Sara Eckel's Blog, page 7

Thanks, Goodreads and Bustle

For including IT’S NOT YOU on these terrific lists:

Happy to be in such excellent company with Meghan Daum, Jen Doll, Diane Mapes, Kate Bolick, Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth Gilbert, Karen Karbo and … Richard Yates!

Goodreads Good Minds Suggests: Meghan Daum’s Favorite Books About Living Life on Your Own Terms (Or What Happens When You Don’t) 

Bustle: 11 Literary Antidotes to Your Baby- and Wedding-Clogged Facebook Newsfeed

 

My review of ‘The Real Thing’ in The Washington Post

This past weekend, my review of Ellen McCarthy’s THE REAL THING: Lessons on Love and Life From a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook appeared in The Washington Post:

On a single day in 2009, Ellen McCarthy became the wedding reporter for The Washington Post and broke up with her boyfriend of nearly two years. At age 30, she was suddenly a chick-flick cliche, interviewing florists and wedding planners between crying spells and dutifully smiling through conversations with blissful couples.

Fortunately, her book’s resemblance to a Katherine Heigl movie ends there. In “The Real Thing,” McCarthy never falls into a fountain, topples a wedding tent or spars with an infuriating groomsman who is actually perfect for her. Instead, she spends four years quietly standing in the corners of other people’s weddings in a simple black dress, taking notes. The result is a wise and compassionate look at how we love, along with some gentle suggestions for how we could get a little better at it.

You can read the full review here.

‘How Do I Get Her Out of My Head?’

Dear Sara: I spent fourteen years with a woman, and afterwards she said it was only out of convenience and that she had found somebody else. I wasn’t very affectionate—you know, two jobs, but I loved her very much, and I can’t get her out of my head. How do I go forward?—A

Dear A: First, wow. That is a really hard thing to hear. It’s no surprise that you’re struggling to get past this.

But I’m glad you’re focused on moving forward. You have wisely recognized that much of the problem stems from a lot of pesky thoughts about your ex, thoughts that won’t leave your brain no matter how much you want them to.

It’s amazing what our minds can do. You know rationally that thinking about the person who broke your heart is the worst possible thing you could do for your emotional well-being. But somehow, the more you try and push the thoughts away, the more persistent they become.

So I’m going to share a mindfulness meditation technique that has worked for me in the hopes that it—or a version of it—might be useful to you.

Sit upright in a chair with your hands on your thighs and your gaze lowered. Notice how the soles of your feet feel on the floor and place your attention on your breath—the rise and fall of your chest, the air going in and out of your nose. (You can also sit yogi-style on a cushion if you’d prefer.)

The point here is to connect with your body, rather than your mind. Notice if you’re feeling any pain—a clench in your chest, a hollow pit in your stomach.

Whatever the sensation is, don’t resist it. Just allow yourself to feel it.

That’s probably an unappealing prospect, but I’ve found that when I allow myself to connect with the physical side of my emotional pain, things become more manageable.  Feeling that knot in my chest (that’s how I experience it) makes me see that the pain won’t kill me or do me any bodily harm. It’s just a sensation that will pass.

Now place your attention on your breath. When you notice that you have drifted into thought, simply label it. Make a mental note to yourself—“thinking”—and go back to the breath.

Here’s what you’ll notice: This is hard. Those thoughts aren’t going to go away just because you’ve done a breathing exercise. They will come back—again and again and again. This does not mean you’re bad at meditating. This means you’re the same as everybody else at meditating.

The point of meditation is not to stop thinking entirely. Instead, it’s to change your relationship with your thoughts. The real action comes when you notice that you’re spinning off into some rumination or fantasy–when you say, “Oh, I’m thinking,” and then return to your breath. Then you drift off again, remembering something she said or did. Then you notice that and return to the breath. Repeat one zillion times.

The process is slow and boring, but the longer you practice, the longer the spaces between the thoughts—the time not thinking about her—will be. It’s like going to the gym. You won’t drop twenty pounds after one round on the treadmill. But if you put in a little time every day, you’ll see results.

I would recommend trying this for five minutes a day, and then gradually increasing the time—say ten minutes the next week, fifteen the week after. I would also highly recommend taking a meditation class. It’s pretty hard to do this on your own.

