Think about where you grew up as a kid, your apartment building or your neighborhood. Could you imagine being married to one of those clowns?
There’s something uniquely valuable in everyone, and we’ll be much happier and better off if we invest the time and energy it takes to find it. But seriously, if the person doesn’t clip their toenails or wear clean socks, look elsewhere. There are plenty of options.
Even if you say you “don’t play games,” that is a type of game – it is the “I don’t play games” game.
Initially, we are attracted to people by their physical appearance and traits we can quickly recognize. But the things that really make us fall for someone are their deeper, more unique qualities, and usually those only come out during sustained interactions.
As we see more and more people online, it can get difficult to remember that behind every text message, OkCupid profile, and Tinder picture there’s an actual living, breathing, complex person, just like you.
On a side note, is there any place on earth that sounds like it has a more chill vibe than Hawaiian Brian’s? Or for that matter, is there a chiller name than “Hawaiian Brian”? “Damnit! Hawaiian Brian just stole my debit card and liquidated all my bank accounts!” I can’t ever see someone having to utter that sentence.
Too busy to write me back, but she has time to post a photo of some deer she saw on a hike?
If you are in a big city or on an online dating site, you are flooded with options. Seeing all these options, like the people in the job example, are we now comparing our potential partners not to other potential partners but rather to an idealized person whom no one could measure up to?
This is my favorite. I just love the idea of the guy opening up his phone, seeing the boobs, and thinking, “Ahhhh. Okay, you got this, Phil! Let’s nail this PowerPoint presentation.
One reason it’s so hard to imagine marrying the people we grew up with is that these days we marry much later than people in previous generations.
Do I call? Do I text? Do I send a Facebook message? Do I send up a smoke signal? How does one do that? Will I set my rented house on fire? How embarrassed will I be when I have to tell the home’s owner, actor James Earl Jones, that I burned his house down trying to send a smoke signal?
There’s something uniquely valuable in everyone, and we’ll be much happier and better off if we invest the time and energy it takes to find it.
So you’re going to horrible places and meeting horrible people and you’re complaining about it? Live your life like a decent person. Go to the grocery store, buy your own food, take care of yourself. If you live a responsible life, you’ll run into responsible people,” he said.
Today, if you own a smartphone, you’re carrying a 24-7 singles bar in your pocket.
Among the older lovers, brain regions associated with anxiety were no longer active; instead, there was activity in the areas associated with calmness.”1 Neurologically it’s similar to the kind of love you feel for an old friend or a family member.
We have two selves: a real-world self and a phone self, and the nonsense our phone selves do can make our real-world selves look like idiots... Act like a dummy with your phone self aand send some thoughtless message full of spelling errors, and the real-world self will pay the price.
Another poll, from Gallup, found that infidelity is more universally disapproved of than polygamy, animal cloning, and suicide.11 So if there were two guys at a bar, one cheating on his wife and another with a cloned pig named Bootsie, it would be the cheater, not Bootsie the pig, getting more disapproving looks.
Making sure the person shared your interest in sushi and Wes Anderson movies and made you get a boner anytime you touched her hair would seem far too picky.
When you found someone you liked, you jumped into a relationship. I don’t think we thought, Well, there are another twelve doors or another seventeen doors or another four hundred and thirty-three doors,” she said. “We saw a door we wanted, and so we took it.” Now, look at my generation. We’re in a hallway with millions of doors. That’s a lot of doors.
Waiting for true love was a luxury that many, especially women, could not afford.