Thinking
in public.
Twice a week, I write for Bloom about relationships, technology, and the choices behind them. These are the latest.
A situationship has the affection. The research says it does not have the commitment.
An exploratory 2024 study defined situationships as affection, sex, and time together without a label or much commitment. A 2006 longitudinal paper found that swings in how committed you think your partner is predict breakup beyond the average level. The slang is new. The measurement is not.
Intentional dating77 percent of singles say dating feels like a marketplace. Two-thirds have already left the apps.
Harris Poll's Modern Dating Survey found 77 percent of singles say dating feels more like a marketplace than a romance story, and two-thirds of singles are not currently using dating apps. People are not leaving romance. They are leaving a search format that feels like inventory.
The lifecycle journeyWhat your partner does with your good news predicts more than how they handle your bad news
Relationship advice prepares you for the argument. In one study of 79 dating couples, how partners responded to each other's good news was more closely related to relationship well-being two months later, and to breaking up, than how they responded to bad news. Three of the four ways to get it wrong feel reasonable from the inside.
Dating and relationship advicePeople who believe in 'the one' are more likely to ghost. The research suggests why.
The first research to ask what predicts ghosting went looking at beliefs rather than character. People who think partners are either compatible or they are not felt better about ghosting, intended to do it more, and reported having done it more. Cruelty and cowardice were never measured, so nothing here rules them out.
Aligned monetizationBumble deleted the rule it was built on. The rules that cost money go first.
On August 11 the app that spent a decade on one idea stopped requiring women to message first. The company gave a user-research reason and the reason is probably true. It is also true that the rule suppressed the exact number a dating app is paid on, and that this is the kind of principle that never survives a bad year.
Intentional datingThree in ten singles used LinkedIn for dating last year. The reason is not romance.
Singles are running background checks on each other through a professional network, and in one survey of US employees, 48 percent said they trust a LinkedIn profile more than a dating profile. What they are reaching for is not a better feed. It is a name attached to a history that somebody else can check.
Utah launch clusterWhat 'best dating app in Utah' actually has to mean
Ask for the best dating app in Utah and you get a national ranking with a state name taped on. Then, if the answer knows this market, Mutual. What the question actually requires, and why a Salt Lake City list that ignores the Wasatch Front is answering a different place.
Dating and relationship adviceLove Is Blind works. That is exactly the problem.
The pods are the part with research behind them. Escalating mutual disclosure reliably produces closeness fast, and that is the one thing the show does well. The failure is what it asks people to do with that feeling, on a deadline that makes the actual predictors of a lasting relationship impossible to observe.
Relationship growth scienceAmericans did not stop wanting partners. They stopped believing the search works.
The romance recession is the story of the moment. Then you check the one number that would prove it and find a twenty-year trend quietly reversing. What actually declined was not partnership or desire. It was faith in the method.
Dating and relationship adviceYour attachment style is not a personality type
The internet turned attachment into four boxes and a quiz you take once. Researchers do not measure it that way, and a study of more than 4,000 people found it moves. What the science actually says, and the finding that tells you when it moves.
Intentional datingMachine learning cannot predict chemistry. The same method predicts relationship quality.
Researchers collected more than 100 traits and preferences from every participant before anyone met, then asked a machine learning model who would want whom. On that question it returned nothing. The same researcher, using the same method inside real relationships, found the opposite.
The lifecycle journeyTechnoference: what the research says a phone does to a relationship
Researchers have a name for the phone coming out mid-sentence, and a decade of studies on what it does to couples. One 2023 result should change how you handle it, because it points somewhere other than screen time.
Originally published on Bloom. Dates are the original publication dates.