How to find The One
Hold out for the perfect partner or settle for good enough? In the calculus of love, flourishing means
‘I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?’The search for ‘the one and only’ romantic partner, our second half who will love us forever and a day, and will light an eternal fire in our loving heart, has been a frustrating undertaking for many people. But why? Could the goal be unrealistic? Can we improve our strategy, and our chances, or should we give up the search?
Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress and socialite (1917-2016)
The search for ‘The One’ can indeed feel futile. You might test what can feel like endless candidates and not find anyone you really like. You can travel great distances but never reach the Promised Land. Even when this land seems to be found, there is no lifetime guarantee, and the expiration date of this happy kingdom might be brief. Breakups, not long-term relationships, appear to be the norm. In many societies, about half of all marriages end in divorce, and lots of the remaining half have at some point seriously considered it.
In light of these difficulties, doubts have been raised concerning the value of this kind of search. One person might dismiss the quest altogether. ‘Done with trying to find a woman for life. Much easier to just hook up for a good short time. Avoid all the other personal drama!’ as one man told me. Another stops the search early, after finding profound love and connection when very young. ‘I’ve never regretted not ordering the fish when my steak arrived cooked and seasoned to my liking,’ said a woman who married her first lover. Yet others say they’ve found The One yet continue sampling what’s out there. ‘I want both – a long, profound love and a series of short, intense romantic-sexual experiences. Lust and profound love are both meaningful and satisfying for me,’ another woman explains.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the third option is preferable for most singles, at least in the United States: the eighth annual ‘Singles in America’ (2018) study from the dating site Match, supervised by the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher and the evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia, both of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington, indicates that 69 per cent of today’s singles are looking for a serious, long, romantic relationship at the same time, nonetheless, as they are experiencing diverse, brief types of superficial, sexual relationships. For instance, many singles, especially women, have dated multiple people simultaneously. Most heterosexual singles would be open to a threesome, the report reveals, and one in four would have sex with a robot.
It is likely that these attitudes will continue after meeting the person who seems to be The One. In a 1996 study of sexual exclusivity among dating, cohabiting and married women, the sociologist Renata Forste at Brigham Young University in Utah and the public-health scientist Koray Tanfer in Seattle found that, if a woman has a history of multiple sex partners, the likelihood of her having a secondary sex partner during a current relationship greatly increases. It seems that personality tendencies and sexual habits are the main factors here. These findings do not reject the value of the search for The One, but rather suggests that this person, once found, might not be all alone.
Despite these kinds of caveats, when it comes of finding The One, strategy counts, starting with the very definition of ‘perfect’. One dictionary definition is flawless: being entirely without fault or defect. The other is most suitable: being as good as possible, and completely appropriate. While the first meaning focuses on eliminating the negative, the second centres on finding as much positive as one can.
Clearly, the search for the flawless person is an exercise in utter futility. Through this lens, the beloved is seen as a kind of icon, without relation to the partner. Here, one looks at qualities that stand on their own, such as intelligence, appearance, humour or wealth. This sort of measure has two advantages – it is easy to use, and most people would agree about the assessments. It’s an approach that takes a static view, in which romantic love is essentially fixed – and that’s something we know doesn’t work well in the real world.
On the other hand, looking for the most suitable person under a given set of circumstances might allow you to build an intimate connection, and could yield a flourishing partnership. This view emphasises the uniqueness of the relationship; it sees the beloved’s most important qualities in relationship to the partner, and offers a dynamic kind of romantic love over time. Such love involves intrinsic development that includes bringing out the best in each other. The suitability scale is much more complex, since it depends on personal and environmental factors about which we do not have full knowledge.
The view is supported by the philosopher Iddo Landau of the University of Haifa in Israel and the author of Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (2017). He distinguishes between two life strategies: aspiring to be the best, and aspiring to improve. The first can lead us down an endless, unproductive path of frustrated competition, while the second brings meaningful development over time. The same type of distinction applies to romantic love. If romantic meaning mainly concerns achieving the best, lovers will always be restless, consumed with concern about missing the perfect person, or perhaps the younger, the richer or the more beautiful one. If, however, romantic flourishing mainly involves improvement, achieving it lies much more in our hands.
