DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
← All episodes
Hannah Witton25 October 2022

Snippet 9: Why True Love Doesn't Exist - Hannah Witton

2Frameworks
13Insights

Listen

Frameworks in this episode

Communication6 steps

Love Versus Compatibility Check

Read →
Mindset6 steps

The Relationship Escalator Audit

Read →

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster

Love does not conquer all

Witton rejects the romantic notion that two people who truly love each other can weather anything. Practical life factors — distance, work, belief systems and values, sickness and health, and finances — decide whether a relationship works out or ends, however unromantic that sounds.

“One myth that I've always enjoyed busting is that love does not conquer all.”

Hannah Witton

“I think there are a lot of just like practical life factors that uh, however unromantic it sounds, can contribute to a relationship working out…”

Hannah Witton
Myth Buster

The relationship escalator you never chose to ride

Culture, media, tradition and even politics — via rights and benefits attached to life stages — define a fixed sequence of relationship stages. Witton's point is that people board it and stop steering, without ever asking what lifestyle would actually suit them.

“Where it's just like you start dating someone, you get on the relationship escalator together, and then you're just riding it, like you're not actually…”

Hannah Witton

“Or are you just kind of like doing these things because you're just like, well, that's what you do when you're in a relationship, that's…”

Hannah Witton

Hot Take· 3

Hot Take

The parenting paradox: most joy, lower life satisfaction

Witton cites referenced research that parents report lower day-to-day life satisfaction than people without kids, while simultaneously calling their children the best thing that ever happened to them — a cognitive dissonance she says she thought about while she and Dan were trying.

“so there is like, I don't know, this cognitive dissonance for people with kids where it's like you're gonna be less happy, but also they're…”

Hannah Witton

“I remember like reading something about that when Dan and I were like try trying, and I was like, You're ready for our life satisfaction…”

Hannah Witton
Hot Take

Marriage helps men's life expectancy, hurts women's

Citing research she has heard referenced, possibly via Invisible Women, Witton notes that when a man and a woman marry, his life expectancy and happiness rise while hers falls — delivered with a joke about it being a sacrifice she's willing to make.

“When a man and a woman marry each other, the man's life expectancy goes up, and I think his happiness goes up, and a woman's…”

Hannah Witton

“Literally marrying men is killing us. I'm like, great, it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

Hannah Witton
Hot Take

We spend our whole lives mimicking, not just as children

Witton argues adults keep doing what small children do — copying observed behaviour. Almost 30 and pregnant, she says she is mimicking movies, other pregnant people and other people in their thirties, which is why couples must check whether they are 'playing house' or building something that fits their actual strengths.

“Like, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just pretending and copying other people, right?”

Hannah Witton

“Are we just copying what we've seen? Are we like are we just playing house? Do you know what I mean? Like, or is this…”

Hannah Witton

Explainer· 3

Explainer

Money is the factor couples forget to discuss

Among the practical factors, Witton singles out finances as the one people most often skip, and one that can cause huge rifts inside otherwise loving relationships.

“People re often forget to talk about money in relationships, um, and that can cause huge rifts. Love does not conquer your bank account, unfortunately.”

Hannah Witton
Explainer

Living apart together: loving someone you can't live with

Witton describes couples who are completely in love but discover they cannot share a home, and who build a structure and system that lets them stay in a long-term loving relationship while living separately.

“like you might really love someone and it turns out that you can't live together.”

Hannah Witton

“where like two people are completely in love and they manage to find like a structure on a system that works for them where they…”

Hannah Witton
Explainer

Bringing statistics into the relationship itself

Witton treats population-level findings as interesting rather than predictive of any specific couple, but says she raises them with her partner anyway — as awareness rather than as something you'd necessarily notice in your day-to-day interpersonal relationship.

“For me, as somebody who like finds learning about these things interesting, that's all it's always something that I bring up with my partner. I'm…”

Hannah Witton

Story· 1

Story

Following the conventional path, questioning every step

Witton says she has largely followed the standard trajectory, but that she and her partner had deep conversations at every single stage about where the desire came from — whether it was the next logical step people take, or something genuinely important to them as individuals and as a unit.

“Like, is this something that we just feel like we should be doing because that's the next logical step of our relationship, and that's just…”

Hannah Witton

Q&A· 1

Q&A

Does your primary relationship really drive life satisfaction?

Abdaal asks about studies linking happiness to the strength of your primary relationship. Witton, flagging that she has only seen them referenced, agrees — and questions whether 'primary relationship' must be romantic at all, suggesting a friend or family member could serve the same role.

“But yes, like your primary relationship and your satisfaction within that primary relationship has a massive impact on your overall life satisfaction.”

Hannah Witton

“I hear primary relationship and I'm like, well, what if your primary relationship in your life is uh with a friend or with a family…”

Hannah Witton

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway

Love is not the same thing as compatibility

Being into each other supplies motivation to work through problems, but compatibility is a separate question requiring honesty, self-knowledge and lived experience together rather than hypothetical discussion.

“But ultimately, like love is not the same thing as compatibility. And I think compatibility is something that we have to get like really honest…”

Hannah Witton

“From talking about it, but also just like from knowing yourself, from um lived experience, from just like yeah, really getting to know yourself and…”

Hannah Witton
Takeaway

Ask why — for relationship goals, not just work goals

Ali Abdaal connects Witton's stage-by-stage questioning to the repeated 'ask yourself why' discipline from goal setting, and Witton adds that motives like pleasing your parents can be acknowledged and then deliberately kept or ignored.

“ask yourself why, ask yourself why again, ask yourself why again, and that like doesn't just apply to like work goal setting, but like personal…”

Ali Abdaal

“And there will be an element of like, oh well, it will make my parents happy, right? And you can choose to listen to that,…”

Hannah Witton
Takeaway

Did we choose these gender roles, or fall into them?

Despite considering herself alert to gender dynamics, Witton catches herself and her partner slipping into traditional roles, and stops to ask whether the arrangement was chosen or inherited from examples and upbringing.

“hang on, hang on, did we choose this, or is this something that we're just like falling into because it's the examples that we've seen,…”

Hannah Witton