When to stop dating and settle down | Hacker News Reader

When to stop dating and settle down

washingtonpost.com

48 pointstintinnabula58 comments

"Wait to long and all the good ones might be gone". The older I get, the more I see what a fallacy this kind of thinking is. A lot of the "good ones" often exit marriages and long-term relationships to better themselves. On the other hand, the "good ones" that stay often stop becoming "good ones" and settle. I found dating to be about concentrating on yourself and your own development, then things kind of took care of themselves.

The older I get the more I'm fooled by prospective partners. When I was younger, the girls I was interested in were people I'd gone through life experiences with: school, general growing up, etc. But now, in my thirties, I'm meeting people randomly. And I'm realizing that character is pretty easy to fake (for a while). I knew that the girls in my past had character, because I watched them grow, overcome hurdles, and so on. But meeting people in your 30s removes all context and -- I'm finding, at least -- that people who lie and cheat and who are generally bad actors are really hard to distinguish from those people who don't act like that.

>I'm finding, at least -- that people who lie and cheat and who are generally bad actors are really hard to distinguish from those people who don't act like that.

This is a great example of how easy it is to misinterpret stuff in English.

If someone is really good at faking good character, doesn't that make them a "good actor"? :-)

We could say that the phrase "(good|bad) actor" has a high collocation, so that it has a higher likelihood of meaning something specific. Also, we could disambiguate by using alternatives like "poor actor" (bad at acting) and "bad agents" (immoral people).

> A lot of the "good ones" often exit marriages and long-term relationships to better themselves.

I would not consider someone who exited a marriage for the sole purpose of bettering themselves to be one of the "good ones". The more apt term would perhaps be "selfish" (this assumes that both parties accepted the conventional terms of what a marriage implies). On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with ending a long-term relationship to better one's self — no permanent commitment has been established.

Personally, I want a partner who actively chooses to stay with me every day. Not one who settles.

So, for me, a good one is absolutely somebody who exits a long term relationship as soon as it isn't optimal enough for them anymore.

I find this very interesting, as it is more or less directly opposed to the traditional (sic) framing of marriage as for better and for worse; and it explicitly foreground self interest where traditional marriage is/was often a contract at least as much about family, business, or social interests, as personal benefit.

Restated, this view asserts that marriage, or, the partner, are of value only in as much as they remain beneficial on a limited horizon extended by limited extrapolation to future goods.

That sounds to me like precisely the same sort of short-term-results focus that is increasingly being criticized for producing non-desirable behaviors by public corporations beholden to hit their numbers, regardless of long term costs, externalities, etc. etc.

I am NOT being critical, btw. This is a total valid and rational formulation, and it has refreshing clarity.

That said at a personal, anecdotal, level, I can report after 15 years of marriage (and 25 together) with a partner, that there seem to be good reasons for the traditional formulations to have evolved as they have.

E.g. that there is great value when the market is down (e.g. under the decade-long stress of parenting young children) is knowing that your partner has committed (is stuck) to you, even when you don't have the resources to give them your best self.

We all err; disaster strikes; forgiveness takes time; sometimes it will take more than a day to heal.

But YMMV :)

I see nothing wrong with that, as long as you and your partner are both clear on that point before marriage occurs. The problem materializes when there is a mismatch on what "marriage" means to the two people involved. As long as neither party reneges on the terms that were mutually agreed upon prior to the marriage, the particular nature of those terms is largely irrelevant.

Exactly.

Which means that the terms they are on with their ex, are an even stronger indicator of how much of a "good one" they are. Communication skills are important. Foresight to agree on things before hand is also important. All great symptoms of someone who will make a good partner.

Someone trapped in a bad marriage <<< someone on excellent terms with their ex.

Funny you say this.. A friend of mine basically is playing the long game with a few of his huge crushes (who are married). He stays in touch with him, remembers to send thoughtful emails on their b'day, Christmas hoping they'll divorce one day. And when they do, the first person they'll jump ship to will be him. That's his thinking... Although, he's married too currently, so there's that.

