Developments around relationships and dating have a relatively small speed premium, so I figured I would wait until I had a full post worth of them. Indeed I now present such a post, in which I present several theories as to why so many of you might still be single.
I would say that the biggest reason people are single is that they don't really want relationships. They want relationships in the same way they want to be billionaires or top performers, in a vague it-would-be-nice-but-sadly-it-is-impossible kind of way. But then it turns out that a committed or even a casual relationship doesn't really fit into their lives, their routines, their habits, their beliefs about the world and their expectations for the future as they are set up. They live their lives as pronouncements into the void. This is a valid life choice, but often people make it without fully knowing they are making it.
Fortunately, making space for relationships in your life is much easier than becoming a billionaire or a top performer. But since it is not happening by itself, a change somewhere must occur. And the only way to make change happen and not be at the mercy of being changed by chance is to revise fundamental assumptions, which is easy to say and hard to do unless you are a reader. Reading deeply teaches you to overhear yourself talking to yourself and recognize the contingent nature and structure of such speech, and then of your existence.
How would another person fit into your daily life, preferably for the better? Do you want them to fit? And how would you fit into their life, preferably for the better? How can you be good for them and they to you? Galaxy brain next-levelling dating tactics don't stem from this questions. Considerations about Ethics and performing plain level 1 generically solid actions such as acquiring new skills or healthy habits do. When you treat yourself and other people ethically, they tend to treat you better as well, and better relationships become possible. That is what good relationships are.
Keeper.ai initially strikes me as a Theranos-style (if not scale) scam, but maybe there's something I'm not getting.
1) Google and Amazon have tons of data on me, every incentive to want to recommend stuff I would buy, and I find that their book, movie, and music recommendations are less than 50% hits, usually much less. So I assume that predicting my tastes is a hard problem.
2) If Keeper has an effective AI solution, shouldn't that be very low marginal cost? The pricing structure would make sense for a very skilled and effective human matchmaker, but seems weird for an allegedly AI solution.
Edited to add: Sorry, Keeper.ai team, I overstated what I meant to say. I should have said "possibly" a scam, and wish you success.
This is 2022, on the tail end of covid, feels like a pretty big confounder to people's dating habits in normal times.
Also, I couldn't find it but how was this data gathered? It mentions dating websites but does that include apps? Everyone I know uses apps like bumble/hinge, almost no-one uses actual websites like okcupid.
I have a pretty large group of friends/acquaintances who are all dating and having casual sex regularly. Some with multiple new partners a month. They are also very far from being patient enough people to fill out any survey. So either I and most people I know are in the 10% (1%?) of hooking up, or there are some data quality issues here.
It has been 18 years, possibly to the day (certainly to the week) since I met my one-day-to-be-wife (although it took 2 years before we started dating). Apparently this makes me a dinosaur, but here goes anyway:
Dating apps seem like an incredible waste. Waste of time, waste of energy and (most cursed of all) waste of rejection tolerance. If you wake up today and think “I want to beat someone up”, do you go to a boxing hall or a gym and pick a fight? Hell no. You go to an old folks home. If you want to find clients you don't go to a convention for your field. You shoehorn your way into the convention your potential clients go to (ideally one that makes it hard for you to get in) and start glad handing people.
Yet, this is exactly what a dating app is. But wait, it is worse! Dating apps (by design) let people filter by what they think. I'm not going to spend too much time on “revealed preference” and “people are idiots who don't know what they want”, but good lord are people JUST TERRIBLE at setting filters in general and more so for dating.
You should maximize for quality shot opportunities. Unless you're a legit six one with decent BMI/face/income/education evidence of twitter/the internet/casual conversations suggests dating apps are going to provide very few quality shot opportunities.
What will provide quality shot opportunities is getting out and meeting people, away from the dating scene, where they are filtering for “do I enjoy spending time with this person, do they make me laugh, are we compatible” first, not “is this person I want my friends to know I am dating” (you can re-phrase the 2nd question a lot of different (and more depressing) ways).
