We have so many options and we’re horrible at analyzing them. We go on boring dates and we’re quick to move on to the next person.
Stack the deck in your favor. Go on interesting dates. Follow the “monster truck rally” theory, and do things that are going to help you experience what it’s really like to be with this person. Don’t just stare at each other across the table while sipping a beverage and making the same small talk you’ve made a thousand times about siblings, hometowns, and where you went to college.
Also, have faith in people. A person may seem just okay, but if you really invest time in the relationship, maybe they’ll be greater than you assume.
Think about it in terms of the music of rapper Flo Rida.* When you hear his latest song, at first you think, Goddamn it, Flo Rida. You’re just doing the same thing again, song after song. This song is nothing special at all. And by the tenth time you hear it, you’re like, FLO!!! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! THIS IS A HIT, BABY!!!
In a sense we are all like a Flo Rida song: The more time you spend with us, the more you see how special we are. Social scientists refer to this as the Flo Rida Theory of Acquired Likability Through Repetition.
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The other thing that has stuck with me is how important it is to analyze options in the real world, not just on the screen. When I was finishing up this book, I got contacted by a woman who had been in the audience of a stand-up show I did in Michigan in September 2013. During the show I was discussing texting and asked if anyone had met someone recently and had been in a back-and-forth. This woman, who was sitting in the front, raised her hand, and I invited her to come up to the front of the stage and share her experience.
She told me she’d met the guy about a week earlier and had been messaging back and forth. She had met him through friends of friends at a bonfire. He lived in her apartment complex, and after meeting her, he left her a note on her door that said, “Dinner tomorrow?” and his apartment number.
She wrote, “I’m busy,” on the note and put it back on front of his door.
He then placed the note back on her door and wrote, “You’re busy tonight? How about Monday, Wednesday, or Friday?”
She then took the conversation to Facebook and sent him a message that said:
He responded: “No worries. Family always comes first.”
As always, you can tell so much by these messages. Her extended list of excuses, including that really intense one about the dying grandma, did not bode well for this would-be suitor. I asked the audience to clap if they thought she actually liked this guy and would go out with him when things “settled down.” There was a smattering of claps. When I asked if people thought she didn’t like him and they would never go out, there was massive applause. The audience knew this lady wasn’t ready to go out with this guy.
After hearing this, she said, “Well, I’ve seen him around since and he’s not terrible,” and that she would “maybe” go out with him. It was the last I heard of this situation.
Then in September 2014, a year later, the woman was able to get in contact with me. She said that after we read through the messages, she realized she should give him a second chance. They started dating, and now, a year later, they were getting married!
It was pretty insane to hear.
And in the context of this book I think it’s an important story to remember. With all our new tools for connecting and communicating, there’s still nothing more useful than actually spending time with a person face-to-face.
Often, when you’re out in the single world meeting people, you meet someone you like, get their number, and put it right in your phone, transforming them into an “option” that lives in your device. Sometimes you and that option engage in some phone-based interaction and you meet up in person. But sometimes that exchange never happens. That potentially cool, exciting person dies there, buried in your phone.
When I was actively dating, there was a woman I’d met in a bar. For whatever reason, our text conversation fizzled and we never met up after our initial meeting. We ran into each other at a mutual friend’s party years later and really hit it off. I felt dumb. Why hadn’t I ever followed up with this great person?
After writing this book, I think I know why. It’s probably because I was busy chasing other options. I didn’t text her and left her to die in my phone.
For me the takeaway of these stories is that, no matter how many options we seem to have on our screens, we should be careful not to lose track of the human beings behind them. We’re better off spending quality time getting to know actual people than spending hours with our devices, seeing who else is out there.