“If Only You Believed In Miracles, Baby…”
How The 80/20 Rule Can Help Us Find The Love Of Our Lives
A friend gave me a month’s gift subscription to an online dating service. He thought it might improve my chances.
The site was filled with pix and profiles of attractive women.
I rubbed my hands with glee. Surely I’ll have me a girlfriend before the month is up!
I posted pix and a profile and sent five notes to five lovely profilers.
Then… crickets.
I sent five more notes to five equally lovely profilers.
This time one response. “Thanks for your interest, honey. Best of luck.”
One “no” and nine “you’re-not-even-worth-saying-no-to’s.”
I was more deflated than…
a snow tire in July.
“If only you believed like I believe, baby…”
The stats say guy’s got a 4% of chance of getting a reply when he initiates contact at an online dating site. For women, it’s something like a 25% chance of getting a reply.
A writer for this publication recently reported that her online profile garnered a hundred responses. She dismissed ninety respondents and whittled the remaining ten respondents down to two. One of them didn’t pan out. The other one panned out for a couple of dates then fizzled.
A hundred guys wanting to date her, and all she got was a fizzle.
But when you look at it in light of the 80/20 rule, it makes sense.
“we’d get by…”
The 80/20 rule goes back to Vilfredo Pareto, the nineteenth century Italian economist, who observed that 20% of the Italian work force earned 80% of the country’s income. His observation was borne out by similar observations in other European countries. Over time, observations came pouring in as to how this 80/20 effect occurs in broad areas of life and nature.
And it spirals. 20% of the 20% account for 80% of the 20%. And 20% of that 20 % account for 80% of that 20%. And so on.
How might the 80/20 rule apply in the dating world?
The rule predicts that 80% of daters will find 20% of daters attractive. The competition for this attractive 20% will be stiff. The remaining 20% of daters will, in addition, find some members of the remaining 80% of daters attractive. The competition for this 20% will also be stiff. That leaves 60% of daters who won’t find one another attractive.
If the rule holds, we’d expect to find that 40% of daters will sooner or later enter into sustained relationships while 60% of daters may hook up for a while, may even marry, but will eventually revert to being single.
The rule also suggests that an average woman, on an online dating site, would be 84% less willing to date an average guy than an average guy would be willing to date an average woman. (25% response rate for an average woman/4% response rate for an average guy = .16; 1 — .16 = .84)
By “average,” I don’t mean that people aren’t unique. I mean “average” as a statistical measure, not a value judgment.
To know if this 84% hypothesis holds water, there’d need to be a large test sample segmented by age, gender, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, social status, economic class and other variables, each segment compared to an equivalent control group. Still, the 84% hypothesis offers anecdotal evidence of guys’ oft-heard lament that women tend to “set the bar too high.” Indeed, a recent study offers confirmation that women are more likely than men to aim above their “desirability level.” (1)
“Desirability level” means we have a sense of how we rank compared to others vis-à-vis the criteria that make us sexually attractive. A tall guy would have a higher rank than a short guy. A slim woman would have a higher rank than a heavier woman. A high status guy or girl would rank higher than a low status guy or girl.
(I say “girl” when speaking of “guy/girl” because “girl” alliterates well with “guy;” guy/woman sounds awkward and man/woman sounds stuffy. Of course, it could be guy/guy and girl/girl, but after awhile, language can start to twist itself in knots. So, solely for didactic purposes, I’m saying “guy/girl.” I’m not implying that “girl” = “less than woman.”)
“There’s nothin’ we couldn’t do… if we wanted to…”
Let’s say you’re out on the dating circuit.
You eliminate 80% of potential partners from the get go as only 20% will meet your basic criteria (chemistry, compatibility, sharing fundamental values.) Of this 20%, only 20% will meet your more detailed and nuanced criteria. Of this 20%, only 20% will meet your incidental criteria, not essential to sustain a relationship but troublesome in their absence.
Going back to the profile that attracted a hundred responses, 20% of 100 = 20. 20% of 20 = 4. 20% of 4 = .8. That’s eight-tenths of 1% of respondents who’d meet the full range of her criteria; i.e. fewer than one guy in a hundred with whom to form a lasting bond. It would take 125 respondents (1/.2/.2/.2) to find that one special guy.
“If only you believed…”
If you do nothing but wait for the right guy or girl to come along, if you take no risk, make no effort, never leave your comfort zone, don’t try to change your outlook or improve your relationship skills and do nothing to meet a potential partner half way, there’s a 100% certainty that if you date as many as 125 guys/girls, you will find the perfect partner. That is, he/she will find you.
“As many as 125.” But you may not need to date nearly as many potential partners before the perfect partner comes along.
