Dating
Modern courtship has compressed into a sequence of small, often ambiguous interactions whose meaning is genuinely harder to read than older scripts allowed. The Gottman work on what predicts relationship trajectory, the attachment literature on how anxious and avoidant tendencies first surface, and the broader research on first impressions all point to the same uncomfortable conclusion: the early signals matter more than the late ones, and most people are reading them with the wrong filter. The pieces in this category try to make the early phase more legible: what to notice on a first date, when a situationship has stopped being one and started being something else, which questions actually predict long-term compatibility, and which common moves quietly reduce the chance the connection will mature.
Where relevant, we draw on Aron and colleagues' (1997) work on how reciprocal disclosure accelerates closeness, on Levine and Heller's (2010) reading of attachment styles in adult dating, and on the Gottman repair literature for what to do when early conversations go sideways. The orientation is practical but slow: dating is not optimisable. The most useful thing this category can do is help you notice patterns earlier, so the decisions you make are based on what you actually see rather than on what you wish were there.
DatingDoes Distance Make You Like Someone More? What the Evidence Says
Absence does raise how much you like someone, by withholding what would revise the estimate. At least a third of long-distance couples split after reuniting.
DatingDo Dating Apps Actually Work? What the Data Says
Now the most common way couples meet. The matching they sell is unproven, and the odds are spread far less evenly than any average suggests.
DatingThe 72-Hour Rule in Dating: Is There Anything Behind It?
One experiment has now tested the wait. The next morning won, two days lost, and nobody has ever tested three.
DatingFirst Date Mistakes: What the Research Says Actually Costs You
The standard advice is to talk less. In the one experiment that assigned strangers how much of a conversation to fill, those who spoke more were liked more.
DatingSituationship Statistics: What Has Actually Been Measured
Three surveys have counted them. The one everybody cites is not among them.
DatingModern Dating Statistics: The Numbers That Hold Up, and the Ones Nobody Publishes
Which dating numbers have a real survey under them, what each one measured, and where every one of them stops.
DatingWhy You Keep Ending Up in the Friend Zone
The evidence does not point at your looks. It points at a frame nobody named out loud, and at how reliably decent people avoid saying no.
DatingThe 3-6-9 Rule in Dating: Where It Came From and What the Research Says
Three checkpoints, three months apart, and not one study behind them. What has actually been measured about the first year says something else.
DatingQuestions That Reveal Compatibility: What Can Be Predicted, and What Cannot
The famous 36 questions were built to manufacture closeness, not to measure it. In the same paper, matching people on their opinions changed nothing.
DatingSigns You're in a Situationship: What the Research Behind Each One Says
The signs have barely been studied. What they point at has: a commitment gap that showed up in about a third of 315 unmarried couples in a national sample.
DatingUsing Your Phone on a Date: What the Evidence Actually Shows
The phone on the table is folklore. What holds up is smaller, stranger, and mostly about what the other person concluded.