Dr Paul Eastwick

We are really at the vanguard right now.

Like research doesn't study things as well as the conversation we're having.

I think it's a lot of it.

If we look at people who are meeting for the first time, I alluded to this earlier, but if you look at that consensus component, it's totally there.

But compatibility, what we might call taste and timing, I mean, it's sort of wrapped up in the term compatibility, but that's going to be a little bigger.

And it ends up growing more over time.

Now, the tricky thing about taste and timing is that it is remarkably hard to predict because you might think like, well, I can sort of make use of this whole compatibility component by, I don't know, like if I really want to be with somebody who's tall, for example, if I just like, you know, okay, let's line up the tall guys and I can, you know, I'm more likely to find somebody who's going to especially appeal to me.

And this is just another one of those challenges.

It doesn't quite work that way.

Like we know compatibility is important, but it's remarkably hard to predict.

And a lot of it comes through conversation, but it's often like the random like sidetracks that we get onto in conversations where two people find that, oh, like, whoa, we will, you know,

had the same elementary school teacher three years apart or something like that, right?

You find those little nuggets, those little moments of serendipity while you're talking with somebody else.

That's where a lot of the magic comes from, but it's just remarkably hard to predict that stuff.

Not exactly.

What is true is, as we've talked about, some people are better in the initial attraction realm.

And so what that means is that if you're somebody that's a 10, you're going to have more hookup opportunities.

You're going to have more sex partners over the course of your life.

You know, these sorts of short-term successes, you'll have more of those.

The issue is that, and this is, again, this is like, wait, what?