In a World Full of Games, How Do You Recognize True Love?

The QDaily Research Lab shares some patterns, numbers and standards that hold across most relationships, so you can look at "true love" from a relatively scientific angle.

So what is true love, exactly? First, a few answers worth savoring:

• The Wang Xiaobo version: "Can you and I manage to have no regrets about everything that has happened, and no demands about everything that hasn't? I'm willing to try."
• The Zhihu version: "True love is when two people are both that unattractive, and each still worries the other will get snatched away."
• The Natsume Soseki version: "The moon is beautiful tonight."

— The definition of true love is an open-ended essay question. Everyone has their own answer. But how true love shows itself, how you judge it and how you keep it do follow some common patterns.

To make "true love" a little more concrete, the QDaily Research Lab ran a series of surveys: "Under what circumstances do you feel someone likes you?", "What do you fake in the early stages of a relationship?", "Under what circumstances do you feel someone has stopped loving you?", "What does your partner do that kills the romance for you?", and more. Out of the results we built a soulmate-screening scale (how to choose), an intimacy-level chart (how to get along) and a true-love-versus-not-love table (how to tell).

These scales are not a template that says "true love must look like this." They share the patterns, numbers and standards that hold across most relationships, so you can look at "true love" from a relatively scientific angle.

The Soulmate-Screening Scale

People apply a set of standards to anyone they let close. Take picking friends. According to the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, a person can hold stable relationships with about 150 others in a typical social group. You meet tens of thousands of people in a lifetime, and you choose roughly 150 of them.

Picking a soulmate calls for more care, so the standards get finer still. The first step toward true love is not to look for a copy of yourself, but to find someone who overlaps with you on certain dimensions and whom you can approve of.

Our Lab once ran a survey titled "How do you screen candidates for a 'soulmate'?" It drew 4,666 responses. Weighing both the votes each answer got and how often it came up, we ended up with the 12 words people bring up most when screening a soulmate:

1. First impression: A first impression is a way of thinking built out of your job, your experience, your knowledge and your instinct. It is not always right, but it is vivid and it sticks, and it shapes everything that follows. Two people who get the first impression wrong may never get a second scene.

2. Looks: Judging by the face is written into human genes. In our Lab's survey on what people look for in a partner, "first glance at the face, then sort into tiers" took 491 votes, third place — behind "can we actually talk to each other? If there's nothing to say, good looks are wasted" (771 votes).

3. Sense of humor: Jokes run hot and cold, and the bar for laughing sits high or low. Two people in it for the long haul don't both need to be comedians, but their triggers should roughly match: you throw a meme, I throw one back; you set up a running gag, I finish it. Finding each other funny is where love starts.

4. Hobbies: How many hobbies you share decides how much you have to talk about. Setting aside the parts where you agree to differ, it helps to like some of the same things. If you share nothing at all, at least manage not to hate what they love — and don't force your own hobbies on them.

5. Food: Spicy? Durian? Cilantro? Chinese or Western? Soup before the meal or after? Tofu pudding, zongzi and mooncakes — salty or sweet? Fights about eating are fights about survival, and for the sake of world peace people tend to pick someone whose plate looks like theirs.

6. Taste: "You love cool tones, I prefer warm ones; you can't stand Zhao Liying, I can't stand Lin Chi-ling." Between two people, identical taste matters less than this: the one with the worse eye listens to the one with the better eye, and the world gets a little prettier.

7. Personality: "Our personalities clash" — a breakup line that sounds airtight and says nothing — is the Double 11 bestseller of excuses. The phrase attached to it is almost always "we can't communicate." One partner loving noise and the other loving quiet is not the problem. Not talking, or talking badly, and then splitting over it — that is the problem.

8. Being in sync: What people want most is to "know what the other is thinking without a word." The kind where I finish dinner and lift a hand, and you can tell instantly whether I want a napkin or a toothpick.

9. Daily habits: When people say the small stuff kills love, this is the small stuff: do you smack your lips, jiggle your leg, let your nails grow? Toilet seat up or down? Does the curly brace go on a new line? Remember that any small thing, repeated ten thousand times, stops being small.

10. Worldview: A worldview is the view you take of the world as a whole, and it does not shift in a few months. So if a couple still fights regularly over "after graduation, do I go to a big city and do what I want, or take the job my family arranged?" — then break up. Next question.

