08 March 2011

Never Together Never

Listening to: The Beatles, "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" A large portion of my Saturday night was spent playing Rock Band: Beatles. My knowledge of the Fab Four is pretty slim but now I realize their genius. This track is now my theme song. Well, I'd prefer if it was named "Do You Want to Tell Me a Secret? Yes You Do," but it's still pretty good like this. I may be sixty years late on Beatles-mania but hey I'm here.

So for a long time, my friend has been insisting that many couples end up together because they look alike. Now I'm no expert on the science of attraction but I thought his observation was bogus. I went through mental snapshots of who my friends ended up with long term and most of them didn't look like one another. Then we started shifting through pictures. Hum. Our other friend, who we think married way out of his league, if you look closely at their features, they do kinda look alike! After a few more such examples, I conceded that there could be some truth to my friend's theory. Plus, casual science backs it up a little because who are we if not narcissistically attracted to someone who kind of looks like our reflections?

Well today I'm reading about this dating website, findyourfacemate.com, that finds you a date based on similar features and now my friend looks like a genius. "The results suggest that the observation of facial resemblance among couples appears to reflect a real phenomenon.... The site won't always match you with people who look like your twin. 'It's not [perfect] symmetry as much as it is shape and structure.'" So for all you singles out there, just keep a sharp eye out for someone who looks kind of like you and then make the move. Unless you're related, in which case, well. That's something they'll have to work out in the algorithm I guess.

Recently Lilly wrote about Singles' Guilt and what that's all about. It's kind of a must read so I'll wait here patiently while you go check it out.

Over the past year or so, some friends who meet my normal group of friends have remarked on how many of us are single. I mean, we're of the age where couples and babies are pretty normal. But my San Francisco friends for example, nine out of ten were single for most of 2010. Not like "unmarried" but single single. And um, with no prospects on any horizon. And out of my main group of friends in San Diego, that ratio is about seven out of ten. Does like attract like? Are we keeping each other in perpetual singledom by hanging out together? Probably.

And yes, I'm excited to keep everyone single till the end of time so we can all still hang out in our dotage. We'll solve one of the great fears of being single in your thirties (being alone in your eighties) by building a commune and having board games every night! Who needs couples and just one lifelong companion when you can have twenty! I'm not sure how my friends feel about my diabolical plan but I'm excited to continue my quest to corner the market on single friends. So if you want to stay perpetually alone and never find your one true love, we should probably be hanging out.

Also, I had no idea what OTP stood for till last week. One True Pairing. Sweet eh?