That is messed up and if I was the current spouse on either side of that, there would be a major problem.

Further, divorces are horrible messes, even in the best of circumstances. To "hope" that for anyone else is even more messed up.

Well, clearly the kind of low self-esteem psychopath who keeps track of past crushes in the hopes of weaseling his way into an affair/relationship with women who have already proven they are less likely to make suitable partners than baseline, doesn't have much regard for what society has deemed "messed up".

Wait, how have the women proven they are less likely to make suitable partners than baseline?

Are you basing this off the assumption one of those women eventually divorces? Divorce doesn't necessarily mean someone is an unsuitable partner.

I only kinda know the games/rules in America. In America this is wrong. On the other hand, what do I know. It just seems weird.

I'll tell the world one thing, I found out about my character that I'm not proud of. I found "the one" a few years ago. She was sweet, caring, had brilliant foresight, knew people, wasen't materialistic, smart, put others before herself, etc. I would have died for this woman. She was the one I measured the others by.

I ran into her at an office a few weeks ago. I didn't recognize her. I talked to her for close to an hour. She didn't have those qualities seemingly left.

I drove home, and asked--still asking myself; "Did I project these qualities on her because of her looks--years ago?

I met her just after a severe life crisis. She was a coworker. Could I have projected these qualities on her because she was so stunning? I'm still questioning myself. I really didn't think I was that shallow. I actually, didn't think, I was shallow in the slightest, but maybe I am?

It the simple "halo effect", where good looking/attractive people are attributed other positive qualities that they don't really posses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Plus, given some limited information about a person, we tend to fill it with "wishful thinking" and assign all kind of positive attributes that don't really exists.

On street parlance this is called "putting the pussy on a pedestal". This is a very common thing that most men (and/or women) do when they are young.

>A lot of the "good ones" often exit marriages and long-term relationships to better themselves.

Second marriage divorce rates are 67%. Doesn't this strategy imply a fair bit of medium to long run risk?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intelligent-divorce...

I agree on the bettering yourself bit.

"concentrating on yourself and your own development"

Agreed. Always baffles me to see people complaining that they can't find "a good guy/girl" as if it was self-evident that they deserve a good partner in a first place. What do you bring to the table? Why would a "good guy" want to be with you? Work on yourself first, I'll give that a +1 :)

This is a rather horrible thing to say.

Unless someone is themselves a "bad person", then why shouldn't they be able to find a "good guy/girl"? Why should they have to bring anything special to the table for that? Shouldn't there be a ready supply of good datable partners, if most people really are generally good as many people like to believe?

Of course, the real problem is that lots of people aren't willing to settle for just anyone, just because they're a nice person. They want them to be attractive, have a decent job, not have any serious baggage, etc. So what happens is they complain about not being able to find a "nice" or "good" guy/girl, but when they do meet them, they don't meet their other requirements, which may or may not be realistic or too picky. I mean, if you're an athletic guy and you meet some nice girl who weighs twice as much as you, I don't personally think it's wrong for you to not be attracted to her. However there's a such thing as being too picky and unrealistic, like people who reject someone because they don't have an advanced degree, or rejecting someone who was married before when you're over 40 yourself.

But I would hope that finding a "good" person should be a basic requirement. I don't know about you, but I sure don't want to date anyone who's evil.

I think you're willfully misinterpreting the parent comment. When someone says "Why can't I find a good man/woman", they usually mean your third paragraph. The parent poster likely agrees with you.

There is something that really bothers me about your comment. I think it's the expectation that the universe should care about you.

The longer a person has been "dating" without settling down, or been in a failed marriage or two, the less likely that person is a long-term suitable partner compared to baseline. Of course the difference in likelihood may not be all that great, and if you find a partner who gives you other reasons to think they are suitable for you, you should go ahead.

