How to Know If You've Met The One

Listener Anna from Toronto wrote in and asked how she coud determine whether the person she's dating is the right match for her.

For millennia, we’ve partnered within our tribe, our village, or our neighborhood. If we were lucky, the number of eligible partners we had to choose from reached maybe a dozen. Fast forward to today, however, and we can connect with untold numbers of people with the right-swipe of a finger.

But choice can be a double-edged sword. It breeds the illusion that we can find our soulmate if we sort patiently and diligently enough. In turn, this leads to second-guessing, high-pressure first dates, and rampant perfectionism in pursuit of The One.

So what does a diligent mate search look like in the 21st century? And how do we know when we’ve found The One? Do birds suddenly appear every time they are near? Do stars fall from the sky every time they walk by?

The bad news: there’s no foolproof formula.

The good news: there are some rules of thumb to follow (though you can still find true love even if you break them all).

This week, here are 6 ways to find your match:

Tip #1: Like Pairs With Like

When looking for a mate, people are, shall we say, optimists. A study in the journal Science Advances examined heterosexual online daters across four major U.S. cities. They found that people have a general idea of how attractive they are, and from there, tend to punch up. The study found that both male and female mate seekers tended to contact profiles who were about 25% more attractive than themselves, and when doing so, strategically compensated by writing a longer message. 

Despite all this optimism, in the end, couples tend to “match” on all sorts of variables, including attractiveness. This is a phenomenon called assortative mating and it’s the overall tendency for all animals, from poison dart frogs to black-headed gulls to humans, to pair like with like. 

We humans often, but not always, pair up by age, education, social class, body height and size, and many other factors, including attractiveness.

There are, of course, many exceptions to this rule—ugly rock stars marrying supermodels is just the beginning—but in general, your perfect match will be exactly that—a match on many different variables.

Tip #2: Shared Values Set You Up for a Shared Life

Even more important than matching on physical and...

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