So in the five weeks left before Evan’s wedding, he was going to help me learn to broaden my filter. We agreed to meet Mondays at noon, but first, he asked, did I have any dates lined up? If he was going to coach me, we’d need to find me some men.
I told him about Wendy, the matchmaker, and how she hadn’t found a new prospect yet.
“No problem,” Evan smiled. He was going to take me into the trenches of online dating.
THE LESS-IS-MORE EFFECT
Honestly, I was never any good at online dating. I’d either rule out guys based on one criterion (too into punk music) or I’d try to be “open-minded,” only to realize that I couldn’t get excited about these guys once we started a correspondence. In the end, I kept searching for the same qualities I’d always looked for—but which never ended in my finding the person I wanted to spend my life with. I started to wonder, did I even know what I wanted?
A few weeks before I called Evan, I’d spoken to Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. He’d written a book called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. I told him about my situation. He said he’d heard it all before—in fact, he’d studied it.
“The idea that people know what they want is quite ludicrous,” he said right off the bat. According to Ariely, not only are we confused about what we want in the moment, but we fail to take into account that our desires change through time as we deal with life circumstances like illness, financial issues, or children.
If we don’t know what we want, he said, dating can be hard, but online dating is even harder. After all, Internet profiles make what you’re looking for seem objective (based on data in the profile) when actual connection is extremely subjective.
It’s this illusion of objectivity that dooms us.
“The less you know about a potential mate before you meet, the better,” Ariely said. “It leaves less room for the fantasy to build. When online daters meet in person, they have so much prior information that there’s little room for discovery. And once you see a flaw in the other person, the fantasy is ruined. So instead of giving the person a chance, you go home and log on to the computer to find someone else who looks good on paper.”
I told Ariely that when I’d done online dating, I always wanted to get a lot of information upfront so I didn’t waste my time. In fact, I wouldn’t respond to profiles if they didn’t have enough information. Was I doing it all wrong?
Ariely said yes: Knowing too much about a person sight unseen makes it harder to become interested in him. In one study, he told me, online daters were given traits of a potential partner, like the ones you’d find on an online dating site. When participants were given a higher number of traits, they perceived the person to be less similar to them than if they were given a smaller list of traits. The more traits you have knowledge of, the more information that gives you to rule someone out.
It’s what he calls “the less is more effect”: If you describe yourself in more ambiguous terms in your profile, you’ll be more likable.
“If you write, ‘I like music,’ and I’m reading your profile, I immediately assume that you like the kind of music I like,” he said. “But if you tell me specific music you like, we might have different interests, and that’s less attractive to me.”
ONLINE JUGGLERS
It’s not just too much information that makes online dating confusing—it’s too many choices. Aren’t there five new “matches” that arrive in your e-mail box each day? Even if none of them is remotely interesting, doesn’t it still give you hope that of the next five, one might be The One?
Match, I noticed, seems to encourage daters to keep as many irons in the fire as possible. As soon as you send an e-mail to a potential mate, the “mail sent” confirmation screen automatically flashes the message, “Take a look at other members with profiles like [the person you just e-mailed]”—then shows you several more people who might interest you. Before the first person even receives your e-mail, you’re given new choices to consider.
When that happens, Ariely said, we short-change people in a way we wouldn’t if there were fewer options. In one study, he and his colleagues got data from an online dating site and looked at people they labeled “jugglers”—those who were managing fifteen or more communications at once.
“The jugglers were writing very bad-quality e-mails to each other,” Ariely said. “If you had to write twenty e-mails, how good could they be? So they probably seemed less interesting to the people they e-mailed, because of these rushed, bad-quality e-mails.”
At the same time, he said, because the stakes are so low, we have a hard time letting people go. If all it takes to keep someone in consideration is an e-mail, why not correspond with that person, and ten others? In the real world we may be considered too picky, eliminating people prematurely before getting to know them, but in the online dating world, we might be casting too wide a net, unable to eliminate anyone.
“When these people over-juggle,” Ariely said, “they don’t have the attention to give to the one person who would really work best for them. But because they don’t know who that one person is, they keep juggling and end up with nobody.”
That’s exactly what happened when Ariely followed these jugglers’ outcomes. He looked at people who’d exchanged phone numbers or set up dates, and found that people who juggled less not only wrote longer, more thoughtful e-mails—they also ended up going on an actual date. The jugglers, meanwhile, sat home at their computers, juggling.
Okay, so what happens once people meet? Ariely didn’t follow these particular subjects, but he did find, more generally, that these kinds of meetings don’t go as hoped for because of all those exaggerated expectations.
“But they never learn from this,” Ariely explained. “Each time, they don’t stop and think, ‘I’ll have more realistic expectations next time.’ Instead, they overexaggerate every time!”