11. Money: Is a street-side food stall fine? Is a 1,280-yuan concert ticket expensive or cheap? How much goes on travel in a year? People will give ground on spending for love — buying cheaper things to match a partner's habits, say. But that ground is limited, and they take it back.

12. Plans for the future: Here people care about two things. First, "am I in your plan?" Second, "are your plan and my plan the same plan?"

The Intimacy-Level Chart

Once you are dating, the small details give away how close you are. Someone who "washes her hair and puts on perfume for every date, then agonizes over 20 outfits" is usually still early on. Someone who "stands in front of you in a red down jacket over green long johns, bundled into a shapeless parcel" is usually at the old-married-couple stage.

A Jezebel report found that women wait at least four weeks, on average, before letting a partner see them without makeup — a fairly conservative number, and only the tip of the iceberg.

To explain intimacy, Jezebel sorted the relationship into five stages from a woman's point of view, and listed the new territory unlocked at each one. Roughly speaking, how much of your girlfriend you get to see tells you how close you are:

1. When you barely know each other, you are both flawless specimens of the species. Your girlfriend looks like this: makeup done just right; dressed sweetly but not obviously trying; hair freshly washed; eating at an elegant rate; sneezing with her head turned and her mouth covered; foundation over the spots; only pedicured feet on display.

2. When you know each other a little, the flawless specimen starts to crack. As you meet more often, she admits that the look is maintained and managed — not what she wakes up as — and that she needs food and air like everyone else. You begin to see: feet with untrimmed toenails; tan lines; how she acts when hunger turns to temper; how she looks when her rhinitis flares up; unwashed hair; and her face without makeup.

3. When you know each other fairly well, you have reached the honeymoon stretch where nothing scares either of you off and you tease each other about your habits. She won't mind you seeing: the box she keeps her pads in; the most comfortable and slightly alarming loungewear; the period outfit (bundled into a shapeless parcel); her browser history; and she will fart in front of you without hesitating, sometimes walking over specifically to do it.

4. When old-married-couple mode switches on, you should be familiar enough with the following to look straight past it: the silly essays she wrote as a child; odd moles; the dopey face she makes clipping her toenails or cleaning out her ears; and whatever constipation, diarrhea or stray gases produce.

5. At the stage where you have each confirmed the other is it for life, one sentence covers it: she no longer minds you witnessing any of her worst excretory business. Fill in the rest yourself.

True Love vs. Not Love

The "true" in true love comes down to being sincere and being real. Call it a way of living that both sides enjoy and can keep up for years. But love is a phase of feeling, and phases can spoil. Plenty of what people take for unshakable true love is counterfeit.

On the question of what love is and what it isn't, the QDaily Research Lab has run two surveys. One asked, "Under what circumstances do you feel someone likes you?" and drew 6,998 responses. The other asked, "Under what circumstances do you feel someone has stopped loving you?" and drew 12,240 (the heartbroken outnumber the rest).

Noticing that someone likes you mostly happens early. At that point people push toward you hard and fake a few things to leave the best possible impression. If someone treats you like this, they probably like you:

They message you constantly, wanting to know where you are and what you're doing, making conversation out of nothing, circling around to a topic, asking "what are you up to," asking "have you eaten," asking "you there, junior?";

They reply with enthusiasm no matter how dull or trivial the subject. You send three words, you get five or more back, and they will keep even the deadest thread going;

They run their own chat etiquette: the last message of the night is always theirs, and goodnight arrives on schedule;

They manufacture reasons to meet — "I've got a basketball game today," "I've got movie tickets, want to come?";

They will eat anything. "I don't mind, you order" is permanently on their lips, and they love picking up the check;

They pretend to embody every flattering adjective in the language. Men are gentlemen, men have style, men lead lives of quality and color — certainly not shut-in coders ordering takeout every night. Women get ladylike, cultured, demure, domestic, elegant, sweet; and if the other side likes the innocent type, a woman can pretend she doesn't even know what dating means;

They pretend to stay up late, pretend work is light, run on endless energy, never get sleepy, and spend 24 hours a day acting as though everything you say is funny;

They pretend to be even-tempered, pretend that waiting costs them nothing, pretend they never swear, and won't complain about sore feet while you shop.

