Sunday 24 June 2007

The downside of being fussy

Pseudoscience of love - The downside of being fussy
The chart above shows that the fussier you are, the longer you have to wait for a suitable partner to come along. The numbers under the bars represent your level of fussiness, e.g. 100 means you like 1 in every 100 people that you meet while 1 is the other extreme - you like everybody you meet! This model makes the following assumptions:
  1. People tend to like people roughly as fussy as themselves. For example, a woman who has been more secure than Fort Knox is not likely to give up her honour to someone who'd obviously get up on a cracked plate!
  2. You go out approximately twice a week (100 times per year).
  3. You meet 3 people on an average night out.
Even with this generous allowance for meeting people, someone who is extremely fussy (likes only 1 out of 100 people that s/he meets) can expect to go just over 33 years* between meeting suitable partners! That's over 3300 nights out using the model above, which is a lot, even for Paris Hilton! At the other extreme, someone who likes everybody can obviously expect to meet someone they like every night they go out. These extremes are so large that I've had to use a log scale above to fit them on the same graph. This is also why, for example, 33 years doesn't look much worse than 8 years at a glance.

So, it is not hard to see the main problem with being fussy and why practitioners are more likely to end up as lonely, cantankerous old fogeys! Wouldn't you end up that way if you waited so long for that someone (really) special that never came?!!


*From the assumptions, (100x100)/100/3. If you like 1 in a 100 people and so does your prospective partner, you can expect (on average) to meet 10,000 people before you click with someone. The model assumes that you meet 300 people per year.

3 comments:

Aidan said...

Fort Knox is the depository for most of the US gold bullion. This Kentucky fortress is a common euphemism for a high security location that is impossible to err, penetrate!!

tania said...

I laughed a lot.
However, being extremely fussy doesn't prevent me from falling in love quite often. It seems I extract my energy from being in love (even if I know that the object of my affection is not The One, I still bask in the glory of love ... LOL)
I first fell in love at the age of 5 and I will probably continue to do so on my death bed...

Aidan said...

Thanks for that comment, Tania and I'm glad I made you smile!

What are you doing Friday night? lol.