That’s because despite the level of detail in these profiles, it’s very hard to tell what a person is like from what is essentially a catalogue. Or as he put it, “It’s like reading the ingredients on a box of food and imagining what it would taste like.”
And that’s assuming the list of ingredients is accurate. Part of the problem with online profiles is that we don’t always have perfect insight into who we are, or the ability to describe ourselves well in a questionnaire. I remember looking at my personality assessment on eHarmony a few years ago and feeling like it didn’t capture who I was at all. Was that because I answered their questions with a lack of insight, or because their assessment couldn’t quite capture the nuance of my temperament? I was left with a very postmodern dilemma: I wouldn’t want to date the kind of guy who would want to date the kind of woman this test revealed me to be. I’d become the Groucho Marx of online dating.
To avoid these problems, Ariely and his colleagues created a different kind of online dating site. Instead of having a profile, each person was represented by, say, a red square or a green triangle, and you’d move around a virtual space. If you were in close proximity to someone, you could start talking. You could wander through an art gallery together and talk about the exhibit. You got to know each other’s personalities. You basically went on a virtual date in this virtual world—not knowing anything about each other.
Then, Ariely said, these people all had to go to a real-life speed dating event. At the event, some people had been on Ariely’s site before and some hadn’t. When it was over, each participant was asked who they’d like to go on a second date with. The results? “They were twice as likely to want to go on a second date if they met through our site,” Ariely said.
“How tall you are and what your hair color is—that’s not what matters, even though people say it is,” he explained. “I think in dating the issue is that we don’t know what’s important to us.”
THE M&M TEST
I was starting to think that I had no idea what was im
portant to me, either, especially when I ran my dating history by Eli Finkel, a newly married social psychologist at Northwestern University. I told him that I’d always sought out certain types of men, but they didn’t necessarily make me happy in the long-term. Was it possible that I didn’t know what traits I actually wanted in a mate?
“If you’re like most people, then yes,” he said.
Finkel told me about an experiment he’d done with his colleague Paul Eastwick to see if the characteristics that people said they required in a partner were really what they ended up finding important.
First, they asked single people to report on how much they were looking for certain characteristics—from physical traits to earning potential to warm-heartedness. Subjects rated these on a scale from 1 to 9, in terms of importance. Then they had these people do speed dating. After the meetings, you’d rate each person in the room on the characteristics you’d said you were seeking. Then you’d rate your romantic interest in each person. And if later you went on a date with one of these people, you’d report on how much you enjoyed the date.
Turned out, people’s stated preferences didn’t do a good job of predicting who they wanted to go out with or had a good time with.
According to Finkel, “There was a lack of correlation between what people said they wanted on the questionnaire, and what they actually picked when they met a real, live person.”
Why is that? How can we be so out of touch with what we really want?
Finkel explained it using my favorite candy from childhood, M&M’S.
“If you ask people why they like M&M’S,” he said, “they might tell you it’s because of the candy shell. But if you give them another candy with the same shell, they won’t like it as much as the M&M. So it’s not the shell. It must be something else that they like about the M&M.”
In other words, we know that we like the M&M, but we can’t explain why.
What does this have to do with dating? Everything, Finkel believes. “People can accurately tell you what they like, but not why. So if a woman says, ‘I’m attracted to this man,’ that’s accurate. She is attracted to him. But if she says it’s because he makes money, that might not be the accurate explanation. It might actually be because he’s generous.”
That’s the mistake many of us make: Our must-haves and deal-breakers are the “what,” when they should be the “why.”
Eastwick, Finkel’s colleague, explained it to me like this. You might think, “I’d like to meet somebody who is a lawyer and makes a stable living.” But really, you’d be just as happy with somebody who’s a composer and works project to project. How can that be? Eastwick says it’s because you really wanted someone cultured and intellectual. You thought you wanted a lawyer because he has a stable career, but really it was that kind of mind that appealed to you.
Eastwick believes that the “what/why” problem is compounded by another problem: having standards that are too specific. He brought this up when I mentioned a friend who’s an art historian at a local museum and wants a guy who “gets” the art world.
Eastwick laughed. “He may not need to be into art to the same degree she is. It sounds like what she really wants is someone intelligent and thoughtful. So if the guy is interested in politics and watches C-SPAN, that’s a trade-off she’d probably be happy with.”
No wonder Internet dating seems so hard. If we aren’t accurate about what we want, we’re probably looking for the wrong things.
It’s not surprising, then, that according to a 2005 Pew study on American online dating habits, roughly half of the singles who had tried online dating had actually gone on a date as a result, and only about a third of those had formed long-term relationships. So if only a fraction of that third of a half got married, the odds weren’t great. But it wasn’t impossible. I knew several people who married someone they’d met online.
The question was, how could I increase my odds? I was counting on Evan Marc Katz, the dating coach, to help me figure that out.
