Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Last week I mentioned that I’d finished reading Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance. Rather than be a creativity kleptomaniac, I’m citing Ansari’s book as the inspiration for this article.

In his book, Ansari talks about the strange thing that happens when someone we like makes themselves available to us. The moment we know this person is a possibility they go from being the one to an option. They lose their appeal. We let our text exchanges with them fizzle out. We’re suddenly too busy to set a concrete appointment. The thrill of discovery is gone. This reaction is especially true to emerging adults fresh on the dating scene, where the search for a soulmate is a numbers game.

Ansari says that between 2005-2012 one third of couples who got married met online. He says the people who were dissatisfied with online dating spent too much time looking at screens sifting…