• If you want to be happy right now, don’t try really hard to be happy right now. Instead, do something that’s both meaningful and pleasurable.

• If you want to find someone to fall in love with, don’t go on dates with the goal of determining if you could fall in love with each person. Instead, meet lots of people from a source that is unusually likely to have people you would fall in love with, and during each meeting, be present and have the intention of getting to know that person.

• If you want to meditate effectively, don’t go into each session trying really hard to meditate effectively. Instead, meditate with a gentle intention to focus on your breath and notice when you lose your focus on your breath (or whatever intention is appropriate for the type of meditation you’re doing).

But why is it more effective to pursue some things indirectly, rather than directly? Sometimes it’s because it’s unclear how to engage in direct pursuit (e.g., most people don’t know how to will themselves into suddenly being happy). Sometimes it’s because the direct approach puts you into a state of mind that impairs your performance at the activity (e.g., the attitude of trying to meditate effectively undermines effective meditation). So even if the only reason you’re doing a certain activity is to achieve some end, you may have to have a different intention while doing that activity for it to work effectively.

This piece was first written on July 19, 2025, and first appeared on my website on October 14, 2025.

Here are four incredibly bad ideas (that are still commonly believed):

1) That people should be judged for, blamed for, or feel shame about the behavior of their ancestors.

Of course, if your ancestors did bad things, you should condemn those acts. And if you directly benefit from something bad your family member did, you should consider if you can make amends.

But, logically, people cannot be morally responsible for events that they were unable to affect.

This bad idea (that we are responsible for the behavior of our ancestors) is partly responsible for numerous cycles of violent conflict, as well as for unjust punishments and unhelpful guilt.

2) That small differences in group means are a good justification for jumping to conclusions about members.

This idea is partly responsible for a variety of forms of prejudice and harmful stereotyping.

Epistemically, a small mean difference provides only a sliver of evidence about individuals. Morally, it’s unjust to treat individuals as though only their group matters.

3) That there’s a simple explanation for all or most human behavior.

Variations on this idea have led to a great deal of confusion about human nature.

Human behavior is not all about sex, or self-interest, or happiness, or status, or individual survival, or even love.

Humans have a very diverse set of forces that influence behavior: emotions, culture, values, habits, instincts, heuristics, goals, etc.

4) That you need to follow a prescribed template in order to have a fulfilling life.

This idea has led to countless people being pressured into or trapped in lives that are bad for them.

Some people will be happiest as homemakers, others as professionals, and still others as adventurers, etc. Sometimes, the best life for a person will match the stereotype for their gender or group; other times, it will be the opposite, and at other times, it will seem completely out of left field.

Our boxes are much too small to force people’s lives into.

This piece was first written on July 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2024.

It has been estimated that over 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Consequently, the majority of friendships and relationships will involve at least one person who has experienced trauma.

This article investigates how one person’s trauma can “clash” with another person’s trauma to cause relationship breakdown and what you can do to resolve conflicts like this if you experience them yourself. You might find it helpful to read if you…

• have some trauma in your past that sometimes gets triggered by other people’s behavior;
• find that your friends or romantic partners sometimes suddenly hurt you for inexplicable reasons;
• struggle to understand other people’s hostile reactions to actions you take;
• want a new model that might help you understand conflict with people close to you.

Let’s look at some specific examples of what we mean by Clashing Trauma: 

1. Trauma from anger and abuse 

Bob is sensitive to teasing because of a physically and emotionally abusive ex that used to tease him incessantly. Anne lightly teases him in what she thinks is a playful way, and he blows up in anger. Anne is sensitive to anger due to trauma in her childhood. She stops replying to Bob’s messages, which makes Bob even angrier. 

2. Trauma from abandonment and unwanted sexual advances 

Bob is physically affectionate with his close friend Anne. It starts to freak Anne out – when male friends have acted this way in the past, they have usually tried to initiate a sexual relationship with her in a way that she found traumatic. To prevent this, Anne stops being warm to Bob. Bob, however, regards Anne as a dear and platonic friend. Because Bob had a traumatic experience of abandonment in the past, he finds Anne’s sudden coldness very upsetting. The fear of abandonment causes Bob to be more affectionate toward Anne as he tries harder to reconnect. This triggers Anne further, causing her to withdraw even more, leading to Bob feeling even more hurt and confused. 

