In the realm of singles, one often contemplates his/her relationship status and wonders when he/she will meet the “one”. Disney-style movies have primarily shaped our view and understanding as to how one will meet their significant other and how they will get married but you can’t help but wonder, how likely is it to happen in real life?
Couple of months after I finished a book called “Algorithms to Live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions” by the co-authors Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, I stumbled upon a 20-minute, Google Zeitgeist Talk, by a Philosopher named Alain de Botton, called “How We Destroyed Our Capacity to Love?”.
I wanted to walk you through some of the ideas about marriage and Love form both sources, and share some of my thoughts on them that might be of help to you.
How do you know when to commit to someone?
Should you marry when you are 18? Should you marry when you are 40? You don’t want to go for the very first person who comes along or the first person who seems to “fit your criteria” because what if someone better turns up later? On the other hand, you don’t want to wait too long or be too choosy because once you have rejected someone, you might not get another chance with them, and your later choices may no longer be as good as the early one you rejected.
Algorithms to Live by presents the concept of Optimal Stopping used in Computer science, but can be leveraged in this particular context. It puts things from a pure mathematical sense that you can read about on your own, but I will share with you the book’s conclusion of exploring such concept and applying it to real life;
You should define a timeframe for which you will starting looking and spend the first 37 percent of your search meeting people without committing to anyone. After that, you should be ready to propose to the first person who is better than the best person out the first 37% you have met so far. 37% was identified to be the point where your probability of being with the best person for you is maximized. Using that method, you have a 58% chance of being with the right person! Mathematically, you can’t increase your chances any further no matter what you do.
Obviously those calculation are associated with a lot of givens and assumptions that you can also read about if you are interested. However, we all know that real life is much more complicated than this and the model really doesn’t help when the best person was in the first 37% but you weren’t committing at that point. Also, it doesn’t factor in the pool from which you can select people, if your preferences are for a particular culture or religious beliefs. Not to mention, people sometimes reconsider their decision to accept someone or reject someone which the model only allows for 1 attempt/potential partner. All of which are mentioned in the book, but let’s pretend for a second that the math checks out and applies perfectly to life.
Statistically speaking, you have 58% or LESS chance of picking the right person… No wonder why divorce rates are so high.
What about my soulmate?
*Alain de Botton enters the chatroom*
Dr. Alain doesn’t talk about the specific statistics of things mentioned above, but rather acknowledges on a high level that you are very likely to end up marrying the wrong person. The reason, according to him, people are basically using the wrong criteria by which they view a potential partner as well as how they view what Love is or should be. This results in either marrying the wrong person, or an unfulfilling relationship. He attributes the wrong criteria to the fact that when people think of Love, they think of romance, and such mentality comes with delusional and unrealistic assumptions that has alot of negative consequences, one of which is sulking. I highly recommend watching the actual talk (referenced below) to get better understanding of consequences.
The assumptions manifest themselves in expecting that your partner must be your soulmate and best friend, that you would be able to finish each others sentences, have the same interests as each other, and must definitely be able to understand one another without effort. Also, you will know that a person is your soulmate when you immediately feel a special attraction to them, and they to you. Expecting that as a demonstration of Love, one must have absolutely no secrets and spend constant time together and that work shouldn’t get in the way. Expecting that raising a family should have no impact on sexual or emotional intensity and that sexual and emotional intensity are the only metrics to demonstrate Love to one another.
Alain de Botton encourages a mindset shift about what constitutes Love. My interpretation of his talk is that Love is not what you learn from movies. It is a skill to be developed and fundamentally starts with the ability to mutually communicate and accepting that neither of you are perfect or is the “one”. There is also no such thing as a normal person, “the only normal person is a stranger” according to him and I totally agree. Each person has their own emotional baggage, insecurities, financial problems, their own craziness. The sooner you put all of such forth constructively, the more successful the potential relationship will be, and your ability to judge whether it is something worth pursuing or not, no matter how unconventional and unromantic it might seem.
The other key aspect of demonstrating Love is being with someone whom you can depend on to give you honest feedback to help you become a better person. People often think that “accepting someone as they are” means “no criticism or feedback in any shape or form”. This is not productive to Love, because the reality is, you will always be internally criticizing, and it will manifest itself in subconscious behaviors that your partner will not understand why you are behaving in such ways. Yes you should accept each others imperfections, but should lovingly remind each other of how each of you can improve and why.
My take on all of this
There are 2 fundamental questions I want to answer for myself and maybe for you.
1- When does one know if they are ready to get married and how to pick?
Maths and statistics won’t do you that much good here. First, one should become self-aware of their emotional baggage, insecurities, financial worries, and their own craziness as much possible by reflecting on how they were raised and what it means for their future. Once you do that, you should learn and be able to communicate those things to your potential partner. Once you get to know what you are dealing with, only then can you make judgement on whether the person is “good enough” for you and whether you can accept their qualities right then and there vs discovering it 5 years into marriage and become resentful and go through a vicious cycle of unhappiness.
2- Let’s say you accept the person for who they, what happens if they won’t accept you?
The worst mind trap you can fall into is viewing that potential person who rejected you as the perfect human who would have solved and relieved you from all your sorrows and got you out of your loneliness. This mentality is recipe for unproductive rage, further sadness, and possibly hopelessness. If you find yourself caught in that trap, know that you got some more maturing to do before you are ready and that rejection was for your own benefit.
Don’t think too highly of yourself and accept your imperfection. Know that rejection can happen at any stage of the process from knowing someone till the day of marriage, know that there is no such thing as a soulmate, and hence you are not missing out on “soulmate”. Know that this rejection allows you learn more about yourself, and that you can make the best out of any future relationship given newly acquired self awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. All of which should give you enough confidence to give yourself a pat on the back for actually taking initiative of being honest and sharing how you feel and what you want and to move on. After all, you need to know that rejection with or without reason is nothing more than another person’s decision. Decisions are influenced by endless factors and no rationale of rejection is enough or complete enough to give you what you think you are looking for. That decision may or may not have to do anything with you at all, as we said earlier, no one is perfect, neither your or their circumstances.
Conclusion
I don’t know how to conclude this, so I will just leave a quote by Carl Jung I found online: “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
References
- Algorithms to Live by: https://github.com/SourovRoy1998/Books/blob/master/Algorithms%20To%20Live%20By%20-%20Brian%20Christian%20%26%20Tom%20Griffiths.pdf
- How We Destroyed our Capacity to Love Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtCtE0f61zo
Useful Other reads
- Be With Someone Who Does These 5 Things For You: https://medium.com/@GoodMenProject/be-with-someone-who-does-these-5-things-for-you-8cdd406ae87c