Join a club. Volunteer on a charity (ideally one with monthly/biweekly social-ish meetings). Join a sports league (but NOT a singles sports league). Take a class. Become a regular at a maker space. Do whatever it takes to make a few new, casual, friends/acquaintances each month. Any activity that plausible includes the appropriate target gender is fine, of course some might be better than others, so long as you actually enjoy it.
Then, either casually ask people out to NON date activities 0-2 times or explicitly ask them out on a low-risk date (coffee, hiking in a populated part, golf (frisbee or regular), 1 off cooking class. Anything that's short-ish, allows for social interaction and has enough buffer/other people to not be too intimidating.
Do not become a creeper or serial asker-outer. How do you avoid this? First, simply avoid it. If your instincts are so bad (and they might be) that you cannot figure this out I would suggest:
1: No more than 1 ask per monthish per activity group.
2: Do not ask out more than 1 in 5? 6? 10? eligible partners per activity. Eligible partner = plausible singles of target gender +/- a big age range.
3: Do not do too many activity groups per month. 3? 4? Anything over this suggests you're over-applying this advice and using them to look for dates and are therefore risking being a creeper.
If (assuming you're a guy seeking a gal) there are 5 single gals in the approx. age range in some activity, and you ask 2 of them out (unless separated by at least half a year), you're a creeper. If you ask out every other girl that joins the activity, creeper.
The touchstone is that you must be seen by the girls as there for the activity first, social life second, dating third. Even if this is a lie, it is how it should come across. If it becomes activity first, dating second you're on suspect creeper thin ice, and if it becomes dating first you're a creeper.
I suggest this will give you an active social life which on its own will help you (social proof of non-creeper/OK person status). It will also give you many more quality shot opportunities than endlessly scrolling and chatting up people in the highest competition zone possible. This strat also allows network effects to work in your favor b/c if you have social proof of non-creeper status you might get hooked up/set up on dates by people you know. Also, if it fails you have an active social life doing things you enjoy (vs having spent hours scrolling through pictures of people that will reject you).
Post-Conclusion Notes:
1. The sad reality is that a lot of nerd-adjacent guys seem to have both under and over corrected on the dangers of being a creeper. Don't assume you can't ask someone out after you've casually met them 1-10 times and seemed to hit it off, but do carefully gauge the (ahem) market differential and use it to set the ask up appropriately. i.e. the hotter/better the other person is compared against you the more you're limited to “hey, there's a new third wave coffee place opened up, do you want to go some time?”
2. Do assume that if someone says no or fobs it off (without asking you to do something in the next few weeks) they aren't interested at that time and hold off on future asks for 6 months. If they refuse/fob a second time, idk you're either done or need to wait years.
3. Work on your conversation skills. Listen to the other person, then respond. Don't plan your response while they're talking. Do not be the topper. Do not talk over people. It's better to let a moment of silence occur than rush to fill it with something stupid. Pauses while you think seem long (eternal) to you, but to other people are just brief moments. Talk about yourself an appropriate amount. Ask more questions than you answer, but don't be prying. ABOVE ALL ELSE THE SPICE/CONVERSATION MUST FLOW. Do what it takes to let it flow fairly naturally.
4. Self deprecating humor should be deployed with extreme care. It's like when people ask you in an interview (on a television show) “what's your 3 greatest weaknesses” and you have to respond with strengths. It is better to avoid self deprecating humor than mess it up, but in general it can't be stuff you're actually afraid of/that is actually a problem. Humor is hard to explain. If you need a detailed explanation of how to use self deprecating humor, you should simply not use it for a while.
5. Your body odor should be soap, with a reasonable amount of deodorant. I will admit to concerns about the wisdom of anti-antiperspirants, but dates/asks are not the place for those concerns. It is OK to have a non-scented anti-antiperspirant and apply the everloving heck out of it, then do 1 small swipe of original Old Spice per pit (SMALL I SAID). Do not smell bad. Clean clothing, reasonably acceptable shoes and no body/breath odor. If you have chronic allergies you should strongly consider asking a friend the honest/brutal question about your breath odor during allergy season. Allergies/post-nasal drip/deviated septum can cause odor that brushing doesn't fix, and if this is true, you should try and fix it as much as possible (and/or mints).