3. Trauma from substance abuse 

Anne has a history of alcoholism that Bob doesn’t know about. Years ago, she resolved to stop drinking when she realized she was becoming like her parents, whose drinking would often lead to physical fights that she found distressing. Bob drinks around her and encourages her to drink, which makes her angry. Bob has protected himself from people’s anger in the past using humor, so he tries to downplay Anne’s reaction by joking around and making light of the situation. Anne finds herself even more triggered and upset by Bob’s behavior – she wants her anger to be taken seriously because alcoholism was a huge challenge in her past.

In all three examples above, one person’s reaction to their trauma being triggered in turn triggers the other person’s trauma response. Clashing Trauma is an example of a broader pattern of Clashing Reactions, where one person’s reaction to an action that upsets them triggers the other person to become upset or angry, which in turn intensifies the first person’s negative emotions, and so on. We’ve noticed that a surprisingly high proportion of fights between people who care a lot about each other fit this basic pattern. The cases of Clashing Reactions on which this essay is focused involve reactions that have their foundations in trauma, but be mindful that trauma doesn’t have to be at the root for similar patterns to occur.

What is trauma?

Trauma refers to enduring changes in your emotional reactions or self-protective behaviors that are the result of painful or frightening incidents in your past. Examples of trauma that people are usually familiar with include experiences with war, abuse, or sexual assault. For example:

• A soldier who was shot at in combat may find that loud noises that sound like gunshots cause her to panic, even in completely safe environments.
• A man who was sexually assaulted by someone with an English accent may feel anxious around people with those same accents.

But it is important to remember that trauma occurs on a spectrum; many people have emotional reactions to reminders of upsetting experiences in their past, even when those experiences were not life-threatening or severely upsetting. For instance:

• Someone who received bad news over the phone may experience a sense of dread and anxiety when they receive a call from an unknown number.
• Someone who was teased by a school teacher for stuttering during a class presentation may find that they get nervous when asked to speak in front of people.

Trauma is the result of a mechanism your brain uses to protect you. This mechanism is often helpful – by sensitizing you to patterns that are similar to ones where you were hurt or frightened in the past, your brain tries to protect you from getting hurt again. Unfortunately, this protective mechanism sometimes goes too far, leading to reactions that can seriously impact people’s welfare (at which point we call it “trauma”).

The soldier, who is now in essentially no danger of getting shot, may have recurring panic attacks that reduce her quality of life and avoid places she used to love just because there are loud noises there. Trauma can manifest in relationships, too; many people are hurt by those close to them (unintentionally or not), and this can make us extra vigilant about avoiding similar painful experiences in the future.

What is going on when people’s trauma clashes?

Here is what we think is going on in situations where friendships or relationships break down due to Clashing Trauma:

1. Anne takes an action that seems normal and reasonable to her. Anne doesn’t know it, but her close friend (or partner) Bob is sensitive to this kind of action due to trauma in his past. Consequently, Bob experiences intense negative emotions as a result of her action.

2. Bob instinctively tries to protect himself from this negative emotion using whatever approaches seemed to help him during past traumatic events (e.g., by avoiding Anne, yelling at her, getting very distraught, or trying to control her behavior). But he doesn’t explain clearly to Anne what is happening. Anne is caught off guard by Bob’s reaction—she doesn’t understand why he’s behaving this way. Even worse, due to trauma in her own past, she gets triggered by Bob’s reaction and starts experiencing intense negative emotions of her own.

3. Anne now acts instinctively to try to protect herself from the way that Bob is making her feel (e.g., by lashing back out at him, avoiding him, shutting down, or trying to control him). This reaction results in Bob feeling even more upset, causing him to intensify his self-protective behavior.