8
Mondays with Evan
Session One: The Percentages
“Just tell me,” I said to Evan when we were sitting by my computer at our first dating coaching session, “do you think I’ll find someone I’ll be happy with if I do this?” Evan was asking me to “drill down” to what was really important in a spouse, and I was having trouble.
Evan had told me to sign up with two dating sites the night before. Now, we were filling in my search preferences with an eye toward realistic percentages.
On the desired height range, I wanted to check off 5’10” to 6’ tall. Evan reminded me that I’m 5’2” and, he said, the average height of the American male is 5’9” or so.
“How important is height for long-term happiness?” he asked. He had a point. I moved it down to 5’7”. Evan pushed further. “What does it matter whether a guy is a head taller than you or two inches taller?”
He suggested broadening the range to 5’5”, but I typed in 5’6”. I knew it shouldn’t matter, but it did. I couldn’t picture myself with someone 5’5”.
“I don’t want to date someone I wouldn’t marry,” I explained.
“You don’t know who you’re going to marry until you date them,” he replied. “You could meet someone who’s five feet five and cool and quirky and the height wouldn’t matter.”
I left it at 5’6”, and Evan raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t facing the reality of the percentages.”
“The reality sucks,” I said.
“The reality doesn’t suck,” Evan said. “If you didn’t have the fantasy, the reality would be just fine.”
Next we selected my desired age range. I was proud of myself for choosing 35 to 48 years old.
“See, I can be flexible,” I said. “That’s a fourteen-year range.”
Evan laughed. “People are always flexible on the end that doesn’t matter. They’re flexible on the younger end instead of where it really counts, which is on the older end. It’s not a real sacrifice to say I’ll go out with someone younger or taller. How about increasing it to fifty-two?”
I typed in 50. This kind of thing went on for another ten minutes, with me “stretching” as far as I could in every category and Evan shooting me dubious looks.
Then we were ready to start a search.
I tapped on my keyboard and dozens of men popped up. I checked out a few and ruled out one who looked interesting but listed “any” as the desired education level for his prospective mate. In other words, his partner’s highest level of education could be high school.
“Why would someone with a graduate degree want to date someone who only has a high school degree?” I asked. “Obviously, he doesn’t want to date his equal. He doesn’t want someone smart.”
“Or maybe,” Evan said, “he’d prefer to date someone highly educated but he’s being open-minded because he thinks he might meet a smart woman who took a nontraditional path and didn’t go to college to get where she is now. I don’t think he consciously said, ‘High school—I need one of those!’ I think he just clicked on the ‘any’ button. Maybe he’s simply being nonjudgmental. You’re judging him for being nonjudgmental?”
I guess I was. By disqualifying a guy who doesn’t discriminate, was I being overly discriminating?
We looked at another profile—a guy who was reasonably cute, age-appropriate, and had a thoughtful profile. But when I read what he was looking for in a partner, I gave Evan the thumbs-down sign. This guy talked about romantic baths together, romantic walks on the beach, romantic Sunday mornings, romantic this and that. I figured he wouldn’t be a good match for me, a single mom with little time for that kind of romance. I was looking for the kind of romance that comes in day-to-day family life, in a contented domesticity. I needed someone who understood the mundane life of a parent with a toddler.
Evan smiled. “You’re taking th
is as a literal representation of who this person is!” he said. “He probably spent five minutes answering the question in an idealized way. Just because he didn’t say, ‘And if you’re a single mom, I’ll rub your back after you finish cleaning up the puke,’ you’re not even going to consider him? If you dissect every single person this way, nobody’s going to be qualified to date you.”
I thought about my percentages and moved Mr. Romantic onto my “hotlist.” Then I clicked on the next profile. The guy wasn’t super-attractive to me, but he was doctor who does transplants and, given my own background in science, he seemed really interesting. I read more. He grew up on the East Coast. I liked that—check. He’d been married before—check. He had kids—check. His hobbies were boating, motorcycling, travel, sports, bingo, and canasta—bzzzz!
“Bingo? Canasta?” I said. “He’s only forty-five, but he acts like a sixty-year-old. What is canasta?”
“You’re nixing this guy based on his hobbies?” Evan asked.
“It’s not just the bingo. Motorcycles are the biggest turnoff to me,” I explained. “It’s a whole subculture I find really unappealing. And look—he says he ‘reads’ books on tape. He doesn’t even read, and I’m a writer.”
I could tell that Evan had been through this before with his clients. He raised his eyebrows, flashed a knowing smile, and waited for me to finish my rant.
“You’re trying too hard,” Evan said. “You’re micromanaging this in a way that’s going to handicap you. Your evolution to finding a happy relationship is in understanding that we can’t change the men out there—they are who they are—so something has to give on your end. I’m not telling you to go out with this guy, but he’s a perfect example of a guy who’s not being given a chance.”
Marry Him_The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough Page 11