One potential advice for both men and women is to switch cities (or even countries), if at all feasible. If you're a man, move to NYC. If you're a woman, move to Silicon Valley. If you're gay, move to SF. If you're Mormon, move to Salt Lake City.
Here's a breakdown of US counties by the % of women aged 18-34, as well as the median 1-bedroom rent in each location: https://dpaste.com/7X6S3ART3. 54% of Manhattan (New York county) residents are women vs. only 47.3% of San Jose (Santa Clara county). This might seem like a small difference but if we assume that 70% of women are in a relationship, this means that Manhattan has 2 women for every single man while San Jose has 1.4 men for every single woman. In other words, dating in Manhattan should be **3** times easier than in San Jose.
It's been a while since I've used any of the dating apps. But 10 years ago they were a great way to meet people and find dates, at least in Chicago. Hinge was definitely the best. It's sad to read that it's deteriorated since then. Tinder was always borderline useless.
The way I stood out to my future spouse was by opening the app-conversation with a customized limerick based on what was in her profile. It's a little cringe, and a little try-hard, but it showed a sense of humor, intelligence, and was complimentary to her. A normal "what's up?" message might get a response rate of 5-10% or less. I'd say that writing them a poem multiplied that number by 5 or so.
I understand the hate on the PUA community. But I was a Magic-playing loner for much of college. When I decided I wanted to have relationships, I had nothing to work with. I dove down into that PUA rabbit hole, and didn't find much that worked. But their emphasis on "inner game" was a game-changer. It turns out I just had to be social, confident, and interesting. I joined a bunch of activities and stopped worrying so much about rejection. That probably took me from the bottom 20% of date-ability to the top 30%. That's a huge change! All that I'm saying is the "inner game pick-up artist" stuff works, and it's mostly fairly obvious stuff. It's actually essentially what much of this article was about.
My guessy model re: 1-date-per-year = horror for about a year is something like what I experience applying for jobs: I’ll have a productive applying period where I’ll apply to several dozen jobs, then over the course of the next few months I’ll get random interviews for some of them which are always unpleasant and involve not-insubstantial investments in uncomfortable scheduling and travel, then if I don’t hear back from any of them I’ll be pretty discouraged for a month or two until the urgency kicks in again. (Or also yeah this maybe suggests more that people are going on first dates that land them a relationship that lasts at least a year.)
Ditto re: bars as increasing hookup hotspots is that it’s a dominant cultural meme that that’s what bars are for, like I suspect that people are using bars less for the food and socialization in the traditional sense; that it almost switched places with “through friends” suggests to me a scenario where singles are possibly almost exclusively using bars to troll for dates vs hangout spots/socializing/food/alcohol.
Bella Rudd is a national treasure.
Can endorse eHarmony at least as late as 2008. Subscription wasn't cheap and they'll actually full on reject you if you fail the initial screening (which piqued my curiosity after a friend complained about this) but easily the best money I've ever spent; wife got the better deal since we met on one of their free weekends. Your description of Reader matches pretty close to what I remember of their process, it matches you up with a barebones (optional) picture & profile and then goes back and forth revealing more in stages. I remember one round lets you pick out a couple open-ended questions to send to the other person. Either person can opt out at any time, ends with letting you directly message each other if you’ve both signed off on everything. Pretty sure they still exist but no idea if/how much they’ve changed given I haven’t needed them since, would start there again in the worst possible scenario.
In the chart showing sources of first dates (through a friend, work, school, etc) any ideas what "Other" would include to make it the second highest source of dates? Everything I can think of is covered in other categories.