Pick a number between 1 and 125. Call it the number of your perfect partner. Let’s say your perfect partner is #56. I chose that number at random. It’s not sequential. It could be any number. Now imagine that the numbers from 1 to 125 are jotted down on slips of paper and tossed in a bowl. One by one, you draw the slips of paper out of the bowl. You keep doing this until you draw #56.
It could happen on the first try. It could happen on the 125th try. It could happen on any try.
Now visualize a normal curve.
The chance of drawing #56 on the first few or the last few tries is very small. By the time you draw the 63rd slip out of the bowl, your chance of drawing #56 would be 50%. (Half of 125 is 62.5, call it 63.) That’s the apex of this particular normal curve. After the 63rd round, your chance of drawing #56 is better than 50% and keeps improving with each subsequent draw.
If you live in a metropolitan area where there’s a large dating scene and you’re willing to go on upwards of sixty first dates, which you could do in little more than a year if you were date one new person a week — not an impossible task — the odds of the perfect partner showing up, without you lifting a finger, are better than even. Do this for two-and-a-half years and the odds are certain.
To be sure, there’s a catch. You’d need to know, on the first date, whether or not he/she is your perfect partner. How well can you know something like that on the basis of a single date? You could know that he/she isn’t the right one for you on the first date and not go on a second date. But knowing, on the first date, that you’ve found Mr. or Ms. Right must be very rare. I’ve heard of it happening but it couldn’t happen very often.
Suppose you’re willing to work as hard at having a sustained and loving relationship as the guy/girl you’re hoping to connect with would be. You’re willing and able to take a risk, to make an effort, to leave your comfort zone, to work at improving your relationship skills and to do other things that go into meeting a potential partner half way.
“Like I believe, baby…”
Now the 80/20 rule narrows the field.
The initial 80/20 iteration still applies. Chances are that only 1 in 5 people (20%) whom you might date will qualify in terms of chemistry, compatibility and sharing fundamental values: “must have or it won’t work.”
Then comes the second 80/20 iteration: “important but could work if the basics are sound.” Now you may need to go on 20 first dates before you’d find the perfect partner or, if not perfect, a partner who’s pretty darn good. Again, that could happen on the 1st first date, the 20th first date or some first date in between.
Then comes the “would be nice but not essential” criteria. Because these criteria aren’t essential, there need be no third 80/20 iteration to arrive at the potential need for 125 first dates. (“I’d like it if he didn’t hole up on the sofa watching the Packers and the Cowboys on Sunday, but he doesn’t do it every week, and he’s willing to switch the game off when he sees I need some attention plus he’s okay with me going folk dancing once a week without him.”)
By the time you’ve gone on ten first dates, the odds of finding the partner of your dreams (or nearly so) are in your favor. By the 20th first date, the odds are nearly certain.
If you’re sufficiently flexible and motivated, as you may be if you’re older and have accumulated some wisdom and perspective, a single iteration of the rule may be all it takes, and you may find a happy, loving relationship in as many as five first dates with the third first date being the most likely first date. As a friend in her sixties recently told me, “If he can get it up, treats me like a lady and is good to my grandkids, there’s a lotta water can flow under the bridge.”
Yet this attitude seems to be rare among seniors who can be as picky and choosy as the younger set, especially seniors who are comfy and not in any rush to get involved, preferring to enjoy time with friends, children and grandchildren, the benefits of an active social life and casual sex when the itch needs scratching. Older folks may also be more materialistic, jaded, cynical and prone to say, “Love me, love my politics.”
Which is to say that the 80/20 rule may not lose its applicability just because time may be running out and opportunities to find partners may be growing scarce. Even in our elder years, we want what we want when and how we want it.
I was recently listening to an interview with the CEO of a top-flite ad agency. He said that when it comes to hiring writers and designers, he looks at the first item in their portfolio and can tell, in three seconds, whether the applicant has talent. If the applicant has talent, the CEO can tell in sixty seconds whether or not the applicant has the skill to make it in the world of advertising. If so, the CEO will either hire the applicant or send him or her, with the CEO’s recommendation, to another agency.
You’ve likely heard of the thirty second rule, reduced to the ten second and lately the three second rule. (I hear it’s now the less-than-a-second rule.)
The rule says that upon encountering a person of the opposite (or same) sex, we feel, in the instant, a jolt of sexual attraction or we don’t. It’s a lighting fast on/off switch. And if the switch doesn’t go on in the instant of meeting, it will never go on.
This has nothing to do with whether or not we might be otherwise attracted to this person or care to pursue an acquaintance or have any interest in them at all. It’s just chemistry. But without chemistry, it’s either the friend zone, office mates or two ships passing in the night.
If this instant chemistry rule is indeed true, speed dating has something to recommend it. Thirty seconds: Hi, I’m Ed. Hi, I’m Jessica. What kind of car do you drive? A Prius. What kind of car do you drive? I don’t. My license got suspended on a DUI. Nice to meet you. On to the next. It doesn’t matter what the question is. It’s just filler. If there are mutual yes’es on the sign up sheet afterwards, the rest, beginning with texting, could be history.
