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.