That distance thwarts intimacy and fosters loneliness, not just in terms of our isolation from ourselves, but from others as well.

Cause if there’s anything we know about our online selves, it’s how quickly and reflexively distance opens up between the ‘Should’ and the ‘Is’. Meaning, there’s what we know we should want from a potential date, there are the right things to desire–what we may have even convinced ourselves we need–and then there’s what we actually want. It could be simple ignorance or delusion at work here, but I’d wager self-justification plays some role too. When you watched their actual browsing habits-who they looked at and contacted-they went way outside of what they said they wanted. But pretty soon they realized that the kind of partner people said they were looking for didn’t match up with the kind of partner they were actually interested in.Īmarnath Thombre, ’s president, discovered this by analyzing the discrepancy between the characteristics people said they wanted in a romantic partner (age, religion, hair color and the like) and the characteristics of the people whom they contacted on the site. As recounted in Dan Slater’s history of online dating, Love in the Time of Algorithms, the first online-dating services tried to find matches for clients based almost exclusively on what clients said they wanted. While we may think we know what we want, we’re often wrong. The paradox of choice appears to be wreaking havoc too:īut people don’t always know what they’re looking for in a soul mate, unlike when they’re picking something easier, like laundry detergent. Suffice it to say, the article contains low anthropology gems galore. This myth–of “the One” out there for each of us–not only puts incredible pressure on any potential partner to be everything we ever wanted, but on our own ability to know what we want. What’s clear is that, despite our claims about having shucked off the ‘supernatural’ when it comes to making life decisions (see disheartening graphic below), the “soulmate” myth has completely taken hold of our culture. His opening observation is that great paradox of modern relationships: we are spending more time and money searching for a mate than any time in human history, yet having a harder time finding someone to settle down with than ever before. Aziz takes as his jumping off point the fact that his parents, who had an arranged marriage, seem to be a whole lot happier than most of his peers, or their parents. Time Magazine published a precis of the book the other day, and while it’s certainly funny, what’s surprising is how serious it is. Instead of a stand-up routine on paper, he’s done something unexpected, teaming up with a sociologist named Eric Klinenberg to pen something on the state of Modern Romance. Don’t know where I’ve been, but comedian Aziz Ansari, AKA the artist formerly known as Tom Haverford, has a book coming out next week, his first.

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