A few months ago, I wrote an article called “Dating From an Evolutionary Perspective.” I received far more feedback on it than I expected. Some of it came from close friends, but surprisingly, quite a few people who were only acquaintances, or people I barely knew at all, ended up reading it too. At one point, I was even told that people I did not know were reading it in Powell Library. So, for better or worse, that essay may have served as some people’s first impression of me.
I should probably clarify something before going any further. That article does not represent, word for word, some comprehensive philosophy that I live by. It was really an attempt to describe one feature of modern dating. Technology and social institutions may have evolved much faster than some of the mating instincts we inherited from much earlier periods of human history. This time, I want to talk about dating from a much more ordinary perspective. Less evolutionary psychology, more observation and statistics.
Two disclaimers first. I am not trying to act like I know everything about relationships, nor am I trying to give anyone dating advice. This is simply how I currently think about relationships, written largely from a guy’s perspective. None of the examples or arguments here should be read as commentary on my own relationship either. I prefer to keep that part of my life private.
Second, parts of this essay may sound unusually utilitarian or materialistic. That is intentional. Obviously, love cannot actually be reduced to a spreadsheet. Human relationships are much messier than any model can capture. But just like in my previous essay, I think there is something interesting about temporarily stripping away the romantic language and looking at dating through incentives, selection, probability, and decision-making.
The word dating has become strangely ambiguous. Going on a date does not necessarily mean two people are dating. A situationship may or may not count as dating depending on who you ask. Some people would even argue that once two people enter an established relationship, they are no longer “dating” in the conventional sense because they have entered a different stage. Strictly defined, dating might therefore mean the period somewhere between the first few dates and the stabilization of a relationship. It is probably also the stage where two people are learning about each other the fastest.
But I am going to use the term more broadly here. This essay is really about the process through which two people meet, become interested, form a relationship, and eventually decide whether that relationship is worth committing to. I think about this process in three broad parts. The first is what you should actually look for. The second is how you should approach the dating market. The third is what I think the healthiest end state of dating looks like.
1. She has to like you
This sounds so obvious that it almost seems stupid to write down, but I think it gets overlooked surprisingly often. If you are a guy looking for a relationship, the girl has to actually like you. There are broadly two ways this can happen. The first is that you become interested first. You initiate conversations, ask her out, spend time with her, and she gradually becomes more interested as she gets to know you. Maybe she was initially neutral toward you, but through repeated interaction, attraction develops. The second is that she is interested first. Maybe there is an immediate spark, or maybe you simply notice that she behaves differently around you. You pick up on it, decide whether you are interested as well, and eventually make a move. The starting points are different, but both situations have to converge toward the same outcome: mutual interest.
I think this matters more than people sometimes realize because a relationship will eventually produce disagreements. Schedules get messy, people get stressed, and sometimes one person simply annoys the hell out of the other. If she genuinely likes you, those moments become much easier to deal with. And I do not mean this in an exploitative sense. Someone liking you is not a license to take advantage of them. If anything, the opposite is true. Having another human being who is under no obligation to care about you voluntarily decide that they do is something worth being grateful for. Family relationships are partly given to us by birth, while romantic affection is voluntarily chosen. That makes it valuable.
So the first filter is extremely simple. Do not build a relationship around someone you constantly have to persuade to be interested in you. If every interaction feels like you are trying to convince someone to give you another chance, that itself is useful information.
2. Build a right radar
I think one major problem with modern dating is not simply that people are unwilling to commit. It is that many people have poorly calibrated selection mechanisms. They say they want one thing and repeatedly select for another. Someone might say that he wants a serious and stable girlfriend, yet every time he becomes interested in someone, his selection mechanism is almost entirely driven by looks, flirtation, or how exciting someone seems in a party environment. There is nothing inherently wrong with valuing those things. The problem is inconsistency. If you only want something casual, optimize for something casual. But if you claim to want a serious relationship, your selection mechanism should actually detect traits associated with the kind of relationship you say you want.
I think of this as having a radar. Every time you interact with someone, you are collecting information. You notice how she treats people. You notice whether she follows through on things. You see what she cares about and how she reacts when something does not go her way. Over time, you start forming a much better picture of who she actually is. You do not need to interrogate someone over dinner to learn these things either. In fact, ordinary environments can sometimes reveal more than formal dates do. You might meet someone through a school club, at the library, or at a social event. Even a normal group conversation can tell you a lot about a person.
Over time, your radar should become better calibrated. This matters because everyone has different preferences, so there is no universally optimal partner. The important question is whether the things you instinctively respond to are actually aligned with the life you say you want. If you want stability but repeatedly chase chaos, then the problem is not necessarily the dating market. Your own selection mechanism might simply be pointing in the wrong direction.
3. The “future mother” test
People often describe why they like someone through individual traits. They might say she has a good personality, that she is smart, or that she is attractive. All of those things matter, but I think there is a broader question that compresses many of them into one test: Would I want this person to be the mother of my future children?
Obviously, this question assumes you want children. If you do not, substitute whatever long-term role matters most to you. The point is not motherhood itself. The point is forcing yourself to evaluate someone through a longer time horizon. Once you do that, you stop asking only whether someone is fun to spend time with right now. You start asking whether you respect her judgment and whether you could actually build a life with her.
That does not mean someone has to be conservative, traditional, or fit some predetermined stereotype of what a “good mother” is. For example, I do not think meeting someone at a party or hooking up early automatically tells you anything definitive about whether she could be a good long-term partner. I take a fairly liberal view of that. People should have the freedom to make their own choices with their own bodies, and I do not want to apply standards to someone else that I would not apply to myself.
