Finding someone with a multitude of specific qualities can prove extremely difficult – perhaps even impossible. If they possess some features, they always seem to lack others. This is because dating is heavily influenced by statistics. In principle, a person can hope to be the exception to the rule, but one should at least be honest that with each statistical anomaly, one is reducing one’s chances commensurably. Taken to an extreme, it is like trying to win the lottery. Yes, some people do actually win, but given the odds, it is surely not a viable income strategy.
The simple truth is that the greater one’s expectations, the more mathematically unlikely it becomes. It may be statistically possible, but very improbable all the same. If a person is highly specific about what they are looking for, it can become like searching for a needle in a haystack – possible, but insanely difficult and with a low probability of success.
The greater the number of demands, the more the chances of finding someone who meets those criteria are reduced. This is why you need to carefully choose your requirements to avoid the statistical odds plummeting. The rarer the features being sought, the steeper the statistical decline. Let us illustrate this through a visit to Macy’s to buy a T-shirt.
Three choices and (potentially) out
Macys may have hundreds of T-shirts available. Let’s say it is a very big store and there are three hundred T-shirts to choose from. But watch the options narrow very quickly. Say, you are specifically looking for a red T-shirt. The chances are that only 10 percent of the T-shirts in the store are red. So, you have already eliminated 90 percent of our options. But you still have 10 percent to choose from – or thirty shirts. That was your first choice used up. Now you want it to be long-sleeved. Sadly, most of the T-shirts are short-sleeved, so now we only have 2 percent of T–shirts to choose from – or six shirts. That is your second choice gone. For your third choice, you want it to have black stripes. You would be lucky to find even one. If you add any further specification, you are likely to find not a single shirt.
Look how quickly it went from a very healthy three hundred choices to potentially none – just three choices (red, long-sleeved, and black stripes) and you walk away empty-handed. Even if they do have a long-sleeved red T-shirt with black stripes, we would have to accept the other features of the clothing item as is. If we also wanted the T-shirt in an odd size, specific fabric, or any other additional features, we could forget about it. You will statistically find nothing. We could go to another store – maybe a hundred stores – and you still could leave disappointed.
The same goes for dating. Say we are looking for a man; that is not a problem as roughly half the population is male. We shall even concede on all the fundamental factors, such as age range, religious identity, and so on. We will still see how quickly the numbers narrow down. Say, we are looking for someone tall – six foot or above – we have eliminated at least 80 percent of candidates. Now, if we want the man to be highly attractive – in the top quarter for appearance. The percentage of highly attractive people who are also tall is the same as in the whole population, namely 25 percent. So, now you are down to 5 percent of the population.
Say we also want him to have a professional career. Now in our population, only 10 percent may be pursuing that kind of career route (in many cases it could be less). With just three key choices, we have narrowed down our search to 0.5 percent of the population. That means half a person for every hundred people. If we were to add even one more specific expectation – say, sense of humor – it could lower to a tiny fraction of one percent.
If we are looking for things that are average (that exist widely in the population), we will not limit our chances by having a long list of preferences. The minute we add less-common features – in other words, present in just a minority of the population – we quickly reduce our likelihood of finding someone to a statistical nil. Even if we are starting with a list of thousands of people – and that is rarely the case – the numbers will play this cruel rationale. There is no escaping it.
Be choosy about choices
To be brutally honest, most people don’t get everything they would ideally want in a partner. Furthermore, people with highly specific expectations are even less likely than average to fulfill all their aspirations. But it turns out not to matter that much. Getting more wishes does not make for a happy marriage; it depends on getting the right wishes met.
Getting more wishes does not make for a happy marriage; it depends on getting the right wishes met.
With each above-average choice having the potential to wipe out such a big chunk of dating options, it’s important to be very selective in our choices. Choosing high intelligence may mean sacrificing a demand for a higher-than-average appearance. Prioritizing finding someone from an elite family may mean sacrificing one’s preference for a certain hair color. That is just the reality. Of course, this is just statistics, so some people will by virtue of their own desirability or sheer luck get more of what they are looking for. Banking on beating the odds is not a realistic strategy for most people, which may explain why some people find it hard to have all their expectations met.
Given this reality, a person looking for the best chance of marital success will include those marriage-enhancing qualities in their list of priorities, such as being high in emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. People are not acting wisely if they use up all of their options on looks, intelligence, and social status, at the expense of those qualities that are worth their weight in marriage gold. Given that we are realistically limited in how choosy we can afford to be, it is important not to put all one’s dating eggs into the least important marriage basket. Some qualities may be desirable to many, but they do not contribute much to marital success.
