steady

Relationships · How closeness forms

Judge it by how you feel with them

After the third date, ask one question: do I feel appreciated by this person, and do I think they're in it? Not "did I impress them".

no timeEvidence: solid

The biggest study of what makes relationships work fed data from eleven thousand couples into a machine-learning model and asked what predicted satisfaction. Neither partner's personality or background mattered much on its own. What mattered was how each person saw the relationship: whether they felt their partner was committed and appreciative, how satisfied they thought their partner was, whether the sex was good, and how much they fought. Evidence: solid

So the question isn't "how do I make her fall for me". It's whether this person makes you feel appreciated and wanted, and whether you can make them feel that too. If the first is no after a few months, that's the thing to weigh, not how well the dates went.

One caution the clinical literature adds: affection that escalates unusually fast, with pressure for exclusivity, big gifts, or pulling you away from friends early on, is a pattern worth knowing the name of. It's called love bombing. That comes from clinical and survey work, not trials. Evidence: worth trying If it's happening to you, say so to someone outside the relationship.

Source: Joel et al., 2020, PNAS (43 studies, about 11,000 couples) (link)

Same theme: How closeness forms

Arrows to move, Enter to open, Esc to close.