What matters is the larger picture. If you put the future-parent lens onto someone, it becomes easier to distinguish between traits that are temporarily exciting and traits that still matter ten or twenty years later. Physical attraction still matters too. I am not going to pretend it is irrelevant. If you are going to spend your life with someone, you should probably find her attractive. Biology matters, and physical traits are partly heritable. But appearance should be one variable in the model, not the entire model.
4. Think in distributions
This is where the statistics analogy becomes useful. Suppose you wanted to estimate the average size of a fish in the Pacific Ocean. You probably would not catch three fish near the shore, calculate their average, and confidently declare that you now understand the entire Pacific fish population. Your sample would be too small and probably not representative. You would want a much larger sample taken across different locations and depths. As the sample becomes larger and more representative, your estimate of the underlying distribution becomes better.
I think dating works similarly. Not in the sense that people are literally data points, obviously, but in the sense that your judgment improves with exposure. If you barely know any women, your perception of what is normal or exceptional is going to be based on a tiny sample. Your estimate of the “dating market” will probably be terrible. But if you know many women across different contexts, you slowly start building a more realistic distribution in your head. You get a sense of the mean and the variance. More importantly, you start understanding what is actually common and what is genuinely rare.
This is why I think guys should cast a wide social net, and I mean that socially rather than sexually. Know more women. Be friends with women. Talk to people you would not necessarily date. Meet people in different environments. There does not have to be some hidden intention behind every friendship. In fact, there should not be. The point is simply that exposure improves calibration and gives you a better sense of what you actually value.
If after several years of meeting many different people, you encounter someone who feels genuinely far out on the right tail of your personal distribution, then statistically speaking, it might be worth taking that seriously. Could someone even better appear later? Of course. But that is where people sometimes get trapped by optionality. The fact that a theoretically better person could exist does not mean continuously searching has positive expected value. At some point, the possible benefit of finding someone marginally better may become smaller than the value you could create by investing more deeply in an already exceptional relationship. In finance terms, sometimes you should stop screening and start underwriting.
5. Say no to games
One part of modern dating that I understand intellectually but still find ridiculous is the amount of strategic signaling people engage in. People deliberately wait before replying, leave messages unopened, or try to make themselves appear less interested than they actually are. Maybe some of this works in isolated cases, but I think deliberately playing these games is usually negative expected value.
If you see a message and want to reply, reply. If you like someone, make your intention reasonably clear. If you think someone is cute and want to know her better, ask her to get food. The reason I prefer straightforwardness goes back to the first criterion. She has to actually like you. If someone is genuinely interested in you, a reasonable amount of directness is unlikely to scare her away. And if simple, respectful interest is enough to make someone disappear, then you have learned something useful very early. That information has value.
I once heard someone say that most hesitation is ultimately rooted in uncertainty, and I think there is something true about that. If someone continuously gives you vague answers or keeps you around without ever moving things forward, then you should at least consider the possibility that the answer is simply not strong enough. Maybe she enjoys the attention, or maybe she genuinely does not know what she wants. Either way, you do not need to sit there trying to solve the puzzle forever. There are billions of people in the world, so at some point it is perfectly rational to move on.
6. Infinite optionality?
One reason I think situationships have become so common is that modern dating creates the illusion of endless optionality. Dating apps put thousands of people behind a screen. Social media constantly exposes us to attractive strangers. Moving between schools, jobs, and cities means there is always another group of people around the corner. The result is that people can become reluctant to commit because commitment means giving up options.
The human brain is also extremely good at imagining the upside of options we do not currently have. What if the next person is hotter? What if she understands you better? What if there is someone who fits you more naturally? Technically, there is always someone better along some dimension, and that is exactly the problem. If you optimize indefinitely, you never stop.
At some point, dating has to move from a search problem to an investment problem. Before commitment, your job is partly to search and compare. After commitment, your job changes. The relevant question is no longer whether there could theoretically be somebody better somewhere in the world. The relevant question becomes whether the relationship in front of you is worth building. Those are completely different optimization problems, and confusing them is probably one reason people struggle to commit.
7. The ultimate stage
I think the healthiest stage of dating actually begins when dating stops being the center of your life. As a guy, you should have your own stuff going on. You should have work you care about and interests that you genuinely enjoy. You should have friends you like spending time with. Your life should already feel meaningful without romantic validation.
That does not mean becoming passive. If you only spend time with the same five guy friends every day, then obviously your probability of meeting someone is going to be low. You still have to put yourself in environments where you meet new people. But there is a difference between intentionally expanding your social circle and designing your entire existence around chasing women. Ideally, you build a life that is already good, meet many different kinds of people along the way, become better at recognizing compatibility, and then take someone seriously when you find someone genuinely exceptional.
There is also one idea I strongly believe in: you tend to attract your own kind. Not perfectly, obviously, because life is noisier than that. But over long periods of time, the kind of person you are affects who is attracted to you and who stays around you. If you want someone intelligent, you should probably make yourself more interesting. If you want someone disciplined, become more disciplined yourself. If you want someone mature, then you should hold yourself to the same standard.
I think this creates a kind of double return. First, you improve yourself. Second, you improve the quality of the people you are likely to meet and connect with. There is another benefit too: your radar gets better. The better you understand yourself, the easier it becomes to understand what you actually value in somebody else.
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