If there isn’t a meditation or yoga center near you, libraries and YMCAs frequently offer meditation classes. I practice with an organization called Shambhala, which has centers in many U.S. cities, as well as online classes. Another great online course: Susan Piver’s Open Heart Project. And while you’re at it, check out her wonderful book on heartbreak, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart. I have also found the books of Pema Chodron to be very helpful during difficult times. My favorites are The Wisdom of No Escape and When Things Fall Apart.

Yours,

Sara

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her onTwitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

Women Think Men Prefer Conformists, But They’re Wrong

If you’re a single woman who has a brain and a backbone, you may suspect that these things are working against you in the dating arena. Maybe you read a dating guide that instructed you not to choose the restaurant or argue about politics. You need to let the man be the man! So hold off on the Yelp search and for heaven’s sake keep your opinions about Hillary Clinton to yourself!

Or maybe friends and family have gently suggested that you’re a tad too independent or intimidating. It’s not that they think that you shouldn’t have gotten that master’s degree or corporate-law job. Everybody’s super duper proud of what you’ve achieved!

The problem isn’t you—it’s guys. They’re so lame! They say they want to be with a woman who can hold her own in an argument about the latest Supreme Court ruling, but really they all want old-fashioned girls who will defer to their opinions about metal bands and gaze in wide-eyed awe as they mansplain about states’ rights and single malt whiskey.

This is the conventional wisdom that annoying know-it-alls have been dispensing to women for decades, and we have mostly believed it. A 2006 study found that heterosexual women asked to contemplate a romantic day with an attractive stranger became more acquiescent, while their male counterparts become more headstrong and non-conformist. The researchers concluded that this is because men prefer deferential women, while women like men who are independent and assertive.

But Matthew Hornsey, a psychology professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, questioned this assumption, since the study was based on what women thought men liked, rather than what men actually preferred. To get a clearer picture, Hornsey and a team of researchers conducted a series of experiments designed to determine how heterosexual men and women select romantic partners.

The study, the results of which were recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that the majority of female participants did indeed find non-conformist men more attractive than the more compliant types. But it also found that men prefer non-conformists, too.

In one experiment, men and women read dating profiles in which subjects showed either conformist or non-conformist traits. For example: “Amy has always liked hanging out with her family and friends, and likes being part of the group. She is quite happy to go along with what others are doing;” and “Jess likes to stand out from the crowd, and enjoys expressing different opinions from her friends, as well as making decisions for herself.”

Most women thought unassuming Amy would have an advantage over the brass Jess, but they were wrong. Men preferred the more headstrong type. In another experiment, in which men and women engaged in an online chat about art preference, male participants preferred women who frequently disagreed with the group to those who deferred to others’ opinions.

“Women should tear up their assumptions about what they think men want,” Hornsey wrote to me in an email. “The old gender stereotype—that men go for conformist, submissive women, has been slow to die. For women, the consequence may be that they rein themselves in when dating when they would be better served by just being themselves.”

So the next time you assume the guy you’re seeing will be crushed if you challenge his opinion on campaign-finance reform, give him some credit. Most men are not the fearful little bunnies that decades of dating folklore have made them out to be. They prefer women who know their own minds, and aren’t afraid to show it.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her onTwitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

A reader asks “What would you say to your 35-year-old self?”

Dear Sara: I’m two months away from turning 35. Despite my trying to stay away from depressing media and articles, I find myself getting sucked in anyway. What would you tell yourself as a single 35-year-old, knowing what you now know? —R

Dear R: When I turned 35, I had been unattached for four years, and that birthday hit me really hard. I had spent age 34 in a state of panic, thinking I just had to meet someone before this looming deadline.

After my 35th birthday, I thought, “Okay, game over.” I bought an apartment, but also sleepwalked though the process and didn’t even bother to paint it. It didn’t feel like a happy occasion—it felt like a declaration of my lifelong spinsterhood.

So here’s what I would say to that woman: You think you know the future, but you don’t. You think that you will always be stuck in the same place, that the story will never change, but it will. And the reason it will change is because even though you sometimes get very, very down you never actually give up. You say you’re giving up, but you’re full of shit because what actually happens is you mope around your apartment for a bit, and then you go out to brunch with friends, and then you make plans to visit someone in California, and then you sign up for a meditation class, and then you swap homes with a friend in Seattle.

