T he anthropologist and famed love expert Helen Fisher seemed ready to dash into oncoming traffic. We were on a sidewalk in Manhattan, opposite the American Museum of Natural History, and nowhere near a safe place to cross the street.
I look into baby carriages and worry about their future with love. This is how Fisher, the year-old chief scientific adviser for Match. Her confidence in this reality—in the static nature of our coupling behaviors—makes Fisher a notable source of comfort in an era of constant worry about the state of romance. Dating on the internet, writers and therapists and mothers and comedians say, is both too easy and too hard. Our social skills are eroding; we are having far too much sex or maybe far too little ; we are suffering from a profound and modern alienation.
Read: The five years that changed dating. At one point not too long ago, this was just what I needed to hear. In the resulting essay, I described her as nearly shouting at me not to worry. Swiping through, at times, literally hundreds of profiles a day—and noting, naturally, a lot of recurring jokes, hobbies, occupations, and styles of glasses—it got easier and easier to imagine that most men were basically the same and exactly as uninteresting as one another.
I was alarmed by how simple it was to become cruel and detached. The memory of this feeling has bothered me ever since. Today, I am a Tinder success story. I met my boyfriend on the app the same day that the first coronavirus case was recorded in New York City; we moved in together this past summer. It was sheer luck. Despite my good fortune, I am less convinced than ever of the case for dating on the internet. So, this past summer, I thought it would make sense to talk with Helen Fisher again.
She has been instrumental in making the case for online dating—movingly, on debate stages, on PBS, on Fox—and remains the scientist most publicly and consistently confident in its promise. She has never wavered, and she has done a lot of work. I thought that instead of just reassuring me, this time perhaps she could convince me.
