Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

by Chip Heath

If you are an overachiever—and single—you might even consider applying this “consider the opposite” principle to your dating life. One research team, interested in why some people find someone to marry and others don’t, interviewed women who were exiting the office where they’d just received their marriage license. To their surprise, 20% of the women reported not liking their spouse-to-be when they first met. (This also implies that there are millions of other people who met their future spouse and then walked away because their gut instinct led them to abandon the interaction too early.) The researcher who led that study, John T. Molloy, reported that some of the single women on his research team were surprised and intrigued by this result. Almost all of them could think of men whose interest they’d rejected—and some of these men were continuing to express their interest (in acceptable, non-stalkerish ways). Now the women wondered if these men might be overlooked potential mates. So they decided to try their own version of a “deliberate mistake” strategy, accepting a date with a guy they’d turned down multiple times in the past. Molloy said that “most women decided they were right the first time.” But one of his team members liked the first date enough to go on a second, and a third, and a fourth. She ended up marrying the guy!