Denise had a problem.

She’d been doing fairly well on Match.com. She hadn’t met anyone she really liked yet, but she’d gone out on a few decent dates. Mostly with guys in their 40s, which she didn’t mind, as she was about to turn 40 herself.

The day after her birthday, she logged into Match.com to check her messages. A 55-year-old guy had messaged her. And one who looked his age to boot.

He wasn’t the first. She started getting messages from guys in their 50s and sometimes even guys in their 60s. She only heard from a guy her own age if she messaged him first.

Why?

You know what happened. It was the algorithm.

When you set up your profile in an online dating site, you tell the site what kind of match you’re looking for. Straightaway, you’re asked what age range would be acceptable to you.

After turning 40, Denise was in a whole different bracket. She was no longer showing up as a match for men who wanted to date women in their 20s and 30s.

Christian Rudder is the co-founder of OkCupid and author of the book Dataclysm. After processing huge amounts of data from the online dating site, he found that age bias is real. Men, no matter their age, prefer women in their early twenties. Women, on the other hand, prefer men their own age.

Rudder explains: “A man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger women. Meanwhile his upper acceptable limit hovers only a token amount above his own age.”[1]

That’s the bad news. But there’s good news:

Offline, that distinction almost disappears.

Sixty percent of married couples are either the same age or within a few years of each other’s age.[2]

Only a small minority of men are much, much older than their wives.

So, while online dating algorithms encourage age bias, in the REAL world couples are falling in love with their peers.

Men may like the look of twenty-year-olds, but they’re mostly marrying women their own age or just a few years younger.

That piece of news helped Denise feel better, but it didn’t change the fact that Match.com was now pairing her up with fifty-year-olds. She wanted to date a guy her own age.

Here’s what I recommended to her:

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Bethany will never forget the last meal out she had with the man she thought she was going to marry.

They’d gone to their favorite Mexican restaurant, the scene of so many happy times. They ate in silence. She asked him how work was. He grunted. She asked him if he had plans for the weekend. He shrugged.

His phone vibrated. When he looked down, she knew she’d lost him. He spent the rest of the meal on his phone while she watched the other diners. She saw couples smiling and chatting. She felt painfully alone.

Conversation is the dipstick of a healthy relationship.

If you’re not talking—especially if you’re not talking about things that matter—you need to top up your “oil.” Conversation keeps the friction in a relationship from flaring up into fights.

But why do you need to talk when you’ve been texting all day?

Sometimes you feel closer to him on social media than when he’s sitting next to you on the sofa. He seems to share more when you’re not face-to-face. Something about having that physical distance helps him close the emotional distance.

John and Julie Gottman have been studying couples’ conversations for forty years. They even created a lab furnished like an apartment so they could study couples’ everyday interactions. And their conclusion—as described in their most recent book Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love—is that quality conversation keeps us together.

When we talk with our loved ones in a way that’s positive, attentive, and curious, our relationships thrive.

But time to talk is hard to come by these days. We’re busy. We’d rather share a meme. When we do talk, it’s practical: “What’s happening this weekend?” “Did you pick up the mail?” “What did your boss say?”

Besides, if you had an hour to sit down with your guy—no phone, no TV, and no distractions—what would you even talk about? You already know everything about him.

No wonder one study found that couples who’d been married for 50 years only spoke to each other for a total of 3 minutes during a 1-hour dinner. (The study found that unmarried couples fell silent only 20% of the time.)[1]

Is it time for conversation to make a comeback in your relationship?

Here are 3 tips that can start you on your journey to a lifetime of connection.

#1. Don’t text when you could talk.

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You’re getting ready to go out on a first date with a guy you met online.

What’s the single most important factor in determining whether you have chemistry?

1. How much you have in common
2. How well you flirt
3. How you look
4. How you smell

I’ll tell you the answer in just a minute, but first let’s look at the way most of us—men and women alike—get ready for a date.

If you want to make a great first impression, there’s one thing that’s absolutely crucial: cleanliness. Take a shower, wash your hair, brush your teeth. Get every trace of sweat and grunge off.

Then you want to pick the right outfit. Something that strikes just the right note.

Last but not least, top it all off with just the right scent. For men that’s cologne; for women, perfume, lotion, or powder.

You’re ready to go, confident you look and smell your best.

But what if that fail-proof routine actually sabotages your chemistry?

I know. It sounds CRAZY.

What could possibly be wrong about showing up to a date feeling clean, well-dressed, and smelling great?

The short answer is…

Pheromones.

I’m not talking about those dubious pheromone sprays that show up in spammy ads in your inbox.

I’m talking about YOUR pheromones.

The ones you have by virtue of being a member of the animal kingdom.

Pheromones are simply scent signals. They’re found in almost every kind of animal, from squid to bees.

You have your own unique “scent signature.” It’s how your dog recognizes you. Mothers can even recognize their babies by scent alone.

This signature scent is one of your most appealing attributes.

You’ve probably heard about the sweaty t-shirt studies. On several occasions, researchers have asked women to sniff sweaty t-shirts and report whether they found the smell pleasant or appalling.[1]

They found that women prefer the scent of men who are immunologically different from them.

Researchers speculate that this preference is built into our biology, helping us pick mates that have the best chance of producing genetically robust offspring.

So it’s not the case that there are certain pheromones that are universally attractive to the opposite sex. Rather, whether or not you find someone’s signature scent attractive is based on your own genetic makeup.

This idea caught fire in what’s known as pheromone parties.]

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A long time ago, I was standing in one of those lines.

You know the ones. Glaciers move faster. Might as well pitch a tent and break out the freeze-dried food, because you’re in it for the long haul.

I’d been staring at the head of the person in front of me for so long that every I was on a first name basis with every strand of her hair.

I was just wondering whether it was too late to switch lanes when I heard something. A song playing over the loudspeakers.

I had no idea who was singing it. I don’t usually listen to country music. But the lyrics caught my ear.

It was a song about a guy who is out with his girlfriend when they see another woman. The girlfriend can tell from the look in his eyes that the woman they just saw was his ex. Fear strikes her. Maybe her boyfriend still has feelings for this woman. Maybe their relationship isn’t as secure as she thought.

He sees that she’s reacting. He moves immediately to reassure her. And the way he does it is just perfect.

“Yes, there was a time / I thought she had it all / She meant the world to me / Back when the world was small.”[1]

I thought: Yes! That’s exactly right.

It’s hard to know what to say to someone who worries that you can’t love her (or him) with your entire heart because you’ve given that heart away before.

That worry doesn’t come out of nowhere. Have you ever been with someone who talked about an ex-girlfriend with an unmistakable glow in his eyes? He tells you he’s over her, but you know the truth.

These days, no matter who you date, he’s going to have a relationship history. He’s going to have one first love he never got over, or an ex who keeps popping up in his life like a bad rash.

What do you do about it?

Do you close your eyes and pretend his past doesn’t exist?

Or do you let him know that it worries you? That you feel vulnerable when he talks about his exes or hangs out with them?

That’s sure to convince him you’re not insecure in the slightest. Even better, cyberstalk him and interrogate him about every attractive girl on his list of friends.

Obviously, I’m joking. But what DO you do?

You change the way you think.

And his past stops worrying you, no matter how much it gets in your face.

Here’s how.

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