>It is as if people are capable of getting a date, then they go on one and recoil in ‘oh no not that again’ horror for about a year, then repeat the cycle?
Actually, this makes perfect sense if we assume the market is efficient. Anyone who can get someone who meets their standards is going to be quickly removed from the dating pool. The only ones who are left will thus be people who can’t get someone who meets their standards. Hence the going on one date a year to kick the tires, thinking “oh no this person sucks”, and then swearing off it for another year.
>Sarah Constantin: If you’re unhappily single *and* don’t have a good group of friends and an active social life that includes people of romantically relevant gender, then “socialize more and make friends” is probably the answer.
This is true, but it’s also not very helpful. Of course being well-liked and sociable will help you get dates. The question is how to do that?
I have an alternative explanation for "meeting at bars and restaurants" being the only category going up other than on-line. That is the story people adopt when they met on-line but don't want to admit it for whatever reason. It is the only other option on that list that isn't falsifiable to other people you know (the other options would require that you both be at the same school, work the same employer etc.), while anybody can plausibly meet anybody at bar. Also most first dates are at bars so people can reinterpret the question for themselves to make it an "honest" answer 'we were only introduced on Tinder, but we MET for the first time at a bar/restaurant.'
To hit on a small point: I'm in a happy, committed, 10-year monogamous marriage. 6 months after proposal we were deep in the process of wedding planning, fighting with both our families (my wife's mother was very upset we weren't married in a church, my parents felt that I hadn't let all six of my aunts participate enough in the wedding planning), trying to plan a life together, and attempting to lock down various services we'd need before our wedding date.
Also the idea that the first year of marriage should be especially blissful is...suspect. There's an idea of a "Honeymoon period" but I'd be interested to see literature on how long it lasts and whether the end of the "Honeymoon period" is a return to baseline or actually a drop. No matter how much you love your partner, sharing a space with them for the first time (as many married people in the U.S. do) can be *extremely* trying. Navigating the transition from dating to married life is a new challenge, one that I'd expect to lead to a temporary drop in happiness. The bliss came after - once we'd figured out which things were important to us as individuals and which were important to us as a couple.
- 31-year-old (in a few days!) French Canadian currently working to reduce risks from superintelligent AI as an AI alignment researcher.
- I'm 5'9", masculine, straight, and monogamous.
- Hobbies include: playing guitar and singing for fun, martial arts, mentoring people, making friends and talking about AI on Twitter, and experiencing and learning new things.
- Currently in Montreal, but I just applied for a visa to move to the London. I should be moving to London by October-November.
- I want to have children, so I'm looking for someone who is also excited about becoming a parent. I can't wait to form a little garage band and do martial arts with my future kids!
- I hosted a radio show during university, so I can make some sick playlists!
- Looking to effectively contribute to helping create a world where everyone has a chance to flourish!
- Striving for greatness. Living as my ideal self.
- I'm someone who loves fiercely, helps my partner grow, and will go to bat for them.
Some interesting points of contrast with Orthodox Jewish "shidduch dating":
* That price given by Keeper is outrageous, upwards of twenty times what a matchmaker gets.
* Regard a group chat for exes: The idea sounds more problematic than the system where the matchmaker knows the relevant info and can dispense it appropriately. The matchmaker has had conversations with the exes during and after their relationships, has discussed why it didn't work out, knows where the person has issues (or had them previously), keeps track of things, and can communicate it to the other party.
The only thing that worked for me was moving. Partly because I’m not what Berkeley women are looking for. Partly because I had so much baggage there... the bit about “gaslighting” is accurate. Leaving let me reset.
Even a similar city like Portland was a massive improvement for me. Other countries were a bigger bump, as you’d expect, but even another heavily liberal city in the US was 5-10 times better for me.
I would say that the biggest reason people are single is that they don't really want relationships. They want relationships in the same way they want to be billionaires or top performers, in a vague it-would-be-nice-but-sadly-it-is-impossible kind of way. But then it turns out that a committed or even a casual relationship doesn't really fit into their lives, their routines, their habits, their beliefs about the world and their expectations for the future as they are set up. They live their lives as pronouncements into the void. This is a valid life choice, but often people make it without fully knowing they are making it.