But, to think that the population of people who have already demonstrated a lack of either desire, or ability, or both, to form a lasting intimate relationship with another human, is a better sample to draw your prospects from, than those who have not demonstrated these qualities yet, is a basic arithmetic fail.

>"Wait to long and all the good ones might be gone".

This assumes there are not new good ones entering the dating pool, either by aging in or by maturing/developing enough to cross the line from not good one to good one.

I think the best thing about this problem/solution is that it encourages people to date more people [as a rule]. ie don't settle for the first one that likes you back

The main flaw with this is that relationships aren't an ordered set. I don't even know how I'd rate my relationships in order. Either a relationship works or it doesn't. I married the first person I found where our relationship just never stopped working, even after a few years of living together.

edit: It also ignores the fact that you yourself are going to change as you date people. Some of the relationships that didn't work out for me, didn't work out because I was terrible at being in a relationship, and that doesn't factor into the equation at all. It sort of presumes you're some perfect relationship oracle.

(which isn't to say that the math isn't interesting, because it is, I just think anyone that takes the math as an actual model to use in their life is being silly).

Girls rejected 25 year old me because he was an idiot.

Girls rejected 30 year old me because he was an asshole.

35 year old me wasn't rejected.

Or:

25 Yo girl rejects guy because she thinks she can do better

30 Yo girl rejects guy because she thinks she can do better

35 Yo girl keeps guy because she thinks she is running out of time to form a family and have kids

You could have been the same idiot + asshole during the whole time. Reality, most likely, is a combination of both scenarios.

You are assuming that the girl's age changes, but it really doesn't have to for the situation the parent describes to be true -- the skill of not being an idiot can (far) more than adequately compensate for a ~15 year age gap... But it might be different for those who didn't start out as idiots :)

Mine's even weirder, I'm bad at dating cause my dating list is rather small (only one other person) but still here we are 3 years in almost. Every case is unique, though you'll find some similarities in some.

The article addresses the unordered set problem. Did you really read the whole thing?

"There’s the risk, for example, that the first person you date really is your perfect partner... If you follow the rule, you’ll reject them anyway. And as you continue to date other people, no one will ever measure up to your first love, and you’ll end up rejecting everyone, and end up alone with your cats."

"Another -- probably more realistic -- option is that you start your life with a string of really terrible boyfriends or girlfriends that give you super low expectations about the potential suitors out there... The next person you date is marginally better than the failures you dated in your past, and you end up marrying him. But he’s still kind of a dud, and doesn't measure up to the great people you could have met in the future."

"So obviously there are ways this method can go wrong. But it still produces better results than any other formula you could follow, whether you’re considering 10 suitors or 100."

Ordered set meaning you can compare them and come up with a "total ordering."

The point is that relationships can't be boiled down to a single number or objective metric.

There's an assumption in the use of any formula that there's an abstract, objective reality out there that you can't change. When it comes to relationships, that's false. You contribute 50% of what goes on in a relationship; how you act very often changes the reality that you're trying to evaluate.

(FWIW, many people dislike feeling like they're always being judged and evaluated, and would find someone who tries to rank-order all their partners very unattractive. Thus adopting any formula at all disqualifies yourself from a majority of partners, and the folks who are left will be those who probably like the idea of rank-ordering partners themselves. Good if you're mathematically-inclined and looking for someone else who is too, but many people seek emotional connection in a relationship.)

Order here roughly refers to the idea that for any two suitors, you can say which is better (or that they're equal).

When I was in middle school a family friend (and Microsoft engineer) advised me to spend my teens and twenties dating as many people as possible and give every relationship a numerical rating, then settle down with the first person who exceeded two standard deviations above the average.

The advice was mostly in jest, but I think it says something interesting about how tech people look at the world.

[Edit] Suppose I should have read the article first since it's basically about exactly this.

Sounds like he was giving a high level explanation of the 'secretary problem'.

