Two: You lose the initial discovery period of getting to know someone because you are so connected and familiar already. This can be an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is you get to prescreen everyone through friends of friends, but the downside is that you lose that fun of getting to know someone. In Monroe, Emily reported, “You already know their life story, so you don’t even have to go on a first date. You have already prejudged them before you’ve even gone out.”
And finally, if you do go out with someone and it goes badly, you have to deal with the fact that you’re going to see that person all the time. Compare this with a place like Los Angeles, where Ryan, twenty-three, said that he could go out with someone and, if it went badly, be fairly confident he would never see them again. “It was almost like they were dead. Like, in a way, you murdered them in your mind,” he said. Damn, Ryan, let’s chill on the mind murders! But I understand his sentiment.
What about expanding the pool of options with the Internet and other social media? Were any of these singles using online dating? Smartphone swipe apps?
In Wichita people were shier about online dating. There was still a stigma, and with such a small pool there was a worry that people would see your profile and judge you.
Josh, from Monroe, decided to give Tinder a try: “I set [the range] for ten miles at first because I want to make this quick. Two people pop up, and I’m like, no [he swiped his finger to the left], no [he swiped again], and then . . . it was done. And I was like, Damn, I thought there’d be more. Can I get those back?”
Others had more luck. Margaret, one of the few Wichita singles who had tried online dating, said, “I think that the online dating thing, what I’m finding is that there’s so much choice, I’m like, Oh my god. All these guys could be great.”
Another dater also tried Tinder. “I started in Wichita but ran out of people after just a week or so. I then went to Pennsylvania, near Penn State University, for a few days and decided to test it out there. I felt like I could swipe through people for years. This just showed me how limited options were in Kansas.”
Of course, not everyone was disappointed by the lack of options in these small towns.
One gentleman in the Monroe group, Jimmy, age twenty-four, had a more positive attitude. Whenever someone expressed frustration with the lack of options in the dating scene, Jimmy would insist that you simply needed to invest time in people to really get to know them.
“If you’re patient and you know what you like, you’ll find what you like in another person. There’s going to be things you don’t like about them. They don’t clip their toenails. They don’t wash their socks.”
I told Jimmy I felt like he could find someone with clean socks and trimmed toenails, and maybe the bar was set a bit too low.
“The point is there’s always going to be something that bothers you, you know? But it’s up to you,” he said.
This positive attitude was echoed in Wichita as well. “I feel optimistic about Wichita,” said Greg, twenty-six. “I know that there’s people here that would surprise me. You have to put a little bit more effort into the relationship. But it’s still there somewhere.”
“I agree,” said James, twenty-four. “There’s still gold here. You just have to look hard enough.”
It was a beautiful thing to hear. The attitude of these guys was to give people a chance. Instead of sampling a bunch of jams, they had learned how to focus on one jam and make sure they could appreciate it before they walked away.
The more I thought about that approach to dating, the more appealing it became. No matter how many options we have, the real challenge is figuring out how to evaluate them.
After my conversations in Monroe and Wichita, I thought about how popular online dating is in New York City and L.A., how almost everyone in all the focus groups there used the sites, and the stories like the woman who was Tindering on her way to a date to try to find a better date afterward.
Maybe we are turning into the people from the job study, trying to find a crazy, unattainable job.
Maybe we are trying to meet every single person in order to be sure we have the best.
Maybe we have it all wrong.
Maybe we need to have a little more faith in humanity, like our positive buds in Wichita and Monroe.
? ? ?
Look at my dad: He had an arranged marriage and he seems totally happy. I looked into it and this is not uncommon. People in arranged marriages start off lukewarm, but over time they really invest in each other and in general have more successful relationships. They are more invested in the deep commitment to the relationship, rather than being personally invested in finding a soul mate, which can tend to lead to the “Is there something better out there for me?” mentality.
ANALYZING OUR OPTIONS