Fortunately, making space for relationships in your life is much easier than becoming a billionaire or a top performer. But since it is not happening by itself, a change somewhere must occur. And the only way to make change happen and not be at the mercy of being changed by chance is to revise fundamental assumptions, which is easy to say and hard to do unless you are a reader. Reading deeply teaches you to overhear yourself talking to yourself and recognize the contingent nature and structure of such speech, and then of your existence.
How would another person fit into your daily life, preferably for the better? Do you want them to fit? And how would you fit into their life, preferably for the better? How can you be good for them and they to you? Galaxy brain next-levelling dating tactics don't stem from this questions. Considerations about Ethics and performing plain level 1 generically solid actions such as acquiring new skills or healthy habits do. When you treat yourself and other people ethically, they tend to treat you better as well, and better relationships become possible. That is what good relationships are.
Keeper.ai initially strikes me as a Theranos-style (if not scale) scam, but maybe there's something I'm not getting.
1) Google and Amazon have tons of data on me, every incentive to want to recommend stuff I would buy, and I find that their book, movie, and music recommendations are less than 50% hits, usually much less. So I assume that predicting my tastes is a hard problem.
2) If Keeper has an effective AI solution, shouldn't that be very low marginal cost? The pricing structure would make sense for a very skilled and effective human matchmaker, but seems weird for an allegedly AI solution.
Edited to add: Sorry, Keeper.ai team, I overstated what I meant to say. I should have said "possibly" a scam, and wish you success.
Hi, are you considering leaving a comment on an article about dating?
Are you:
1. Someone who is happily in a relationship and are convinced that if people just did X they would be also?
2. Single, and convinced this is someone else's - possibly an entire gender's - fault?
If so, do us all a favour and don't.
>A 2022 sample of singles
This is 2022, on the tail end of covid, feels like a pretty big confounder to people's dating habits in normal times.
Also, I couldn't find it but how was this data gathered? It mentions dating websites but does that include apps? Everyone I know uses apps like bumble/hinge, almost no-one uses actual websites like okcupid.
I have a pretty large group of friends/acquaintances who are all dating and having casual sex regularly. Some with multiple new partners a month. They are also very far from being patient enough people to fill out any survey. So either I and most people I know are in the 10% (1%?) of hooking up, or there are some data quality issues here.
Also. regarding the app data thing. This is a more representative diagram for most people I know: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fd1qx3733dnkb1.gif
It has been 18 years, possibly to the day (certainly to the week) since I met my one-day-to-be-wife (although it took 2 years before we started dating). Apparently this makes me a dinosaur, but here goes anyway:
Dating apps seem like an incredible waste. Waste of time, waste of energy and (most cursed of all) waste of rejection tolerance. If you wake up today and think “I want to beat someone up”, do you go to a boxing hall or a gym and pick a fight? Hell no. You go to an old folks home. If you want to find clients you don't go to a convention for your field. You shoehorn your way into the convention your potential clients go to (ideally one that makes it hard for you to get in) and start glad handing people.
Yet, this is exactly what a dating app is. But wait, it is worse! Dating apps (by design) let people filter by what they think. I'm not going to spend too much time on “revealed preference” and “people are idiots who don't know what they want”, but good lord are people JUST TERRIBLE at setting filters in general and more so for dating.
You should maximize for quality shot opportunities. Unless you're a legit six one with decent BMI/face/income/education evidence of twitter/the internet/casual conversations suggests dating apps are going to provide very few quality shot opportunities.
What will provide quality shot opportunities is getting out and meeting people, away from the dating scene, where they are filtering for “do I enjoy spending time with this person, do they make me laugh, are we compatible” first, not “is this person I want my friends to know I am dating” (you can re-phrase the 2nd question a lot of different (and more depressing) ways).
