Justin Garcia

So in some of our studies, we do a big study every year called Singles in America.

We've done it for 15 years now.

We survey about 5,000 US singles.

It's sponsored by Match, the dating company.

And what we tend to find is that people are often aware of what they're looking for.

So if they want more of a casual relationship, a serious relationship, but exactly to your point,

then they stumble on someone.

There's so many examples of people saying, well, I wasn't looking for love.

I wasn't looking for a relationship, and here I am.

Or vice versa.

People say, well, I'm looking for something serious, and I found myself in this casual situationship that I wasn't expecting.

So I think a part of when

we're thinking when we're searching, we're in the search process, there's a difference of what we need, what we want.

But then when we're in that search mode, really thinking about what is it, what is it and who is it that we want in this particular moment?

And maybe it's all, maybe we say I'm interested in everything, but I think it would serve all of us to focus more on that question, particularly when dating and mating, because we can look for very different traits and the outcomes of those relationships can be very different.

In our single study, we ask people every year to rate, to hierarchically rate what are the things they're most looking for.

So these are in single nationally, demographically representative sample of single Americans.

And what we've noticed over the last few years is that again and again, these traits of someone you can trust and confide in, someone who can make you laugh, someone who is comfortable in their sexuality, all these traits are boiling up to the top five.

Now, 10 years ago, physical attraction was pretty high up, often two or three.

What we found is that it's dropped from the top five.