That’s why you’re going to be okay–why you’re already okay. Doing these things won’t guarantee that you’ll meet the love of your life, but staying committed to making your life as rich and interesting as possible will give you power.

Gradually, you will start to see that all this work you’re doing is paying off—you’ll feel a lot better about yourself, and you will be better able to see through all the crap that we put on single people and not be so affected by it. You’ll still want a partner, but you’ll stop hating yourself for not having one (or for wanting one). You’ll stop caring what other people think and just know that you are lovable even if you don’t have a dapper man by your side, proving it to the world. This power will serve you extremely well for the rest of your life–in your marriage, your career, and everything else.

The point is not that there is a husband at the end of the rainbow. It’s that when you look back on your life ten years from now you will see that it was incredibly rich and meaningful and your one-and-only regret will be that you wasted so much time worrying about the future. Seriously, that will be the only thing you regret: all the time you spent fretting about finding someone and letting the scolds and scaremongers get under your skin. Don’t waste another second on those idiots. You don’t have everything, but you have some things so enjoy those things because one day you’ll have different things. You’ll like those things, but you’ll also miss what you have now.

The great irony of worrying about the future is that I don’t think it leads to a better future. You make smarter decisions when you aren’t beating yourself up over things you can’t control. In fact, you will never once make a good decision out of fear. And of course, it is those daily choices that determine what our futures will be.

So have fun, do your best, take care of yourself, and be nice. The future is always uncertain, but you’ve got your best shot at a happy one if you can stay grounded in the present.

Oh, and the apartment? Buying it won’t seal your fate a single person, but it will have a profound effect on your future: One day you’ll sell it for three times what you paid.

Yours,

Sara

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

Unrequited: When the One You Love Doesn’t Love You Back

When Lisa Phillips was thirty years old, she fell passionately in love with an unavailable man. Her crush began as a hopeful mental diversion, but quickly escalated into a kind of madness. At one point, she found herself standing outside the man’s door, knocking so loudly and insistently that when he finally opened it he was holding a baseball bat and threatening to call the police.

“As the months passed and he didn’t come around, something inside me shifted. My unrequited love became obsessive. It changed me from a sane, conscientious college teacher and radio reporter into someone I barely knew—someone who couldn’t realize that she was taking her yearning much, much too far,” Phillips writes in her fascinating new book, Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession.

For Phillips, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, the lunacy was relatively short-lived. Eventually, she fell in love with someone else, and they later married and had a daughter. But when she was recovering from her heartache, she promised herself she would one day re-examine that infatuation and try to make sense of out it.

Crushes, as we all know, are an enormous waste of energy—all the time we spend daydreaming about our beloved is time that we’re checked out of our actual lives. They make us fall behind at work, ignore our friends (or drive them nuts with our endless monologues about him or her) and, worse of all, fail to notice nice people who might actually like us back.

But most of us do fall under the spell of someone who doesn’t return our affections at some point; Phillips says that 93% of us have been rejected by someone we loved passionately.

Although unrequited love is extraordinarily painful, Phillips says it can also have a beneficial side. She recounts the story of Diane, whose crush on a co-worker from Mexico prompted her to end a bad relationship, learn Spanish, redecorate her home and plant zinnias in her yard. She didn’t get the guy, but she did move forward.

“Unsatisfied desire—those distracted, bittersweet days of seeing your beloved glitter with not yet—are worth something even if they result in nothing. In the days of unsatisfied desire, we did feel more alive as we explored our new place for ourselves in the world through our desire for another. We planted zinnias, we opened up about our lives and we daydreamed about an emotional utopia. We lived in the suspense of ‘Do you love me?’ and myriad other questions that passion brings forth, questions about fear, aloneness, possibility, and what it means to be human,” writes Phillips.

Reading Unrequited reminded me of the time, many years ago, when I was tortured by a crush. It was terrible to be in love with a man who had no interest in starting a relationship with me, and I still cringe when I think of the brainspace I lost to my obsession.

But, like Diane, I also started making important changes in my life during that time. I ended a relationship that wasn’t working. I moved to a better apartment. I took acting lessons and yoga classes. I threw parties, honed my public speaking skills, and developed my upper-body strength.