Join a club. Volunteer on a charity (ideally one with monthly/biweekly social-ish meetings). Join a sports league (but NOT a singles sports league). Take a class. Become a regular at a maker space. Do whatever it takes to make a few new, casual, friends/acquaintances each month. Any activity that plausible includes the appropriate target gender is fine, of course some might be better than others, so long as you actually enjoy it.
Then, either casually ask people out to NON date activities 0-2 times or explicitly ask them out on a low-risk date (coffee, hiking in a populated part, golf (frisbee or regular), 1 off cooking class. Anything that's short-ish, allows for social interaction and has enough buffer/other people to not be too intimidating.
Do not become a creeper or serial asker-outer. How do you avoid this? First, simply avoid it. If your instincts are so bad (and they might be) that you cannot figure this out I would suggest:
1: No more than 1 ask per monthish per activity group.
2: Do not ask out more than 1 in 5? 6? 10? eligible partners per activity. Eligible partner = plausible singles of target gender +/- a big age range.
3: Do not do too many activity groups per month. 3? 4? Anything over this suggests you're over-applying this advice and using them to look for dates and are therefore risking being a creeper.
If (assuming you're a guy seeking a gal) there are 5 single gals in the approx. age range in some activity, and you ask 2 of them out (unless separated by at least half a year), you're a creeper. If you ask out every other girl that joins the activity, creeper.
The touchstone is that you must be seen by the girls as there for the activity first, social life second, dating third. Even if this is a lie, it is how it should come across. If it becomes activity first, dating second you're on suspect creeper thin ice, and if it becomes dating first you're a creeper.
I suggest this will give you an active social life which on its own will help you (social proof of non-creeper/OK person status). It will also give you many more quality shot opportunities than endlessly scrolling and chatting up people in the highest competition zone possible. This strat also allows network effects to work in your favor b/c if you have social proof of non-creeper status you might get hooked up/set up on dates by people you know. Also, if it fails you have an active social life doing things you enjoy (vs having spent hours scrolling through pictures of people that will reject you).
Post-Conclusion Notes:
1. The sad reality is that a lot of nerd-adjacent guys seem to have both under and over corrected on the dangers of being a creeper. Don't assume you can't ask someone out after you've casually met them 1-10 times and seemed to hit it off, but do carefully gauge the (ahem) market differential and use it to set the ask up appropriately. i.e. the hotter/better the other person is compared against you the more you're limited to “hey, there's a new third wave coffee place opened up, do you want to go some time?”
2. Do assume that if someone says no or fobs it off (without asking you to do something in the next few weeks) they aren't interested at that time and hold off on future asks for 6 months. If they refuse/fob a second time, idk you're either done or need to wait years.
3. Work on your conversation skills. Listen to the other person, then respond. Don't plan your response while they're talking. Do not be the topper. Do not talk over people. It's better to let a moment of silence occur than rush to fill it with something stupid. Pauses while you think seem long (eternal) to you, but to other people are just brief moments. Talk about yourself an appropriate amount. Ask more questions than you answer, but don't be prying. ABOVE ALL ELSE THE SPICE/CONVERSATION MUST FLOW. Do what it takes to let it flow fairly naturally.
4. Self deprecating humor should be deployed with extreme care. It's like when people ask you in an interview (on a television show) “what's your 3 greatest weaknesses” and you have to respond with strengths. It is better to avoid self deprecating humor than mess it up, but in general it can't be stuff you're actually afraid of/that is actually a problem. Humor is hard to explain. If you need a detailed explanation of how to use self deprecating humor, you should simply not use it for a while.
5. Your body odor should be soap, with a reasonable amount of deodorant. I will admit to concerns about the wisdom of anti-antiperspirants, but dates/asks are not the place for those concerns. It is OK to have a non-scented anti-antiperspirant and apply the everloving heck out of it, then do 1 small swipe of original Old Spice per pit (SMALL I SAID). Do not smell bad. Clean clothing, reasonably acceptable shoes and no body/breath odor. If you have chronic allergies you should strongly consider asking a friend the honest/brutal question about your breath odor during allergy season. Allergies/post-nasal drip/deviated septum can cause odor that brushing doesn't fix, and if this is true, you should try and fix it as much as possible (and/or mints).