The slide from love to not-love usually shows up as carelessness in small things, and less and less time and energy spent on you. If someone treats you like this, they have probably stopped loving you:

They almost never message first. The chat log goes from 1,000 messages to 500 to 200 to two days ago; calls go from two hours to half an hour to ten minutes to two days ago;

The replies, when they come, are flat and keep shrinking: "Oh." "Heh." "Fine." "Whatever." You ask what's wrong; they say nothing's wrong;

The chat etiquette has changed. No more instant replies, and the last message of the night is always yours;

On the phone there are long silences, or "nothing else, I'll hang up," or "sorry, what did you just say?";

They stop demanding to see you every day. They never come to you unless it's business. They're always busy. And when you are together, they're on their phone;

They used to want photos of the two of you; now they only take selfies. You used to be pinned to the top of their chat list; now they'd rather block you.

Questions About True Love

As a research outfit with a knack for noticing and summing things up, the QDaily Research Lab has pulled some small data on true love out of the numbers above. We've arranged it in the order things happen — meeting, dating, marrying — to answer a few questions no relationship avoids:

1. What should you watch for in online dating?

Research from Cornell University and Michigan State University found that nine out of ten people fudge something in their profile. Men tend to cheat on height; women shave off about eight or nine pounds.

Data from the American dating site OkCupid shows a few standard lies: actual height runs 5 centimeters below the claimed height; actual income runs 20% below the claimed income; the better the photo looks, the more likely it is old; and 80% of the people who call themselves bisexual are attracted to only one gender.

2. How many long-term relationships turn into "true love"?

A YouGov survey found that more than 85% of people manage three or fewer long-term relationships in a lifetime, and 10% have never really had one at all.

3. Does distance make love truer?

Merolla, a scholar at Baldwin Wallace University in the US, argues in one study that a long-distance relationship you survive is actually sturdier — much like the plot of Only Lovers Left Alive. The two share the same passions and don't depend on living side by side, which puts the bond above ordinary love that needs company. It is hard to shake.

4. What should you watch for when the distance ends?

That is exactly when things break. Of the 335 long-distance college couples Merolla surveyed, 180 broke up once the distance closed and they could finally be together. The likely reason: the idealized version stops, and each starts noticing the other's flaws. One in three reunited long-distance couples splits within three months of reuniting.

5. What happens after you move in together?

A study from University College London found that when one person makes a positive change, the spouse often follows. Take quitting smoking. Alone, 7.7% of men and 8.2% of women succeed. As a couple quitting together, the rates jump to 48.4% for men and 50% for women.

6. Does true love fight?

True love is not free of friction — there is far too much worth getting angry about. UC Berkeley compiled a ranking of breakup triggers (respondents could pick several): no toilet paper in the bathroom (45%), dirty bowls and cups left around the flat (40%), empty shower gel nobody refills (35%), dirty dishes in the sink (19%), an unmade bed (13%), and a mountain of laundry left to rot (12%).

7. Who is worth marrying?

The QDaily Research Lab once asked, "What kind of person would you least want to marry?" and drew 9,385 responses. The traits people can least stomach in a partner: stingy (17.5%), boring (14.5%) and unemployed (12.5%).

8. Does marriage settle it for good?

To be precise, 69% of the conflict in a marriage is permanent. A four-year study found that couples argue over the same things forever: new clothes, a new haircut, a few pounds gained or lost, a wrinkle more or less.

In After the Honeymoon, the psychologist Dan Wile writes: when you choose a long-term partner, you inevitably choose a particular set of unsolvable problems, and you may be wrestling with them for 10 years, 20 years, even 50.

9. How do you keep true love going?

Know the exact coordinates of how your partner's mind works. You can name the person who irritates your spouse most. You can list the relatives your spouse likes least. You know the three most important moments of their life. You know what they would do if they won the lottery, and so on.

When you talk, use "we" far more than "I" and "mine." When you argue, the couples who score highest on true love hit a certain ratio: five positive remarks before every negative one.

If you're still searching high and low for true love and now, with the help of the above, have someone in your sights, take this parting gift: click through for the 36 questions about love from the viral piece To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.

The psychologist Arthur Aron has a theory that two strangers can grow close fast by asking each other a set of unusually personal questions. Meet someone you like — go ask them.