• A conflict in deep values – such as their being highly religious whereas you are allergic to anything remotely spiritual
• Incompatibility of interests – not a gap in enthusiasm, which can often be bridged by encouragement, but a serious mismatch, such as their being a passionate sailor whereas you are aquaphobic
It’s tempting not to consider deal-breakers. But we should be clear about what we don’t want, especially the elements we are uneasy about not wanting, as they’re the ones we may most unwisely give ground on. If we truly couldn’t live with someone who has a dangerous job, for example, it’s fairer to everyone to be aware of that, rather than denying, compromising, then wobbling.
A ‘normal, happy day’
Wish-list made, deal-breakers noted, we next need to specify in a slightly different way. Rather than defining a partner, envision a partnership. What if you woke up one weekday morning five years in the future, having made the perfect choice. Imagine the rest of the day – not special, not peak experience, just normal, solid and satisfying. What might be your plan for this ‘normal, happy day’? In what location would you see yourself? What would you do? How would you spend time – with your partner? By yourself? Who else might be there? What sort of lifestyle would you have? How would you feel? Above all, what would be especially rewarding about the relationship you’d created?
This exercise gives new perspective by drawing two crucial distinctions – between dream and actuality and between partner and partnership. Envisioning what we’re after not as fantasy but as reality strips away many of the inessentials – things we may hanker after but are irrelevant to our happiness; we may find ourselves altering our wish-lists as a result. Plus the exercise broadens awareness out again, from the partner we might choose to the everyday life we would have with that partner. (This everyday life is, of course, the whole aim of choosing a partner in the first place: I did at one point wonder whether this book should have been called ‘How to Choose a Partnership’.) Enhancing detail in this way leaves in place the core needs, but allows us to form a resonant and motivating picture of what we want our future to hold.
Welcoming invitation
How to use these specifications? When doing distance dating, the wish-list and the deal-breakers inform the tick-boxes, while the ‘normal, happy day’ exercise will give you the material to write the free-text elements of profile and partner specification. There’s an added bonus here. Research suggests that, online, it’s more compelling – for which read attractive – to structure your profile not as a ‘dating CV’ (age, interests, holiday plans) but as a welcoming invitation to join you in a relationship; the ‘normal, happy day’ exercise provides all the essential raw material for such an invitation.
If you’re motivated to put in the work, you could also use the material you’ve gathered to design and apply your own customized matching algorithm. This is precisely what was done by PhD student Chris McKinlay, who apparently had something of a eureka moment when he realized that, rather than relying entirely on personal charisma, he could use his talent as a mathematician to develop a personal formula for a perfect partner. He did so, found love and wrote the bestselling book to prove it. Details of Optimal Cupid – and of Data, a Love Story, from female counterpart Amy Webb – are in the bibliography.
If partner choice is face-to-face – speed dating, blind dating, meeting with an online suitor or simple right-place-right-time serendipity – the wish-list, deal-breakers and ‘normal, happy day’ specifications are vital touchstones. With these kept firmly in mind, we can begin to tally vision with reality, our desires with flesh and blood, and start asking ourselves the crucial questions: Does this person fit our theoretical specification and, if not, does that matter? We may well feel it doesn’t, if in other ways there is a fit. Does this person contravene any of our deal-breakers, and if so, is that contravention writ in stone? It may well be resolvable with some negotiation. Finally, but most importantly, could this person help us create the daily life that we want for ever? If there’s a real possibility they can, that’s the best basis for continuing.
6. Connecting
Only connect.
(E. M. FORSTER, HOWARD’S END)
It’s surely clear that good relationship decisions are based on knowing far more about a partner than whether they simply tick the headline demands of our wish-list. To return to the ‘love funnel’ metaphor, the more we filter down our options to fewer possible partners, the more we need to aim for a broader and more extensive understanding of each one.
For there’s an addendum to the earlier-mentioned jam experiment. Repeats of the research suggest that the ‘shopping mentality’ problem is not only down to too much choice but to too little information. Increase our knowledge about each jam (that is, each partner) and choice becomes not only easier but also more accurate, more emotionally intelligent, more successful. So, as we recognize which partners may be right for us, we need to view them from different perspectives, to witness them in different situations, to learn about them and allow them to learn about us – in short, to connect. The slow-river approach again, but this time trawling the deeper waters.
Let’s start with the simple fact of meeting. Once upon a time, we knew we were smitten because our eyes met across a crowded room (or at the village well, or as we were tilling the fields). The natural, biologically driven ritual of partner choice is founded on real-life contact.
Yes, some historical courtships were pursued at a distance. Europe in the Middle Ages was awash with ambassadors journeying from royal court to royal court while bearing portraits of beautiful princesses in the hope of arranging advantageous marriages. But without meeting, such long-distance strategies often went horribly wrong: King Henry VIII of England failed to even consummate his marriage to fourth wife Anne of Cleves because when she arrived for the wedding, he realized that ‘she is nothing as fair as she hath been reported’.
To really connect with – and make a decision on – a partner, we need to see, to hear, to literally feel them. It was anthropologist David Givens who in 1978 mapped out for us the instinctive process of natural attraction. We glimpse a potential partner from afar, then engage by eye contact, then by talking, then touch, eventually getting close enough to smell, taste and, if the stars align, be sexual. At each stage we parallel our conscious appraisal by unconsciously rating the other’s physical appearance, the way they move and speak, their hormonal invitations. At this early stage, closer and closer contact filters partners, not only because of what they say and do, but also because of the way they say it and do it. (Those who make the cut are likely not only to attract us but to be attracted to us; if face-to-face connection leads to a ‘yes’, it’s likely to become a virtuous, circular reinforcing ‘yes’.)
Twenty-three days
Actually, we know all this. We intuitively trust face-to-face contact because we realize it gives us essential knowledge on which to base judgement. We are reluctant to develop a relationship before meeting someone, because we know that without face-to-face contact we can’t make a full assessment. Which is why when it comes to the distance dating of new technology we may be fascinated but we’re also wary; traditional partner choice follows a ‘meet–look–talk–touch’ model, while new technology follows the new pattern of ‘view–read–write–talk–meet–touch’, which leaves the really important bit to almost the very end.