compatibility/matchmaking round 2

it's finally happening

Bob Thompson, Untitled (The Miraculous Draught of Fishes), 1961

Hi guys! The second batch of Bookbear Express matchmaking is finally open. The form will close next Sunday on September 22nd or whenever we get 1000 people—last time it filled up pretty quickly.

Some changes we’ve made based on feedback: platonic matching is now opt-in, people will be given each other’s phone numbers instead of emails, you’ll provide out a little blurb about yourself that will be shared with your matches, and you can specify the exact age range you’re open to dating. We will also be getting matches out significantly faster—a week after the form closes.

This time we’re charging $5 to incentivize people to reply to their matches. Obviously, if you start texting someone and they seem awful, you’re free to not meet up with them, but it ruins the trust element of the experiment if people never give it a shot. If for some reason you’re unhappy about the experience post-matching, feel free to email me and I’ll immediately refund you.

I really enjoy reading Modern Love, watching people talk about first dates on TikTok, and hearing about my friends’ love lives. There’s something about the impenetrability of love that moves me. Very often two people get together and I think, Of course, that makes perfect sense. But then sometimes two people get together and I think, Why? What do they talk about about when they’re alone in bed? (Well, of course they might not be talking all.) I like that in a time where we have more data on each other than ever before we are still far from solving compatibility. And I like that regardless of what’s happening in the discourse (dating apps suck! all single people are narcissists!) people continue to fall in love all around us.

You know that James Baldwin line about how reading makes us feel less alone because you think you’re experiencing something unique and then you discover in a book that it happened to Dostoyevsky? The magic of love is that evidence makes no dint on it. Every single person who’s madly in love believes despite all evidence that they are the first person in human history who has ever felt this way. Fuck Dostoyevsky, fuck Anna Karenina—I’m the only one who has ever or will ever experience this. Love is about the opposite of loneliness, but love is also an inherently alienating experience. C and I were discussing how people literally retreat from society when they fall in love—people who swore mere months ago that they would live in a group house until they die suddenly make plans to shack up the forest with only their Beloved. You go to dinner with them and their eyes are glazed over. You have been demoted, maybe only for six months, but also maybe forever.

It’s infuriating but it’s also glorious. I have to confess here that part of the appeal of love is seeing people tunnel into states of temporary insanity that are, well, perhaps the most sane states of all. Here at Bookbear Express, I think we can agree that there’s a good argument to be made that the meaning of life resides primarily in connection. What we can be for others—do for others—mean to others. I sort of go around living my life like I’m maniacally in love at all times, which basically means that when other people fall in love their values suddenly come in alignment with mine. Finally, we see the world in the same way.

*

When someone asks me at a party what type of person I’m attracted to, I say “INTJ.” For someone who doesn’t necessarily love disclosing facts about myself, it’s the perfect response: it’s totally true in that everyone I’ve ever dated tests as an INTJ on Myers-Briggs, but also doesn’t mean anything at all. Every guy in SF is an INTJ, and I’m certainly not compatible with most of them.

What actually matters in matchmaking is the one thing about your romantic taste that’s totally distinct. I used to say that I only fell in love with people who really liked the Philip Roth book American Pastoral. Then I thought, That’s too arbitrary.

I think it’s really important to like the way someone smells. And the texture of their skin.

Apparently, people are attracted to those with similarly complex vocabularies. I think that conversation is more important to me than anything else. I think talking is fundamentally erotic, which is why friendships are fundamentally romantic. And the point of a good conversation is to actually get somewhere. I’ve dated people where we just couldn’t get anywhere when we talked. There wasn’t this sense of fluidity, of breaking through. We never ended up anywhere new—we just circled the same streets repeatedly.

You don’t need actual novelty to feel like a relationship is always new. But you do need to keep unearthing more depth. And while you might be able to find anyone interesting if you’re interested enough, you certainly can’t achieve the same amount of depth with every person. It depends on chemistry, compatibility, intellect, emotionality, attachment styles—there I go again, reduced to truisms. It would be easier if there was one thing to pin it to. Like an affinity for a certain writer. Well, sometimes it’s simple, but mostly it’s not.

*

The frustrating thing about matchmaking is that if you go to great deal of trouble to find someone exactly who they say they want (“A 6’2, brown-haired, athletic doctor who lives in New York and has two dogs”) they will more likely than not come back to you saying, “Well, that’s close, but something’s not quite right about this guy. We just don’t click.”

The inexplicability that’s the magic core of love also makes setting people up insanely difficult. People are not reliable narrators of their heart’s desires. You have to listen to what they’re saying, but you also have to study their actual behavior and their previous partners to understand their real preferences. But knowing who they’re attracted to is not enough, because the reason you’re setting them up at all is because all of those previous relationships haven’t worked out. So you also have to come to the table with your own personal theory of what they need.

*

Research suggests that opposites do not necessarily attract. People tend to get along with those who share their core beliefs and pastimes; they also choose partners of similar age, attractiveness, IQ, socioeconomic status, political values and religiosity. Couples do not necessarily match up when it comes to extroversion/introversion, height, weight, happiness and neuroticism. This lines up pretty well with what I’ve observed in those around me.

Anecdotally, I know multiple couples who strongly physically resemble one another. It’s sort of weird but it also makes perfect sense. I’ve also noticed that my friends tend to date people who share their own values. If they’re athletic, they look for similarly athletic people. If they like to read, they look for a bookworm. That’s why I think values-based matching can work—though it might seem intangible or impractical compared to the cold hard truth of physical attraction, I suspect that it’s a better way to find people who pass the tent test. As in, could I happily live in a tent with this person for the rest of my life and not be bored to death?

*

I watched a podcast yesterday that discussed when you know if you love someone. One host said that for them, it tended to be when the urge to say “I love you” started spontaneously arising. In my own life, this tends to be a good rule of thumb: when you find the words leaping out of your mouth against your will.

I’ve had this happen with friends as well as lovers—the late night goodbye when you feel the declaration slip out furtively. And then you think, Am I allowed to say that? And then you think, Well, I mean it.

We don’t fall in love so many times in our lives. Or maybe we fall in love every day, but the magnitude is not evenly distributed. Like the Fleetwood Mac song—Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice.

The term “infinite optionality” is thrown around a lot when modern dating is brought up. Lately I keep thinking about how we have finite time, finite room for error, and finite attention to give. But the good thing about love is that you only have to get it right once.