Modern Romance

“When I started the project, I thought the big changes in romance were obvious—technological developments like smartphones, online dating, and social media sites. As I dug deeper, however, I realized that the transformation of our romantic lives cannot be explained by technology alone; there’s much more to the story. In a very short period of time, the whole culture of finding love and a mate has radically changed.” 

In the Introduction, Ansari explains why he initially wanted to write this book; after a love interest failed to respond to his text message, he went through a downward spiral of rejection, wondering why she didn’t write back. However, he realized he wasn’t alone in his experience. As he began to do research for the book, it became clear that there had been a shift in how singles dated in previous generations to how they date today. While technology is a major factor in this shift, he realized that the change has more to do with differing ideologies.

“After our interviews we examined whether this spoke to a larger trend. In 1932 a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania named James Bossard looked through five thousand consecutive marriage licenses on file for people who lived in the city of Philadelphia. Whoa: One-third of the couples who got married had lived within a five-block radius of each other before they got married. One out of six had lived within the same block. Most amazingly, one of every eight married couples had lived in the same building before they got married.” 

When Ansari spoke to older generations about how they had met their future spouse, he was shocked to learn that many of them had met because of their proximity to one another. This is one of the starkest differences between older and younger generations: The dating pool for older generations was smaller because they had to date people that lived close by, whereas younger generations can meet people from all over the world on the Internet.

“As our technology becomes more prevalent in our lives, romantic behavior that seems strange or inappropriate to one generation can become the norm for people in the next one.” 

Older generations had to rely on in-person interactions or phone calls to ask each other out on a date, but statistics show that younger generations are using texting or other forms of messaging to ask each other out.