Since an alternate name for it is the marriage problem, I guess it's not too far off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

In 1968 I was a freshman at U.C. Berkeley with a part-time job at the Computer Center. I had dated since high school, but never had a steady girl friend. I met a young lady who was also a U.C. student and who also worked at the Computer Center. We found each other quite engaging, were married early in 1970, and are about to celebrate our 46th anniversary. We did not perform a mathematical analysis, but we felt a mutual attraction, affection, and desire to share our lives, and we are very glad we acted on it.

I'm 26 and I've never even figured out how to start dating. Why are y'all in such a hurry to stop?

I couldn't recommend Mars and Venus on a Date more highly. I know the sample size is ridiculously small, but 5 out of 5 people I've given this book to have gotten married within a year. (These were also people who were looking to find someone to marry)

It sounds like none of them were with their future spouses when you gave them the book. I may be cynical, but marrying after less than one to two years of dating doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't survive long on either planet.

I basically started dating at 26. Download some dating apps. Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Bumble, ... Use them, meet some people. Ask lots of questions. See what happens. It's easier than you think!

Heh. I might look into dating once I have free time. Currently, I have none.

(Also, I'm gay. That might make things much more difficult.)

Would like to see this adapted to angel investing...

Like the investor wants to invest $1m per year, and will look at n companies over the year. The investor only has short time to accept/reject any particular company - s/he can't wait until the end of the year to decide everything. So what's the rule for accepting/rejecting the ith company?

...and to make it more complicated, what fraction of the $1m should be invested in the ith company.

...furthermore after 5 years of experience, how much better can the investor pick. Maybe s/he should not invest the full $1m the first year, etc.

I firmly believe that the only way the-general-we will get to the point that we are having better relationships is when we stop worrying about being in a relationship so much. People have a lot of anxiety over the idea of being single, and I think this makes people stay in bad relationships longer than they should. If you don't fear being single, it's easier to wait for The Right One.

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Clearly the number of eligible partners is also limited by the number of people you can date in one lifetime.

Or limited by how many people you could date in that age range who would likely still be interested in you until you reached a certain age. I have no data on this, but I'm willing to guess that most 23-year-old girls won't want to be dating an 80-year-old man.

Tell that to Hugh Heffner?

Wow, this is pretty poor analysis. You're casting your net far too wide, and also if you're basing your numbers on Tinder swiping, you're making the big mistake of thinking that the women in your local area are similar to the women worldwide. Sign up for Tinder Plus and start swiping in someplace different; if you're in some nice metro area in the US, try some place on the opposite side of the country, in a rural area, and see what you think of the women there. Hint: I swipe left for women who have pictures of themselves with rifles and dead deer. Those women will be more common in some locales than in others. (Same goes if you're into such women: you're not going to find many women like that in the NYC area.) Better yet, set your location to someplace like Mumbai or something. See if there's anyone there you have anything in common with.

Face it, you're probably going to only be interested in certain types of women, who come from certain cultures. I'm going to guess, for instance, that a conservative Islamic woman from Saudi Arabia is not going to be of interest to you, nor would a village-dwelling subSaharan African woman who lives in a mud hut.

Finally, most people want to date someone who lives reasonably close to them so they can meet them in person and get to know them. That limits you more than anything.

So, instead of ~700M women in your age range, that should cut it down by a few orders of magnitude.

And speaking of Tinder, you missed the other part: the women have to be interested in dating you. How many of those women on Tinder have "liked" you? Probably not that many. And out of those, how many have actually responded when you messaged them? Probably only a fraction, based on my own Tinder swiping. (A lot of people there don't seem to be serious about meeting and dating.)

When you consider all the real-world factors that people use to gauge a mate's viability and set a minimum standard, the pool of dateable people becomes much, much, much smaller.

The math can't really tell you to settle down: it assumes future knowledge as to the number of people you are going to end up dating. Then in the same breath it suggests a strategy which will yield a stopping point that is less than the number of people you guessed you would end up dating.

