually does make, which is that often they are, and sometimes it will grow into something. But yet there's sort of a legacy issue there. And of course, we're not really seeing the full relationship, right, they get married, the movie's over. So I'm often gonna dig movies for that. - I remember Paul was happily ever after. - Right, what could we ever say? - Other than nothing ever went bad again. Presumably the second time they had sex, there was nothing problematic at all. - I'm sure it was fine. - All right, well, that is all the time we have for today. This is the Love Factually Podcast. My name is Paul Eastwick. I've been here with Eli Finkle and Eli. I will be delighted to do this with you next time. - I am looking forward to it. (upbeat music) The Love Factually Podcast is produced and edited by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkle, featuring music from Andrew Fraker and Sons.