How Love Turns You Insane - Dr Max Butterfield - #1069

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 5.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2026

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr. Max Butterfield is an experimental psychologist and professor who studies relationships and decision-making. Why does love make us do crazy things? Rom-coms make relationships look easy, but real love is far more complicated. So what actually makes a relationship work—and why does love make us act irrationally? Expect to learn what science says about what people should do to recover from a breakup, if the Norwegian skier who confessed to cheating on his girlfriend was doing more harm than good to his relationship, what Dr Max wished more men and women knew about how to signal interest, why we ruminate so much and how to ruminate less, what healthy communication actually looks like and much more… Timestamps: (0:00) Did This Declaration of Love Backfire? (7:37) Why Grand Gestures are a Bad Idea in Dating (14:03) The Psychology of Breakups: How to Recover Faster (18:58) Is a Breakup Really Like Losing Someone? (20:31) Why Do We Ruminate So Much? (31:01) Does Rejection Actually Shape Us? (32:32) How to Signal Romantic Interest (37:52) Why Women Signal Beauty Through Clothing (44:30) Is She Actually Out of His League? (47:02) Relationship Red Flags You Shouldn’t Ignore (50:32) The Fascinating Evolutionary Approach to Relationships (56:36) Green Flags: What to Look for in a Healthy Relationship (01:03:51) The Power of a Psychological Reset (01:11:18) Does Direct Communication Improve Relationships? (01:16:27) The Hidden Role of Indirect Aggression (01:21:36) Why Intrasexual Competition is So Controversial (01:27:12) The Power of Healthy Communication in Relationships (01:38:33) What’s Next For Ben Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom Get 15% off your first order of my favourite Non-Alcoholic Brew at https://athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Dr. Max Butterfield, welcome the show.
0:02.0	Chris, thank you for having me.
0:03.7	Please call me Max.
0:04.7	No, Dr. Max Butterfield.
0:07.3	You rip.
0:08.5	I absolutely love your content.
0:10.0	I think you're so fantastic.
0:11.6	I really appreciate it.
0:13.0	I am shocked every day when somebody tells me that because I'm nobody, you know.
0:18.4	I just have been telling people who I am every day for the last year,
0:21.3	and it kind of started to take hold, I guess. Yeah, and there's very few people doing evidence-based
0:27.1	relationship advice, especially in short form on social media. So it doesn't surprise me that it's going
0:33.0	well. PhD in experimental psychology, master's in clinical psych, masters in experimental psych, bachelors in
0:38.7	psych, and some additional work in religion, law, and languages. Just a couple things. I really, you know, in first grade, I decided I liked school and I was never going to leave. So still here 30 years later. All right. I'm going to get you to, I'm going to get you to react to something straight off the bat. Norwegian biathlete, Stirlahom-Legreid. Have you seen this? Yep.
0:57.6	Okay. So, I'm going to get you to react to something straight off the bat. Norwegian biathlete still a home leg raid.
0:56.1	Have you seen this?
0:57.0	Yep.
0:57.6	Okay.
0:58.1	So this 28-year-old guy chose the Olympics as a place to shoot his shot with his ex.
1:02.8	After he won the bronze in the men's 20-kilometer biathlon in a viral post after his
1:10.6	win in the interview, this guy confessed to cheating on the
1:13.9	love of his life revealing that she dumped him after he came clean a week ago and said he was
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chris Williamson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Chris Williamson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.