What is love supposed to be like? How will we know when we meet our ‘perfect’ partner?
Hollywood, in the form of romcoms, has given us very strange ideas about what is appropriate when it comes to meeting and mating with potential partners. The rules which they whimsically lay out for us, through the vehicles of overconfident men and spineless, dithering women, would end up in disaster if applied in real life. For the record, for most non-sociopathic men, if you say you’re not interested, he is going to believe you; don’t be surprised if he actually leaves you alone, rather than showing up outside your bedroom window with a boom box!
When we are looking for happy, compatible, long-term matches, we don’t tend to meet them the way they do in romcoms, whether it is someone whom we have made bets with our friends about, have pretended to have kids in order to meet, or have been found by our 8 yr. old son from a call in radio show.
In this blog, I will discuss two, of the nine important steps, from my course, ‘Finding a Perfect Partner.’ Two important factors to consider when searching for well-suited matches are commonality and proximity.
Commonality is critical in our quest to find a partner. While the well-known saying, ‘opposites attract’ is an old favourite, is it actually true? Probably, not. Instead, it should be ‘attraction increases as similarity between partners increases’. People tend to be attracted to people who are similar to themselves.[1] It is even advantageous to the relationship that our partner also enjoys seven-course tasting menus at poncy French restaurants, or would rather sing karaoke than go to a jazz club. By them sharing similar outlooks and interests, it helps to legitimise our preferences. It also increases the ‘we are on the same wave-length’ appeal or, if you are a die-hard romantic, the ‘soul-mate’ ideology.
Proximity is also important when finding a good match, because when we are near these ‘like-minded’ people, the number of interactions we could have with them increases. Another benefit from frequent sightings of the cutie in red, is that we will like him or her more. Research has shown that we prefer people whom we see more often, even if they are strangers. This is called the ‘mere exposure effect’[2]
So, while commonality and proximity are important factors, the ideal is when they overlap. We often find people whom we have things in common with are already in our immediate proximity. They are sitting at the table next to us at our favorite restaurant, they are doing a downward facing dog in the row behind us at our local yoga studio, and they are in the same queue while buying vegetables at the neighborhood Saturday market. Open your eyes, the people whom you are well-matched with, are doing the same things that you’re doing, and most likely, in your proximity. Your own neighborhood is the best place to begin your search. So this weekend, I recommend sitting outside your favourite cafe: when looking for love, you need to see and be seen!
Jean Smith is a cultural and social anthropologist – an international expert in human attraction, body language and how we flirt with one another. She will be leading 'How To Find the Perfect Partner' on 27 September and 7 November at The School of Life. For more details and to book, click here.
Occasionally, in living life in the fast lane, we do not quite manage to meet up with our destined "soul-mates", which I suppose is a good reason to take what you can get at the time. However, if you don't get anyone to live your life with in a reasonably-civil partnership, really, it is not so much a "big issue" as much as the constant results of an inconstant irrelevance being played out in real time, and there can be no other remedy for that but death, which must be a good thing eventually, as, after all, death ultimately pays all debts, personal or otherwise.
Posted by: Drew Byrne | September 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM
Happyness is a warm gun fit snug in your favourite holster hombre!
Posted by: Pistollero | September 19, 2011 at 01:57 PM