You can now see how Clashing Trauma works:

• From Bob’s perspective, Anne suddenly did something that triggered his trauma, and when he tried to protect himself, she doubled down and hurt him more.
• From Anne’s perspective, Bob suddenly started acting in a strange and hurtful manner, and when she acted to protect herself, he hurt her even further.
• From the outside view, it’s clear that neither person intended to hurt the other, yet both feel hurt, and the relationship suffers.

Incidentally, if you think that you might be Anne or Bob, you’re not alone. When we shared a draft of this article, one friend of the author reached out asking if Anne represented them, and another reached out asking if they were Bob. But the post wasn’t actually about either of them! We are trying to describe a general pattern that we’ve observed many times. Or, put another way: if you think you are Anne or Bob, then this post may well apply to you, but it’s also about lots of other people as well.

How can you prevent Clashing Trauma?

Strategy 1: Prevention

The best way to prevent this pattern of conflict is to discuss in advance with trusted friends and romantic partners what triggers you each have, how to avoid these triggers, and what the best actions to take are if you trigger each other by accident.

For instance, Bob could have told Anne in advance that he can feel very attacked when someone is critical of him and that he tends to lash out in anger as a defense mechanism. Then Bob and Anne can work together to plan how Anne can give Bob feedback in ways that won’t trigger him.

Strategy 2: Interception

Barring Prevention, upon being triggered the first time, Bob would ideally wait until he’s calm and then tell Anne (without blaming her) that her action triggered negative emotions for him, explaining what the trigger was and how to avoid it. (See our post on non-violent communication for advice on how to communicate this kind of thing without making the other person feel bad.)

Then, Anne, caring about Bob, would ideally apologize for inadvertently hurting him and commit to trying to avoid those triggering actions in the future. But behaviors can take time to alter—Anne should set realistic expectations about how quickly she can make that change.

Interception is hard, but appreciating the negative consequences of unresolved Clashing Trauma might help motivate you to implement this strategy.

Strategy 3: Repair

If it’s too late for Interception, try Repair: once Anne is hurt by Bob’s response to her behavior, Anne could wait until she feels calm and then initiate a conversation with Bob.

During the conversation, she could explain how Bob’s behavior seemed (to her) to suddenly and mysteriously change and how this had hurt her, while expressing interest in hearing Bob’s experience of the situation. She would try to genuinely understand Bob’s experience (non-violent communication could also be a helpful way to employ this strategy).

Bob could then explain what he experienced in the situation and what made him react that way towards Anne. They could each commit to new behaviors to reduce the chance they trigger each other in the future.

Understanding trauma

Each of the Prevention, Interception, and Repair strategies involve Anne or Bob explaining their triggers (and/or the trauma that underlies them) to each other. These strategies will therefore be harder to implement if you don’t understand your own trauma or what can trigger it. One way to build an understanding of your trauma and triggers is to discuss it with a trained therapist or trusted friend (or partner). Conveniently, this is a great segue into setting up Prevention strategies with a trusted friend or partner so that you can avoid triggering each other!

Did you find this model of relationship breakdown helpful?

The next time you feel suddenly and unexpectedly hurt by a close friend or romantic partner, it may be worth asking yourself – could this be an instance of Clashing Trauma? Or, more generally, could it be a case of Clashing Reactions? In either case, consider the strategies of (1) Prevention, (2) Interception, and (3) Repair. A lot of great friendships and romantic relationships end for preventable reasons. We hope you can use these strategies to stay close to the people that you love.

This essay was first written on April 17, 2022, was turned into an article on Clearer Thinking (coauthored with Holly Muir) on May 5, 2022, and first appeared on this site on May 6, 2022.

And yet, as inscrutable as it may seem at times, attraction cannot be inherently mysterious. Mystery is what occurs when we don’t yet have an explanation for something. There is some explanation for why you are attracted to certain people and not to others, even if you don’t know what that explanation is. And if you were to understand that process of attraction, the mystery would be replaced by knowledge.

