Love in the Age of Data: How One Woman Hacked Her Way to Happily Ever After. By Maria Popova Reverse-engineering the algorithms of romance, one picky data point at a time.
The question of how love works has bedeviled writers and scientists for centuries. But how do the dynamics of romance differ in the age of online dating? In Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match (public library; UK), digital strategist and journalist Amy Webb — one of the smartest people I know — takes us on her unexpected journey to true love, in which she sets out to “game the system, using math, data, and loopholes” to find the man of her dreams. If it sounds predictable and contrived, rest assured it’s anything but. Amy writes in the introduction: I realized that we’ve all been going about finding our matches the wrong way.
But this, she soon realized, was only half the equation — it only illuminated what she was looking for in a mate. I Love You But Don't Call Me, OK? I don’t have a definitive answer as to whether introverts and extroverts make perfect, complementary couples or are destined to drive each other crazy.
The bottom line is, like everything else, it depends on the people. And like everything else, if both parties respect and compromise, everything’s cool. No matter how much common ground they have otherwise, introverts and extroverts have different needs, and they do things differently. My husband is only slightly less introverted than I, and even so we have had to negotiate a few things. (The telephone vs. email, for example.) General guidelines for socializing. 10 Habits of Happy Couples. What does it take to be happy in a relationship?
What's Your Relationship IQ? 50 Characteristics of Healthy Relationships. Shutterstock If you can say yes to most of these, it's very likely you're in a healthy relationship: 1.
You can name your partner’s best friend and identify a positive quality that the person has. 2. You and your partner are playful with each other. 3. 4. 5. The Science of Heartache: 6 Things You Need to Know. Jose AS Reyes/Shutterstock Just as the digital age has ushered in new ways of enhancing human connection, it’s also opened up the scope and range of social rejection.
Unfriend—as in, un-Facebook friend—was the word of the year in 2009, joining its older cohort “cyberbully,” amid the advent of the text breakup or the Facebook status change as ways to tell him or her that it’s over. With the yin and yang of digital life in mind, it seems relevant to explore what science knows about emotional pain and its connection to the physical kind. Language has always mirrored the connection between the two; we suffer from "broken hearts" as well as bones, and speak of "bruised feelings" along with toes. This all seems intuitively right because we recognize the common basis of the pain we experience, whether a throbbing headache or the pain of missing someone so much that you ache. The links go well beyond the metaphorical. 36 Questions to Bring You Closer Together. 3 Things You Need to Learn About the Opposite Sex. Stuart Jenner/Shutterstock We are alike in so many ways, but when it comes to relationships and love, there's no denying it: Men and women can seem to be complete opposites.
What might surprise you however is just how many and how real these differences truly are. And yet, you can't ignore these different ways of looking at love if you want to build a successful relationship. My book, 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great, was based on the findings of my one-of-a-kind, long-term study of marriage. One key finding was that becoming aware of the differences between you and your partner will lead to a stronger and happier relationship in the long run. 3 Things Men Need to Understand About Women in Relationships Conflict lingers. 3 Things Women Need to Understand About Men in Relationships. Why Your Partner May Be Like Your Parent. Ana Blazic Pavlovic/Shutterstock Perhaps nothing is as disheartening as the discovery—after years of trying to escape from your dysfunctional childhood—that you have actually managed to recreate it.
One woman, the daughter of a hypercritical and demanding mother, recently talked with me about her recently-ended, two-decades-long marriage: "I still have issues with feeling capable and doing things right. Unfortunately, I married my mother and was never able to feel competent in my husband’s eyes, either. I also never really felt loved by him, in the same way I didn’t feel loved by my mother.”
A man emailed me recently with similar concerns: “On the surface, my wife and my mother have nothing in common. How can you end up marrying your mother (or father) if, on a conscious level, you’ve been on the run from her? These working models affect individuals in myriad ways.