Of course, the idea was to become a woman who this particular man would love, and at that I failed completely. But in the process, I achieved something more important: I started to become the woman I wanted to be. I began to see through all of the cultural garbage I was putting on myself—not pretty enough, smart enough, sweet enough, etc. And I began to have faith that one day I’d meet a great guy who loved me as much as I loved him. And that’s exactly what happened.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

A Woman Faces the Men Who Rejected Her—and Makes a Surprising Discovery

When Lea Thau was 38, her fiancé broke up with her while she was pregnant with their child. She subsequently became single for the first time in her adult life.

“I went from being engaged to be married and pregnant and looking for houses every Sunday to being eight months pregnant, alone in an apartment, discarded and devastated,” said Thau, in her astonishingly beautiful and raw podcast series Love Hurts.

Thau spent the next four years dating and was dismayed to discover how difficult it was to get into a relationship. And like so many of us, she wondered why—why couldn’t she find a partner?

She even took a year off from dating to work through the pain of her breakup. “Then I went back to dating thinking that now I had done the work and therefore deserved the relationship. But no one had informed the universe that I was now ready and deserving and no relationship came,” she said.

The producer of KCRW’s Strangers, Thau then tried a more journalistic approach: She interviewed men who had rejected her and asked them to explain why they weren’t interested.

If that isn’t the gutsiest thing you’ve ever heard, consider this: At the time she did the interviews she had just been jilted by a guy she’d been seeing for two months. He had said he’d lost touch because his father was dying. That struck Thau as a very good excuse, until she saw that his online dating profile was active.

Despite this intense vulnerability, Thau sat down with men who had rejected her and asked what when wrong. Was she projecting some kind of bad juju, some off-putting vibe of desperation or anxiety?

The men said absolutely not—she had made no mistakes. Instead, their answers fell into one of two categories—either the timing was bad, or they just didn’t have romantic feelings toward her.

“I don’t think there is a secret sauce to it,” said one guy. “I really think it has to do with chemistry, and you just know when you meet that person whether you think there is potential or not, and I don’t think there is anything you can do or huge mistakes not to do. Aside from the basic grooming things—sure take a shower…”

It might sound awful to hear a former date say “I’m just not that into you.” But for Thau it wasn’t, because the explanations she had made up in her head were so much worse.

“Of course, they might not admit it if they found me gross or annoying, but I really didn’t feel that was the issue. They just didn’t feel that thing. And that isn’t a problem. The problem is we add all kinds of interpretations. We jump to conclusions like ‘If he doesn’t want me, no one ever will.’ And we blame ourselves like ‘I’m too old,’ ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘I’m too much,’” she said.

As she was working on the show, Thau also heard from the guy who blew her off after two months. He was still unattached and, as he had before, exhibiting behavior that was, well, flakey and weird. This too was liberating.

“When someone dumps us, we’re so quick to think there is something wrong with us,” she said. “From actually communicating with the guys instead of making assumptions I realized that maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe it wasn’t about me and my attributes or ones that I lacked. Sometimes people are dealing with their own [stuff] and they have their own reasons. And it’s both too self-absorbed and too self-critical to think that it’s about us. So I recommend this business of finding out what the other person has to say, even though it is so terrifying to ask. Because most of the time, they’re good people and they don’t think you’re half bad.”

So often, we turn rejection into a confirmation of the worst fears we have about ourselves, and we decide that the best way to deal with it is to hash over all our flaws so that we can fix ourselves and prevent it from happening again. But all this really does is make us feel awful.

We think that is the sober and realistic way to behave, but Thau’s exercise shows that all those self-critical thoughts are often just fantasy. The real-world explanation was so much less painful than the ones she had made up in her head, and it showed her that she didn’t need to change herself. She just needed to take a deep breath, try again, and have faith that eventually the timing and the chemistry would be right. By the end of this extraordinary five-part series, we get a hint that could be happening.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t Fear the Cupid

We all know that Valentine’s Day is a contrivance of greeting-card companies and florists. We all know that even those who have nice relationships aren’t really enjoying February 14, as there is nothing particularly romantic about eating overpriced heart-shaped ravioli in a restaurant full of unhappy couples on the coldest night of the year.