One potential advice for both men and women is to switch cities (or even countries), if at all feasible. If you're a man, move to NYC. If you're a woman, move to Silicon Valley. If you're gay, move to SF. If you're Mormon, move to Salt Lake City.
Here's a breakdown of US counties by the % of women aged 18-34, as well as the median 1-bedroom rent in each location: https://dpaste.com/7X6S3ART3. 54% of Manhattan (New York county) residents are women vs. only 47.3% of San Jose (Santa Clara county). This might seem like a small difference but if we assume that 70% of women are in a relationship, this means that Manhattan has 2 women for every single man while San Jose has 1.4 men for every single woman. In other words, dating in Manhattan should be **3** times easier than in San Jose.
It's been a while since I've used any of the dating apps. But 10 years ago they were a great way to meet people and find dates, at least in Chicago. Hinge was definitely the best. It's sad to read that it's deteriorated since then. Tinder was always borderline useless.
The way I stood out to my future spouse was by opening the app-conversation with a customized limerick based on what was in her profile. It's a little cringe, and a little try-hard, but it showed a sense of humor, intelligence, and was complimentary to her. A normal "what's up?" message might get a response rate of 5-10% or less. I'd say that writing them a poem multiplied that number by 5 or so.
I understand the hate on the PUA community. But I was a Magic-playing loner for much of college. When I decided I wanted to have relationships, I had nothing to work with. I dove down into that PUA rabbit hole, and didn't find much that worked. But their emphasis on "inner game" was a game-changer. It turns out I just had to be social, confident, and interesting. I joined a bunch of activities and stopped worrying so much about rejection. That probably took me from the bottom 20% of date-ability to the top 30%. That's a huge change! All that I'm saying is the "inner game pick-up artist" stuff works, and it's mostly fairly obvious stuff. It's actually essentially what much of this article was about.
Note that Kenny was off by a factor of 2: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-dating/comment/39004910 . Democrat-Republican marriages still happen -- I'm in one -- but 4% vs. "18% expected by chance" is significant.
My guessy model re: 1-date-per-year = horror for about a year is something like what I experience applying for jobs: I’ll have a productive applying period where I’ll apply to several dozen jobs, then over the course of the next few months I’ll get random interviews for some of them which are always unpleasant and involve not-insubstantial investments in uncomfortable scheduling and travel, then if I don’t hear back from any of them I’ll be pretty discouraged for a month or two until the urgency kicks in again. (Or also yeah this maybe suggests more that people are going on first dates that land them a relationship that lasts at least a year.)
Ditto re: bars as increasing hookup hotspots is that it’s a dominant cultural meme that that’s what bars are for, like I suspect that people are using bars less for the food and socialization in the traditional sense; that it almost switched places with “through friends” suggests to me a scenario where singles are possibly almost exclusively using bars to troll for dates vs hangout spots/socializing/food/alcohol.
Bella Rudd is a national treasure.
Can endorse eHarmony at least as late as 2008. Subscription wasn't cheap and they'll actually full on reject you if you fail the initial screening (which piqued my curiosity after a friend complained about this) but easily the best money I've ever spent; wife got the better deal since we met on one of their free weekends. Your description of Reader matches pretty close to what I remember of their process, it matches you up with a barebones (optional) picture & profile and then goes back and forth revealing more in stages. I remember one round lets you pick out a couple open-ended questions to send to the other person. Either person can opt out at any time, ends with letting you directly message each other if you’ve both signed off on everything. Pretty sure they still exist but no idea if/how much they’ve changed given I haven’t needed them since, would start there again in the worst possible scenario.
In the chart showing sources of first dates (through a friend, work, school, etc) any ideas what "Other" would include to make it the second highest source of dates? Everything I can think of is covered in other categories.
