Why we don’t have much choice in dating (despite the apps)

We're often encouraged to celebrate the

many options we now have for love. We're

no longer limited to who's in the

village. Technology lets us look in on

millions. We could be out with new

people most nights of the week, thanks

to the apps.

But in order to have a successful

relationship, we may need something more

important still than a busy diary. A

quiet conviction that despite all the

noise out there, we don't, in fact, have

many options at all. This doesn't have

anything to do with personal

limitations. It has to do with the

fundamentals of psychology.

Whatever the shiny surfaces of those we

meet, we can be certain that anyone

we'll come across is going to harbor

substantial complexities of character

and a capacity at times to make us feel

that we've ruined our lives by getting

together with them.

We may decide to commit to someone not

on the basis that they're perfect, but

that imperfection is the rule.

The world is not short of people, only

of people who might be sane or good. It

seems that whoever we meet is liable to

offer, under a pleasant manner, a new

take on certain of the perennial follies

of the species. They may smile, they may

be good at tennis, they might not have

our ex's exact problems around reading

or timekeeping, but sure enough, they

too will, in their own way, sometimes be

extremely hard to understand and very

demanding to tolerate. They too will, in

some way, be bad at communicating. They

too will, on occasion, be irrational and

peevish, moody and mysterious, enraging

and limited, compelled in peculiar

directions by their childhood, and prey

to a dozen unconscious urges at odds

with happiness and reason.

To date widely and often is simply to

have the privilege of discovering new

perspectives on inner conflict, more

fresh takes on parental dysfunction,

novel arrangements of insecurities,

further varieties of neediness and

anxiety.

We cannot, in those heady early

evenings, predict exactly what the

problems will be, only that they will

emerge and that they will be very

serious.

Soon enough, we'll have to do what we

would have to do with anyone. Get our

tools out and start to work. Apologize

for the mood on Tuesday. Put flags on

contested territory. Forgive them for

what they did yesterday in the light of

what happened to them when they were 8

years old. Have a snide row. Have a

hopeful reconciliation. Spend some time

apart. Comfort ourselves with books and

return with gratitude.

So, we do have many options, but they

are inevitably, in part, options to

suffer, options to yearn, and options to

squabble. The person we might be with in

love, asleep in the other room, isn't

unusually bad. We're probably just

getting to know them unusually well.