Those who know me well are aware that I love to collect many different lenses. I like my frameworks and models; I want to peer through my spyglass, considering a question through X lens, then Y, then Z, feeling out which view rings most true, right now.
I think many of us are like this! We like to play with perspectives.
Lately, I've been collecting lenses on choosing a long-term partner.1 How do you think about who to date? Who is a good match?
(Note: I'm focused on serious dating here. There are seasons where you just need to explore how you like to be fucked. Or when you want to date someone simple and kind and experience low-key companionship. It's totally fine to have temporary dating goals, as long as you're communicating clearly with your partners about where you are. But I'm focused on the long-term question.)
I think most people start by approaching this question with:
(1) Basic approach: filtering 101. Reflect, discover what's most important to you, write it down, and charge forth. The space for what you might care about is large; everyone's list will be unique. You'll probably find a few logistics filters that narrow the stack: gender, mono vs. poly, kids vs. not, geography, pets, income. And then there'll often be some filter around sexual compatibility: are we attracted to each other? Does anyone have an obligate kink?
(These first checks are often more legible, but not always! Some people don't know if they want kids. Don't know what they like sexually. Of course, you might decide you'll filter out those who don't know themselves in these ways.)
After the logistics checks, the field is wide open. Now you really get to define what you want.
Maybe you find you care deeply about shared activities, because you want a life deeply intertwined, or you want to be known through doing. Maybe you care about extraversion, because you've found the costs of dating introverts are too high. Maybe you desperately desire an intellectual match, someone who can play with your ideas for the next fifty years (and contribute new toys of their own). Maybe you want a shared spiritual commitment to self-growth, or altruism, or some other north star.
It doesn't matter what it is. Simply find the factors that you know are core, nigh non-negotiable. Write them down. Don't date people who don't have them.
Filtering 101 is all very well, but it can feel... extremely open. Confusing. How do you narrow down what you want? Separate the preferences from the hardlines?
Here are a few additional models people use to hone in:
(2) Date your best friend. Or, okay, maybe not literally your best friend. But a very, very good friend. One of the best, or clearly with the potential to be. Someone you can spend almost endless time with. Someone you can flop around and be your weird ugly self with. For some, being with them feels as easy as being alone.
This is fun & good in itself, but there are pragmatic reasons for this approach too! After all, sex drives fade; eventually you're just hanging out in your old age: you want to be hanging out with a bud. Also, even before then, there will be long stretches where sexual chemistry is low, and you want a deep friendship to carry you through those times. And you want someone who you can be your whole self around, and you feel their love for and joy in you — otherwise, what are you doing? Hiding part of yourself for the rest of your life?
(3) Date the builder. Your co-CEO. They share your vision for what kind of life to build together. And/or you trust that there is enough alignment for both of you to joyfully co-create that vision as you go. This person will balance you out, ensuring that, combined, the two of you have full coverage over the skills needed to build the life you want. This is The Couple as Firm model. You two work through shit well. There is a deep amount of trust in your partner here — you trust them to be "in it" with you, to not shy away from the odd disharmonies. Those are simply problems to be worked through. You trust them to be dedicated to the process.
Those models might help you hone in on who feels like a good long-term match as you filter. But there are also some approaches that are (at least a bit) orthogonal to filtering 101:
(4) Wait for true love. Like in the movie Imagine Me & You. When you know, you know. Someone will come along who makes your soul sing. It will usually be fast; it will be undeniable. It will feel qualitatively different from anything you've felt before. It's worth holding out for.
(I'll note I am suspicious that this is often NRE, and one can easily go awry chasing it. And yet, people report being in long relationships, for many years, that they describe this way, and claim stayed that way — long past the time when NRE should have faded.)
(5) Date Alice. In Looking for Alice, the author explicitly notes that you won't know exactly what you're looking for. They still seem to recommend doing some amount of reflection on traits you want to avoid, and on who excites and attracts you (in an endorsed way), but they note...
"... hers is the right attitude: you do not like a category. You like individuals. And you're not born knowing which kind.
So what do you do? You go talk to a thousand people (increasingly less randomly sampled) and see if there are any patterns in who makes you feel excited and alive and true and heard. And then you start hanging out with people like that."
There is still some "when you know, you know" in this. You will find yourself inexorably pulled towards certain individuals. But there's also agency — you can practice dating others so you have self-knowledge about what works for you. You can intentionally hang out with people you like, hoping that you'll meet even more of them through the social graph. There's filtering, but it's led by the heart and gut. And when you feel the pull, follow.
A couple of models that seem less fleshed out, but which come up in conversation:
- (6) Date the person who inspires you to be your best self. You don't want to be drawn into smaller versions of yourself, living out of alignment. Date someone who helps you live up to your ideals and become the person you want to be.
- (7) Date the person who makes you feel seen. Who seems to know you, sometimes better than you know yourself. Who lets you have those resonating conversations where yes, yes, we are exactly on the same wavelength, seeing the world together, sharing, one perspective, knowing each other. You touch into that spiritual experience of connection, bridging the chasm between alien entities.
Most of these frames are based on how you feel with another person, rather than specific traits to look for. But they all have different emphases: self-actualization or connection or easy authenticity or trust. And so forth.
I find myself drawn to different frames on different days. At the very least, I think it's helpful to see them and notice "ah, if I date this person, I'll be leaning into this frame, and possibly sacrificing on that one. Maybe there's a way not to sacrifice. Maybe there isn't, and that's okay. Or maybe it turns out that's not the frame I want to lean into after all."
When I was younger, I followed flashes of romantic or sexual feeling more. I now find it helpful to think more categorically, with more heuristics — I trust those feelings less, especially at the beginning of relationships. As a result, the builder frame is more attractive than it used to be, as is the best friend frame (which at times has felt a little unsexy to me). But the frame I feel most drawn to right now, writing this out, is the Alice frame. I'm surprised by this — I didn't immediately love the article when I first read it. Maybe I didn't understand it; I probably still don't! But laid out here, it feels like a beautiful mix of analytical thinking and following one's heart and wisdom.
To be clear, I'm not saying that frame is the one to always use. The others are helpful too. I'm just pleasantly surprised to have the experience of updating, coming around, seeing deeper beauty in something I dismissed too quickly.