>It is as if people are capable of getting a date, then they go on one and recoil in ‘oh no not that again’ horror for about a year, then repeat the cycle?
Actually, this makes perfect sense if we assume the market is efficient. Anyone who can get someone who meets their standards is going to be quickly removed from the dating pool. The only ones who are left will thus be people who can’t get someone who meets their standards. Hence the going on one date a year to kick the tires, thinking “oh no this person sucks”, and then swearing off it for another year.
>Sarah Constantin: If you’re unhappily single *and* don’t have a good group of friends and an active social life that includes people of romantically relevant gender, then “socialize more and make friends” is probably the answer.
This is true, but it’s also not very helpful. Of course being well-liked and sociable will help you get dates. The question is how to do that?
I have an alternative explanation for "meeting at bars and restaurants" being the only category going up other than on-line. That is the story people adopt when they met on-line but don't want to admit it for whatever reason. It is the only other option on that list that isn't falsifiable to other people you know (the other options would require that you both be at the same school, work the same employer etc.), while anybody can plausibly meet anybody at bar. Also most first dates are at bars so people can reinterpret the question for themselves to make it an "honest" answer 'we were only introduced on Tinder, but we MET for the first time at a bar/restaurant.'
To hit on a small point: I'm in a happy, committed, 10-year monogamous marriage. 6 months after proposal we were deep in the process of wedding planning, fighting with both our families (my wife's mother was very upset we weren't married in a church, my parents felt that I hadn't let all six of my aunts participate enough in the wedding planning), trying to plan a life together, and attempting to lock down various services we'd need before our wedding date.
Also the idea that the first year of marriage should be especially blissful is...suspect. There's an idea of a "Honeymoon period" but I'd be interested to see literature on how long it lasts and whether the end of the "Honeymoon period" is a return to baseline or actually a drop. No matter how much you love your partner, sharing a space with them for the first time (as many married people in the U.S. do) can be *extremely* trying. Navigating the transition from dating to married life is a new challenge, one that I'd expect to lead to a temporary drop in happiness. The bliss came after - once we'd figured out which things were important to us as individuals and which were important to us as a couple.
Interesting overview of the current dating market.
My date-me doc: https://jacquesthibodeau.com/lets-go-on-a-date/
About me:
- 31-year-old (in a few days!) French Canadian currently working to reduce risks from superintelligent AI as an AI alignment researcher.
- I'm 5'9", masculine, straight, and monogamous.
- Hobbies include: playing guitar and singing for fun, martial arts, mentoring people, making friends and talking about AI on Twitter, and experiencing and learning new things.
- Currently in Montreal, but I just applied for a visa to move to the London. I should be moving to London by October-November.
- I want to have children, so I'm looking for someone who is also excited about becoming a parent. I can't wait to form a little garage band and do martial arts with my future kids!
- I hosted a radio show during university, so I can make some sick playlists!
- Looking to effectively contribute to helping create a world where everyone has a chance to flourish!
- Striving for greatness. Living as my ideal self.
- I'm someone who loves fiercely, helps my partner grow, and will go to bat for them.
Some interesting points of contrast with Orthodox Jewish "shidduch dating":
* That price given by Keeper is outrageous, upwards of twenty times what a matchmaker gets.
* Regard a group chat for exes: The idea sounds more problematic than the system where the matchmaker knows the relevant info and can dispense it appropriately. The matchmaker has had conversations with the exes during and after their relationships, has discussed why it didn't work out, knows where the person has issues (or had them previously), keeps track of things, and can communicate it to the other party.
The only thing that worked for me was moving. Partly because I’m not what Berkeley women are looking for. Partly because I had so much baggage there... the bit about “gaslighting” is accurate. Leaving let me reset.
Even a similar city like Portland was a massive improvement for me. Other countries were a bigger bump, as you’d expect, but even another heavily liberal city in the US was 5-10 times better for me.