If there are ten people you will end up dating as your guess as to how many you should date then apparently you now stop gathering information after dating about 4 people. Lets say the next person meets the criteria gained through the first 4 dates. Then this firth person is the stopping point. You have now dated five people.

So really according to the math you should have actually stopped gathering criteria at roughly two people. But then you could have settled for the third.

So in that case you would have only needed to date roughly one person to gather criteria. So now you could have ended up getting matched to the second person.

And if you were matched to the second person then the criteria would have been roughly one person.

Basically, the length of the data collection process and the resulting selection both depend on each other.

You're thinking about it slightly wrong.

You want to know the number of possible people you might date. These are "dateable candidates."

If that number is "n", then by the constraints given, you don't want to end up actually dating each and every one -- if the last one isn't a match, you're screwed.

We can try to ground this with an example. Suppose you're a female, and you know that you want to marry someone to conceive a child together. Now, [suppose] you have until you're ~40 years old to have a kid. Then you need to find your ideal suitor slightly before that.

So now, if you imagine you'll meet 10 "dateable candidates" per year, and you're just under 30, then you might estimate n to be 100.

Note, the method doesn't guarantee you'll stop shortly after the 37th dateable person you meet because it might take much longer until you find someone better than the first 37.

But at least you know that you've given yourself the best chance at finding the best person to have a kid with [under the dowry problem restrictions].

But then we are back to the initial problem: we are just guessing how many people we are going to date. So its still not really true that the math supports it when dating in actual reality. There is no reason to choose two, three, four, or any other number based on math alone.

There are other assumptions that this model of dating makes that also aren't well founded. For example, the probability distribution of the candidates probably isn't going to be uniform: a person who has dated one person versus someone who has dated fifty is going to have a lot of biases to the selection that the person who dated only one person didn't have at that time.

What I'm getting at here is that this isn't math giving an answer. There are many different places where a person has to make leaps of faith in order to accept this model. And a person also probably needs to make a definitively incorrect guess to start things off.

So if someone were to be wondering if they are being an idiot for not dumping the person they are with, who they like, for the sake of appeasing this math model? They could be prudent: and it wouldn't be going with what is supposedly going to give them a 37% shot at finding their best match. It would be not breaking up with the person they are dating.

It's a math problem. You make some assumptions, and then you solve the problem with respect to those assumptions.

Of course all models of the world are flawed. But some are useful. If you're wondering which restaurant you should stop at on your walk from a to b but aren't familiar with the area, you might assume you should pick the next place better than all previous after walking a third of the way home. That would be a reasonable application of this model.

Regarding your last point: I wouldn't base serious life decisions exclusively on an "optimal game theory" move. That would be nuts! This obviously doesn't perfectly model reality, so why act like it does?

The limitation I see with applying this method is that you need to know the total number of potential suitors at the start. How can you accurately estimate this if you don't have any past experiences to base your estimate on?

the Washington Post has really gone down hill since Bezos bought them

You must be single :(

37% of what? equal what? did I miss the suggested number? I see that it's dependent on the number of people that you are considering, from 10 to 100, but that leaves a difference of between 4 and 40 people to date. How do we know how many people, total, we would date, when we are just starting?

I get the feeling that this article only has half the math.

As an aside, I've heard that the optimum number for this equation is in fact 12. So 12 is the 38%. But this article doesn't confirm that - as far as I can tell.

It probably depends on your starting age and how long before you really want to get married (women have biological restraints and unless you want a large age difference men do too), and how long you'd date before accurately rating.

12 is probably too high. That would mean you'd date over 30 people. People who are single their whole life don't seriously date that many people.

The article suggests 11 as the number of suitors (as an assumption, not conclusion). That's probably fair, maybe even too high.

So you should settle for the best partner (of any previous) after number 4. That could be 5 but it could also be 6 or 10.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem (more info here)

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