The 80/20 rule would still be in force. It’s just the venue that would change.
The 80/20 Rule and The Law of Attraction
We should distinguish between the 80/20 rule and the Law of Attraction.
The 80/20 rule is descriptive. The Law of Attraction is prescriptive.
The 80/20 rule reflects observations made from a wide variety of human and non-human activity. From a practical standpoint, if the 80/20 rule applies, who cares why it applies. It’s merely a constraint to take into account as we go about our business.
Still, some of us are more adept than others when it comes to finding loving partners. And while it’s true that with no effort or compromise, we’re virtually certain to find the perfect partner if we’re willing and able to go on 125 first dates, who’s got the time, resources, energy, desire or opportunity to do that much first dating?
The online dating sites report that the quality women rate most attractive in men is a laid back mix of confidence, independence and charm, a guy who “knows who he is,” holds his space well and is endowed with a relaxed, slightly aloof charisma, i.e. an inviting blend of power, presence and warmth, the three elements of charisma according to Olivia Fox Cabane, the authority on the subject (2). In a word, a high status male who can read a woman and is responsive to her unspoken needs.
Honor, integrity, care, kindness, patience, generosity, loyalty and devotion are qualities lower down the list.
These sites report that the quality men rate most attractive in women is a kind, caring, receptive, attentive and affectionate manner that values him for who he is, not for some flawless masculine ideal that few men can genuinely attain. (Homely ladies with good hearts be encouraged. Looks seem to be less important to men than the culture would have us believe.)
At the same time, given the culture’s ideal or prototype of sexual attractiveness, those who fall short will, in many instances, strive to embody the ideal. The immense number and vast array of dating gurus and coaches attest to this need.
“All the answers to our prayers, it’s the same everywhere…”
There’s evidence, in the literature, that faking it ’til you make it can bear fruit. Prince Hamlet counseled his mother to “affect a virtue if you have it not,” and, had she done so, the stage, in the final scene, might have been less deeply drenched in blood. From Amy Cuddy’s power posing to Vanessa Van Edward’s many life hacks to David DeAngelo’s cocky comedy to Arielle Ford’s “feelingizations,” you appear to have a fighting chance, within limits, to become what you aspire to be if you “affect the virtue” well enough.
The 80/20 rule predicts that 20% of your effort will result in 80% of your success, so the trick is to find the most productive way to concentrate your effort. Should you spend that $60.00 on the purchase of a better pair of shoes or a couple of hours at the spa? Should you smile or not smile at the camera for pix you plan to post online? Should you borrow a friend’s dog for a walk in the park as dog walking seems to make one more attractive? Should you grow a beard? Should you thicken and darken your eyebrows? Should you sign up for this self esteem-enhancing webinar or that online Love Summit?
In any event, the 80/20 rule proposes that, to some extent, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps in a virtuous circle of nothing succeeding like success.
The Law of Attraction also holds that nothing succeeds like success but takes a different tack.
The Law of Attraction is a religious conviction similar to that expressed in the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. “By faith are ye saved through grace, not by works…” and echoed in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus tells the father of “the boy with an evil spirit” that “all things are possible for those who believe,” to which the boy’s father replies, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.”
The Law is a conundrum. For the Law to work in your favor, you need to believe that you already have what you don’t yet have and, further, if you don’t believe you already have what you don’t yet have, you’ll never have it.
For this reason, the Law’s critics say that the Law of Attraction is a crock of horse hockey.
They have a point. How are you to persuade yourself of this logical and experiential fallacy? By what mental trick can you get yourself to believe what you don’t believe?
By the power of prayer. You humbly ask for the gift of faith in the expectation that the gift will be given. “Don’t you want somebody to love. Don’t you need somebody to love…”
But faith and prayer, for most of us, is hardly a satisfactory answer.
If you’re not prayerfully inclined, the place to begin is with “the granddaddy of motivational literature,” Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic, Think And Grow Rich (3). Napoleon Hill was a protegé of Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate. Hill’s reflections on Carnegie’s aphorisms led Hill to formulate the Law of Attraction in its contemporary form.
When it comes to romance, the Law tells us that our soul mate is present in our “vortex,” searching for us as we’re searching for him/her. To find one another, we need to raise our “vibration” to the required intensity. The universe is composed of energy. Like attracts like. Higher energies do not reverberate with lower energies. Love is the name we give to the highest level of energy of which we, as embodied beings, are capable.
How are we to raise our vibration to the point at which we can find our soul mate/perfect partner?
Esther Hicks (i.e. Abraham,) one of the leading interpreters of the Law, reprises Bloody Mary’s advice to the American sailors in Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical, South Pacific: “Happy talk, keep talkin’ happy talk. Talk about the things you like to do.” Claire Zammit and her “Wonder Women” experts offer a host of techniques designed to hasten the process. Likewise contributors to The Secret (the book and film) and Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul series.