To some people, knowledge of this type would seem unromantic. Some would say that if your attraction boils down to specific physical facts about a person rather than mysterious unknowables, then beauty is taken out of the experience. But these facts about when we feel attraction exist whether or not we know precisely what the facts are. The mystery and sense of unknowability live in our minds, not in the process itself.

Fortunately for scientists, a flower still smells just as wonderful when we understand the chemistry and neurology involved in the process of smelling it. And we experience a sunset as being just as beautiful, even when we know that the pleasure experienced can be be reduced to certain neural firings in the brain responding to specific patterns of input. Hopefully, in this vein, understanding what you and others find attractive will not impact the degree to which you enjoy the feeling of being attracted, or how good it feels for someone to be attracted to you. Hopefully, without the illusion of magic, it will still feel magical.

Attraction seems well worth trying to understand, as understanding may provide insight into how to attract others, and how to prevent ourselves from being attracted to those that are bad for us. So let’s consider a number of the components that make up attraction.

1. Face. It’s remarkable the extent to which small variations in the protrusions on the face can alter the magic of attraction. While the precise shape of our faces is fundamentally quite arbitrary (it obviously makes no difference, non-socially speaking, whether you have high cheekbones or low ones, a big nose or a small one, thick lips or narrow ones), facial features obviously impact attraction a great deal. Symmetry tends to be appealing to us (it likely provides some indication of healthy development), as is clear and smooth skin (which may correlate with being free of disease) and youthfulness (which is linked to both less disease and greater ability to bear children). Certain specific facial ratios are preferred (e.g. big eyes in women in comparison to the size of the face, and large jaws in men seem to be preferred). Facial features are likely relevant from an evolutionary standpoint as indicators of genetic fitness and compatibility (facial features correlate with genetic differences that may be relevant to the survival of your offspring). But they also gain relevance because mating with good-looking people is likely to result in good-looking children who are more likely themselves to be able to find mates. Hence attractive faces, like peacock feathers, become more desirable from the point of view of the survival of your genes just due to the fact that others find them attractive, regardless of whether they correlate with any other desirable traits. Of course, plenty of preferences about faces are cultural rather than genetic. If you are embedded in a culture with strong facial preferences though, you unfortunately are still likely to be evaluated based on them.

Increasing facial attractiveness: get a haircut that frames your face nicely, consider using makeup, consider using skin care products that help you avoid blemishes or blotchy skin, adjust facial hair to an ideal length for your culture (men), avoid hair in places that your culture considers it undesirable by waxing, shaving or plucking.

2. Body. Certain features of the body (e.g. muscular chests on men, breasts of a certain size on women, and bodily symmetry in both) obviously influence attraction. Features we are less conscious of, such as the waist to hip ratio in women, may also play a role. Much of what is found attractive with regard to the body is of course not genetic, but determined by societal norms. Specific preferences in body mass index appear to have this quality. In some cultures, for example, higher body mass index is associated with wealth, whereas in others it is associated with poverty. Sun tanning of the skin is also viewed differently by different cultures (sometimes it’s viewed as desirable, other times, undesirable).

Increasing body attractiveness: exercise regularly, lift weights (for men especially), stay close to what is considered your ideal weight (which is culturally dependent), wear clothes that fit you well (e.g. avoid baggy t-shirts), consider tastefully showing off a little bit of skin (if your culture doesn’t view it negatively), and wear clothes that are currently in style (which of course varies tremendously across time and place).

3. Scent. Smell influences attraction to an extent that many don’t realize. People tend to rate t-shirts worn by more physically attractive individuals as smelling more attractive, even when they are unaware of what the owners of the t-shirts looked like. Likewise, people with more symmetrical faces seem to get rated as having more attractive scents than those with less symmetrical faces. One can speculate that the attractiveness of a person’s smell to you might be a weak (but not totally worthless) indicator of how fit your offspring would have been on average 100,000 years ago if they were produced with that person. Comments that people sometimes make such as “the thing I liked best about my ex was his smell” make quite a lot more sense if you believe this idea.

Increasing scent attractiveness: bathe regularly, use antiperspirant deodorant, use cologne or perfume with a scent that appeals to the gender you find attractive (but don’t make these added scents too strong).