And yet, the holiday still manages to make us feel like shit.

Every stupid drug-store box of chocolates, every generic bouquet of deli roses, every Macy’s ad hawking tacky jewelry and embarrassing underwear is all basically saying this: Everyone is buying this crap, knowing full well it’s crap, because there is someone out there who they love, and they don’t want that person to be left out. You, on the other hand, are being left out.

That’s why we see so many stories telling us “How to Be Single on Valentine’s Day.” We get cheerful lists and slideshows: Get a massage! Sing karaoke! Buy yourself a new purse! These chipper suggestions are accompanied by pictures of extremely happy singles: great-looking 20somethings laughing and raising giant glasses of wine, women dancing alone in their apartments or blissfully soaking in candlelit bathtubs. These singles aren’t going to let Valentine’s Day bring them down—nuh uhn!

I spent many years writing magazine articles that aimed to help women feel better about their lives—I interviewed hundreds of psychologists, and read countless self-help books. It wasn’t just academic to me: I was single for most of my 20s and 30s and was particularly interested in how one handled the pain and indignity of The Search. So I often road-tested the advice I gathered. One solitary Saturday night, rather than my usual pasta in front of the TV, I cooked myself a pan-seared salmon with sautéed spinach and pine nut couscous. I opened a nice bottle of wine, flipped on the classical music station, lit a candle—the whole blissfully single nine yards.

I was trying to prove to myself that I didn’t need a relationship, that I could be “happy alone.” The problem was, having a candlelit dinner alone didn’t make me feel better: it made me feel much, much worse.

What happens when those twitchy feelings you’re trying to douse with new clothes and funny movies and herbal body wash show up anyway? What happens if instead of being rapturously single on Valentine’s Day you feel other things: loneliness, frustration, anxiety, depression?

During my years of involuntary singlehood, I gradually learned that the most empowering action I could take was to let those unfashionable emotions in. When I didn’t try to push the pain away, when I simply noticed that queasy sensation in my heart, I realized it wasn’t that bad. When I stopped being embarrassed by my sadness, the actual experience of it was quite manageable. The fear of the feeling was worse than the feeling itself.

I’ve got nothing against a having a Valentine’s spa day or celebrity crush movie marathon. But those perky Valentine’s listicles have always bugged me because they protest too much. Underneath all that pep is an underlying panic: Distract yourself! Distract yourself! The truth is too painful! Let a trace of sorrow creep in and then that’s another thing you’ve failed at. Not only are you unable to find a partner, but you also suck at being single.

What if, instead of celebrating yourself on Valentine’s Day, you just were yourself? What if you simply acknowledged that being alone on February 14 can be difficult? I’m not saying wallow in it. I’m saying acknowledge that it is hard in the same way that married people brag that marriage is hard. You’re going through something kind of challenging. You’re being reminded that other people have something you want and don’t have. This doesn’t make you a loser—this makes you about average. It has been said many times before, but it bears repeating: We all have our stuff.

Here’s the main point: It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Whatever particular cocktail of feelings you have on Valentine’s Day will pass. They will pass whether you spend the evening at the greatest party in the world or cleaning the bathroom. They are temporary neurological sensations. You don’t have to be afraid of them.

In the Buddhist tradition I study, this is called being a warrior. That might sound weird, but in a culture where so much is designed to distract you from your life, actually being in it turns out to be sort of ballsy. And as with any act of courage, it’s hard at first but at a certain point you realize, “Hey, I’m doing this. And I’m fine.”

So do what you like on Valentine’s Day—have a great time, have an awful time. On February 15, the flowers will start fading, the balloons will start puckering and the chocolates will be half price. It will be an ordinary day, just like the one before.

This post first appeared on The Date Report.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

You’re More than Your Checklist

I frequently hear from readers who are confused about why they’re single, and their letters very often include a detailed list of their attributes. They typically go something like this: “I have a great job, lots of friends, work out regularly, am active in my church and frankly look pretty darn good for my age.”

I understand this impulse—I used to mentally tick off my fine qualities when I was facing yet-another wedding or Valentine’s Day or Saturday night on my own. It felt productive somehow—like I was actively trying to solve the riddle of why I was alone. And in a culture that puts a high premium on self-esteem, focusing on my strengths seemed like the best course.