“When I start dancin’ inside you, oh, baby, you make me wanna sing…”
It’s the some enchanted evening approach to romance American-style. Our ideal partner awaits us across a crowded room. Our eyes lock. Our hearts connect. Our arms open. A thousand facets from the glimmering, overhead chandelier illumine our carpeted path to one another as though the moment was destined from all eternity. “You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true.”
Some dislike the Law of Attraction because the Law is ruthless and has no scruple. The Law is indifferent to moral and ethical considerations, devoid of pity and charity, unconcerned with fairness and justice, makes no distinction between kindness and cruelty, virtue and vice, good and evil. Of two golfers caught in a sudden downpour on the golf course, one decent, the other a cad, the fatal bolt of lightning will as soon strike the one as the other.
People often say, sometimes with bitterness, “I’ve tried everything. The Law of Attraction doesn’t work for me. Why am I not good enough?” To which the Law of Attraction, having no advice or remedy, simply responds, “If only you believed in miracles, baby, so would I.”
The 80/20 rule and the Law of Attraction resemble the doctrinal conflict between salvation by works and salvation by faith, salvation meaning, in the secular, swipe left, swipe right world of dating and partner shopping, the fulfillment of the Airplane’s “Wouldn’t you love somebody to love. You’d better find somebody to love.”
If you’re extra picky and let the 80/20 rule iterate once again to its “Fourth Turning,” so that you’d need to go out on 625 first dates to be certain of finding your perfect partner (1/.2/.2/.2/.2,) you’d have to scour the earth to find your soul mate.
But that doesn’t happen.
After all, we’re people, not points on a graph of a binomial probability distribution.
When we pay our money down, including our sexual and emotional currency, we tend, most of us, to be somewhat realistic. Which may mean having to compromise and, though we may be loathe to say it, to “settle” for what we can honestly expect rather than what we’d ideally prefer. If the adjustment is made in a good spirit, partners tend to be happy with each other. If the adjustment is made in a grudging spirit, breakups are likely to occur amid the frustration and heartache that breakups often entail.
Visualize a straight line. Place “tough” at one end of the line, “tender” at the other end. There’s a full range of variance between. For simplicity’s sake, we can divide the spectrum into three relational combinations: tough/tough, tender/tender, tough/tender, all of it being a matter of degree.
The tough/tough couple may rough each other up, sexually and emotionally, but they’ll tend to come out okay. Their virtue lies in honesty and resilience. When they split, they’ll recover pretty quickly and may remain friends. They’ve got the grit to dust themselves off and try again.
The tender/tender couple tends to be considerate and sensitive. Their virtue lies in stability and endurance. Their weakness is a tendency to be less than truthful. When they split, recovery tends to be harder and to take longer than the tough/tough combination, and the tenders may end up bitter and resentful and dragging those feelings as obstructions into future relationships.
In the tough/tender combination, the tender often take it on the chin. Why would this combination come about? In apparent contradiction to the Law of Attraction, opposites attract, most often to the detriment of the tender. Many tenders devote themselves to becoming tougher so as to feel less pain. Again, there’s a plethora of dating gurus and coaches whose role is to assist in this endeavor.
The toughies can handle themselves. If a tender has masochistic tendencies and is irredeemably drawn to the toughies, good luck and God bless. But if and when the tender hits bottom and has had enough of the toughies so that he or she begins “recovery” in earnest, the struggle is to let go of that gripping need, the wanting the tough so badly that nothing else matters, the aching desire to do anything — sexually and emotionally whoring if need be — for the love they never got from those who should have but didn’t or couldn’t love them.
This is recovery from addiction. You’ll never get the high you got from the passion of being loved and left, your orgasms may never be as powerful, your feelings as intense, but you won’t be riding the roller coaster, and there won’t be times when bleak despair leaves you ready to kill yourself.
“If only you believed in miracles, baby…”
When many participants on the dating scene are looking for love and lasting connection and few are apparently finding it, as the stats from the online dating world suggest, the supply and demand curves of the dating market fail to intersect at the breakeven point, the dot on the graph at which there’s a loving partner for everyone who wants one and no one gets left out in the cold.
“so would I…”
The failure of the supply and demand curves to intersect at the breakeven point indicates that we overvalue ourselves and undervalue others or vice versa. The disconnect imports loneliness, unhappiness, resentment and recrimination into the equation, leaving us, unless we believe in the miracle the Law of Attraction promises, to weep alone at night, badly wanting someone to love and to love us, our tears dampening the gossamer fabric of our surrealistic 80/20 pillow.
(2) The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master The Art And Science Of Personal Magnetism, Portfolio Press, 2012
(3) The original republished by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Wise, VA