4. Eyes. Sometimes what we experience as sexual rapport is generated to a large extent by strong eye contact. In fact, finding an excuse to get study participants to gaze into each other’s eyes has been found to produce feelings of both liking and attraction. The social acceptability of initiating eye contact, however, is highly culturally dependent.

Increasing eye attractiveness: make intense eye contact during conversations, hold eye contact just slightly longer than normal to increase intensity (but not too long or it is considered odd or creepy!)

5. Similarity. People tend to date or marry those that are similar to themselves in traits like cultural background, age, ethnicity, IQ, political ideology, and agreeableness. This is explained, in part, by the fact that we find similarities attractive. More specifically, when others agree with us and seem like us we tend to feel more positively towards them. Finding out that someone else’s favorite movie is an obscure film that we love creates bonding. Discovering that someone hates all of our favorite foods, or disagrees with our political ideology, creates a sense of distance. When we find out that a person is part of one of our in groups (e.g. they know one of our close friends, or they grew up in the same far away country that we did) we are substantially more likely to feel warmly towards them than if we cannot identify similarity or common group membership. Similarities don’t even have to be conceptual to create liking. Clothes and manner of speaking likely have an impact. Studies have even found that we tend to like people more when they purposely use body language that mirrors our own.

Increasing perceived similarity: bring up ways that you and the person you are talking to are similar, actively seek similarities, subtly mirror the other person’s body language, if the other person says something you agree with, make sure they know you agree.

6. Fun. People tend to be a lot more attracted to those that they have a pleasurable time with. It could be that the person makes you laugh, or is a great conversationalist, or takes you to hear awesome bands you didn’t know about. When something makes us feel good, we naturally want more of it.

Increasing fun based attractiveness: do activities with the other person (of the type you know the person enjoys), make the other person laugh, maintain reasonably high energy and enthusiasm while together, be spontaneous, monitor the other person to make sure they are having fun.

7. Status. Men of high status had a strong survival advantage a few hundred thousand years ago. Other people would have been likely to help them out often, they would be in control of more resources, and so forth. It therefore makes sense that women find high status attractive (the extent to which men naturally are attracted by status in women is much more hotly debated, but it stands to reason that high status women are also attractive to men for the same reasons). Status is not so much about thinking a person is objectively valuable, as it is about viewing them as being viewed as valuable by others. For instance, men who are engaged in conversation with multiple women at a bar may seem more desirable to other women than men standing alone, because they seem to be considered at least somewhat valuable by other women (a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “social proof”). Likewise, an actor who you just read about in a magazine is going to seem more desirable than one who you just met through a friend, and a man receiving a standard ovation for a lecture he just gave will tend to seem more attractive than an equally good-looking man at the supermarket.

Increasing status based attractiveness: work naturally into conversation (without bragging) things that make it clear you are liked, popular, or looked up to by others, let the other person see you in a situation where others like or admire you (e.g. giving a well received speech, or around friends that clearly value you a lot).

8. Value. Personal characteristics obviously influence whether, in our ancient ancestral environment, someone was likely to be a good mate. This implies things like being good at providing food, rearing children effectively, and remaining faithful. To give a few examples of value, cross cultural polls indicate that women especially value intelligence, confidence, and kindness in men. Perhaps this is, in part, because these traits correlate with how well the women and their offspring would have likely been treated in the ancestral environment. Lack of confidence may be particularly troubling, as it may signal to the other person that even we ourselves don’t think we are very valuable (though the conventional wisdom is that women care more about confidence in men than the reverse). It has also been found in surveys that men tend to prefer women who are sexually promiscuous when interested primarily in short-term dating, and tend to prefer women who are un-promiscuous when considering long-term relationships. This is what you’d expect when taking a gene survival perspective, since the former case implies that the time invested in mating will not be wasted (in terms of maximizing gene spreading), and the latter case implies that the children you invest time into raising will probably be your own (again, beneficial for gene survival).