But now, reading these lists bums me out. While I’m glad these readers are able to recognize their good qualities, I wish they didn’t feel compelled to plead their case.

Even when you judge yourself positively, you’re still judging yourself. You’re still buying into the idea that there is a standard that separates couples and singles, a bar that you have yet to clear.

We write these lists to elevate ourselves, but I think they diminish us. They read a little too much like a catalog copy for a kitchen appliance or a used car. In great shape! Lots of baggage space! You’ll never need another! There is an underlying anxiety to them, as they also inspire the inevitable shoe-drop question: So what’s the catch?

Valentine’s Day is coming, and if the oncoming barrage of heart-shaped paraphernalia has you massaging your attributes like worry beads, I’d like to suggest an alternative. What if instead of parsing yourself into a bunch of pleasing qualities, you honored the gloriously complicated mass of humanity that you are?

Would you still be lovable if you lost your job? If you gained twenty pounds? Would you be worth knowing even if you weren’t a gourmet cook or a triathlete? Is there something inside of you that transcends your great sense of style and your ability to speak French? Are you more than your career, your looks, and the number of likes on your last Facebook post?

When you practice this kind of self-acceptance—the kind that does not care about how much money you make or how many Instagram followers you have—you gain a kind of superpower. When you accept yourself unconditionally, you become extremely difficult to manipulate. The perpetual message that singles receive—that you’re not quite good enough—loses its power. When you know your worth, you no longer feel compelled to prove it.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

Can 36 Questions Make You Fall in Love?

Can you make a decision to fall in love? Writer Mandy Len Catron wanted to find out. As Catron writes in a wildly popular New York Times Modern Love column, she told an acquaintance about a technique, developed by psychologist Arthur Aron, in which two strangers ask each other 36 questions of increasing intimacy and then stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes straight. When Aron conducted his study more than two decades ago, two participants fell in love in his lab and later married.

Catron’s acquaintance was game, so that night over beers they started asking each other questions like “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?” As the evening progressed, the queries became more revealing—“If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know,” for example.

“The questions reminded me of the infamous boiling frog experiment in which the frog doesn’t feel the water getting hotter until it’s too late. With us, because the level of vulnerability increased gradually, I didn’t notice we had entered intimate territory until we were already there, a process that can typically take weeks or months,” Catron wrote.

If you haven’t read the piece yet, you might want to do it now, because a spoiler is coming up.

They fell in love.

Catron makes clear that her experiment wasn’t scientific, since they were both interested enough in each other to do the exercise in the first place. She doesn’t suggest that you can make another person fall in love with you or that chemistry doesn’t matter. Her story, she says, is about “what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.”

We would all love a formula for how to fall in love, and while I don’t think the 36 questions are that, I do think they could be very useful for online daters.

The great thing about internet dating is that it gives us access to people we would have never met otherwise. The tough thing is, it’s hard to establish intimacy in just a few dates. People who meet at work or through school have the advantage of spending time together before the first date. Even people on blind dates share the connection of their mutual friends. In both cases, a bond has been established before you ever enter the coffee shop. But when you meet someone who has been plucked from the ether, you’re very clear that the person sipping that latte, however cute and nice, is a stranger.

I’m not suggesting you try the 36 questions on the first date—that might be a bit much.

But it could be a great exercise for the fourth or fifth date. Shortly, after Catron’s piece ran, Vogue published an account of a newish couple giving the questions a try and subsequently seeing their feelings shift from cautiously interested to smitten.

If you’re already gone on several dates, you’ve clearly established a base level of interest and attraction. But this is also a time when couples can hit a wall. You’ve established your taste in music and how many brothers and sisters you each have. You know the other person’s hometown and college major. You like each other, but you’re not close yet, so it can start to feel like one of those job interviews where the hiring manager keeps bringing you back in to talk to another round of VPs.

At this point, there’s a temptation to bail, figuring that if that magical thing hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t. But just as online dating has shown us that you don’t need pixie dust to meet a nice person, perhaps the 36 questions reveal that you also don’t need to rely on the universe’s whims to take the relationship to the next level. Maybe we can allow science to help us out on this front, too.

If you’re on the fence about that fifth or sixth date, it might be worth a try. And if you do, please write me and tell me how it goes.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.