You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

This is NPR's LifeKit. I'm Demona Hoffman, certified dating coach and host of the Dates and

Mates podcast. I get a lot of clients who say they've tried everything when it comes to dating

that there's just no one out there for them or dating apps just won't work for them

or that they wish love would just happen naturally and they would meet someone at the grocery store.

But I often see them making the same choices over and over again that leave them right where they

started. Our guest today also sees these kind of clients. It inspired her to write a book called How to

Not Die Alone. I know the title is not so subtle. I am really glad that you brought up the title.

I've gotten a few messages here and there where it's like you know this is triggering me and this

is upsetting me and I'm like that's sort of the point. That's Logan Yuri. She's a Google behavioral

scientist turned dating coach. She's also director of relationship science at the dating app Hinge.

She's heard countless stories from clients who go on pretty good first dates only to have it

and there because they just didn't feel the spark. I say in the book that the spark became

my nemesis because I felt like my clients were looking for this thing that they had seen in the

romantic comedy that they had seen in a Disney movie and they felt like if they didn't feel it

right away then why give someone else a chance. She's on a mission to get people to shake up their

dating habits using behavioral science. I want someone to see it. I want them to stop and to pause

and to say okay I'm on one path and I'm headed in a certain direction and am I headed in a direction

of finding someone or not and if I don't like the direction that I'm headed in then I need to change

course and I need to shift my behavior I need to shift my attitude I need to do something else.

Yeah and people will tell me as a dating coach when I say you need to put a process around finding

love. They'll say but demonet that's not romantic. I just want it to magically happen. I saw this

...