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If you are a bit leery about pinning what is likely the most important decision in your life—who will be your partner through good times and bad, possibly the parent of your children—on a stranger's inclination to swipe left or right based on a snapshot of you, rest easy. Just as the social world is hurtling full tilt to force decisions more and more on less and less, so are forces moving in the opposite direction. They don't garner the hoopla that digital devices do, and they don't pretend to turn your desire into a fast game either, but the trend is real nevertheless.
The latest bit of evidence is the newly published book Deeper Dating by New York psychotherapist Ken Page, a PT blogger and wise informant on relationships and the search for love. Page argues that the ways our contemporary culture instructs us to find love—looks and gimmicks and games on digital devices or games of playing hard to get or acting confident—are really paths to loneliness. They attract the wrong people, keep us mired in disappointment and/or rejection, and intensify insecurities.
And while looks can indeed play a role in attraction, physical attraction is much more complex and malleable than a single swipe would suggest. Instead, Page says, what is most important is that we all have unique, quirky selves, and it is only through recognizing our essential features—often forged through difficult experiences—that we can feel authentic and attract the partners who will meet our deepest needs.
Page is not the first to counter the claims, implicit and stated, of dating apps such as Tinder. University of Texas psychologist Paul Eastwick took direct aim at the common belief that mate value is summed up in looks or charisma or some other desirable quality visible to observers. Rather, he found in a study reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, what matters is a person’s uniqueness.
Uniqueness is revealed over time, as two people get to know each other, and trumps such factors as attractiveness and success. A seemingly quaint notion, Eastwick conceded in a related New York Times op-ed article last year.
In a conversation, Page disputed the basic idea that dating apps and websites increase your odds of finding a mate at all. In fact, he says, numbers decrease your odds.
Studies have shown that the act of dating online changes users in a few ways. First, the existence of large numbers of people on any app or website (forget, for now, that many may be married or just playing) induces users to think that there is a near-infinite pool of perfect people out there, and the ideal mate is just one more click away. It actually inhibits choice and deters commitment to any choice.
Dating apps like Grindr and Tinder focus attention on “your scratch-the-itch sexual type,” Page offered, rather than on someone with whom the excitement grows. “Are you looking for a bond or a hookup? It’s like looking for prescription glasses at a yard sale. The way you look for love influences what you get."
He instructs those searching for love to look first at their own deepest nature, and especially at those features about which they are most sensitive. Those are the connectors to love. It’s an act of bravery to declare who you really are—Page is inclined to refer to your unique qualities as your gifts. But it is the only way to find those who are likely to recognize and appreciate you—that is, those with whom you can find durable intimacy.