Increasing value based attractiveness: work naturally into conversation (without bragging or seeming self-absorbed) things that show you are talented, wealthy, intelligent, hard-working, ambitious or effective, let the person see you in a situation where you are doing something you are very skilled at, be kind and confident.

9. Interest. We tend to like others who like us, seem interested in us, and respond positively to the things that we say. We are unlikely to feel positive towards those who seem cold or distant. In this vein, it has been found that when women smile they appear especially attractive to males (though whether the reverse holds is unclear).

Increasing interest based attractiveness: smile a lot (but it has to be genuine so as not to seem fake, so think about something that makes you happy when you do it), laugh, complement the other person in truthful ways, be considerate, pay close attention to everything the other person says, really try to understand the other person’s point of view, ask lots of questions, let the other person do 60% of the talking, empathize, and say the other person’s thoughts back to them in their own words to confirm you understood what they meant.

10. Trust: We tend to be more willing to open up to people we trust, and opening up itself creates trust (when that opening up is responded to in a positive manner) leading to a positive feedback loop. Usually a person will feel more comfortable opening up to you and trusting you if you do the same first. Sharing something personal will encourage the other person to do so as well (but you should start by opening up in smaller ways so as not to come across as weird). Actively working to develop a deep understanding of the other person can also build trust.

Increasing trust based attractiveness: open up to the other person first, tell personal stories (but don’t go overboard at first), empathize with what the other person says, respond positively to the other person telling you personal things, ask meaningful questions that really help you understand the other person, and if the other person seems emotional about something, gently give them an opening for them to elaborate about it without pressuring them to do so.

11. Touch. When we are touched by someone who we feel sufficiently comfortable around and find sufficiently good-looking, it can quite naturally lead to increased sexual attraction. Some theorize that touching others may be a way to signal high status, which may contribute to (especially women’s) attraction of those who use touch. But whether or not this is true, physical touch naturally causes chemical releases which can lead to bonding and arousal, turning ordinary liking into sexual liking. A brief touch on the upper arm has been shown to substantially raise the success rate that men have when asking women to dance and asking for their phone numbers (but if a baseline of attraction is not there, or if someone doesn’t feel at ease around you, touch can very easily backfire, making someone like you less). And of course touch can make others uncomfortable when it occurs without their consent, so it is especially important to read the other person’s desires accurately and to use caution.

Increasing touch based attractiveness: lightly touch the other person’s upper arm momentarily (but only if it’s appropriate in the current context), sit close to the other person if you have the opportunity (but again only if it’s appropriate in the current context and back away if they give any signs of discomfort or if they back away to make more space), make further contact only if attraction or contact is clearly being reciprocated, read the other person very carefully for any signs of disinterest or discomfort.

12. Time. While attraction is sometimes instantaneous, it frequently takes time with a person for attraction to build. In part this is because only some of the factors mentioned in this article can be assessed immediately. Others you can only perceive if you’ve spent enough time with a person. Generally, time spent together won’t make up for the absence of other factors, but it is often necessary for them to come into play. Beyond that though, as we spend more time with people we usually become more comfortable with them, and are more likely to bond.

Increasing time based attractiveness: spend plenty of time with the other person, especially time that is fun.

The trickiest part about many of the techniques mentioned above is that, while they build attraction if done skillfully, they will also be viewed negatively if performed unnaturally, obviously or awkwardly. For instance, makeup that is too obvious but that doesn’t seem intentionally obvious, excessive eye contact, talking about one’s own accomplishments in a way that feels like bragging, smiling in a forced way, and excessive touch can all severely backfire. It’s sometimes better to have one of these factors absent than to have it be executed poorly (e.g. no jokes are better than jokes that no one is amused by).

When you find yourself strongly attracted to someone you just recently met, it certainly can feel like magic. However, it can be useful to remember that much of attraction is explainable in terms of: face, body, scent, eyes, similarity, fun, status, value, interest, trust, touch and time. Fortunately, understanding this doesn’t make attraction feel any less wonderful, it just makes it less mysterious and more attainable.

Influences: Alex Fanshel, Richard Wiseman