Looking for "A Sense of Quality" in Dating
How we interpret Quality in other people reflects the way we understand ourselves
“Someone with a sense of quality,” reads my friend’s dating profile. I love the way she phrased this. You too, are looking for a sense of quality if you’re single and Taiwanese in January and February, around Lunar New Year — when families want to know who we’re dating (and if they’re marriage material)1.
“Quality” is confusing, however. It is the excellence we perceive, how we appreciate it and everything contributing to that sense. How we define Quality, as a concept or a specification, changes with what we’re talking about. 👀.
Falling in love is not like manufacturing a pair of eyeglasses — the specifics of well-made products is clear and each step of the process can be replicated
Any decision-making process that engages our emotions is less precise. This is hard to avoid, since consumer products are loaded with branding.
To our demise, we still try to be exact.
Taiwanese singles visit the temple of Yue Lao 月老, god of love in Chinese mythology, when a holiday reminds us life’s better with company. Usually, Yue Lao’s patrons bring a fantasized list of what their spouse should be like. A certain kind of job, car, house, etc. A schoolmate asked for and manifested herself a physician. There’s a difference between having a wish list and understanding what we want, though.
The Problem with Wish Lists
We also have a sense of what we want. And, we don’t give enough thought to what we’re really asking for. At some point, everyone gets what they ask for and then regrets it. Part of understanding what we want is noting the trade-offs, sacrifices, where we fit in, and saying “count me in.” A few people have lifestyles that they need their spouses to fit into. Overworked professionals, including physicians, seem to look for someone with a talent for managing the household. But no pair is the same.
In Chinese, to 找三觀適合的人 means finding a partner with a compatible worldview, outlook on life, and values. It’s easy enough to say we have nice values so sharing them isn’t enough. How a person lives their values is probably most telling, even if it’s less swipe-able than obvious signals like job or possessions. One thing I learned working for BMW marketing2 in college is you can be a physician who drives a BMW and be an asshole, or be the CEO of BMW and treat everyone like they, too, are normal persons. Both are living their values; they just happen to like German cars.
Most of us imagine our values are virtues that have been engraved in us. It’s probably more accurate to call them Aspirational, since a large part of personal growth is figuring out how not to fail our values. This exposes the problem with Wish Lists.
They’re made from our hopes, desires, personal trauma
A list of traits can’t predict compatibility (Finkel et al, 2012)
They reflect very little about why these things matter to us or what we’ve done to fit what we want
Quality, it seems, is learned by observing ourselves and understanding how that relates to others. After all. If we don’t understand ourselves, how will we make sense of anyone else? Since we can’t see what we’re doing in real-time, everything happens below the threshold of our consciousness. So, pursuing Quality is grounded in self-awareness and reflection, not appearances. As the joke goes, the difference between a porcupine and a BMW is the pricks are on the inside3.
Making the Love God’s Job a Little Easier
Even if we’re high Quality (you certainly are), self-improvement has no set endpoint. Our identities evolve, wish lists expand, environments change, too. Maybe, our 2020 confidence isn’t worth the same in 2024. If we aren’t growing in other ways, our sense of quality and what we want is stuck in the past.
The part everyone avoids
A phrase I keep in mind is 你是怎麼樣的人就會和那樣的人交往，因此要讓自己變得更好，才會談到好的戀愛。“You are what you attract, so you need to keep working on yourself before you talking about a good relationship.” Work, in this context, can be material, physical, emotional, social, professional; ways we experience connection. Perhaps we’re too tired to do work, the work is misguided, or past work loses value. Academic achievement, by the way, is not so important (Bassett and Moss, 2004).
In some ways, a past version of me was a higher quality date for a larger percentage of girls. Despite that, I didn’t let myself be whole since there was always a bigger achievement I needed to feel complete4. I wasn’t enough for myself, so relationships with anyone like me were, of course, doomed. Sometimes “growth mindset” actually holds us back.
We need both views. The part of growth everyone avoids is critical self-examination, but it leads to realizing what’s likable about ourselves. Before we come up with lists of exactly what we want, first, we deserve to know who we are now. Researchers found that the odds of converting an online match into a face-to-face meeting increases when a dating profile seems more realistic (McLaughlin et al, 2011). Being the most attractive version of whoever we are now might be the best dating strategy.
As for myself…
My signal of Quality is being more diligent about reasonable medium-term goals. Big goals crumble easily and are less relatable, especially if you work in a complex field. I still try to do big things, and work at it one medium-term problem at a time. Also, this doesn’t mean career, career, career until burnout.
The part facing others isn’t which boxes I can check on a girl’s wish list or the stuff I own to make me feel more like a man. It’s looking put together, taking care of people and things I value. And, reflecting the vibe I love living in - emotional intelligence, mental and physical health - by improving my own.
How we carry the balance; that’s our sense of Quality.
Outside of the LBGTQ community, “marriage material” has fairly conservative norms in Taiwanese society
Cars are another example of how Quality is a confusing term; it happens in the context of what the consumer cares about and how the brand positions itself.
The joke’s on me. I used to drive a BMW. I like nice cars but don’t care much about labels. If the difference between driving a Toyota and a luxury car is another family vacation each year, I’ll choose the vacation.
This is classic high-expectations Asian parenting (never feeling enough). We ought to extract the positives and take personal accountability. In defense of the strategy, Asians have to compete harder for admission to top U.S. universities than other minorities (Taiwanese often imagine a white person’s version of America).