EITHERne night in January, while Robert Stewart was going through old Hinge matches, he decided to revive a conversation he had started months ago with a woman on the dating app. After picking up where they left off and exchanging a few pleasantries, Stewart asked if the woman wanted to take a phone call. He hoped that would lead to a date in person.
“We could do that,” the woman replied, but with a caveat. “Would you mind completing a questionnaire for me first?”
Stewart, who lives in Dallas, clicked on a Google form the woman submitted, titled “Dating Compatibility Questions and Answers.” The woman wanted to “skip the small talk” and go straight for the jugular. If Stewart wanted to go on a date with her, even if he wanted to talk on the phone ahead of time, he had to answer a series of 26 questions.
First question: “Are you married?” Stewart (who, for the record, isn’t) thought that was fair enough. But then he clicked on to the next page and saw more. Was he in therapy? What was his love language? How do you put the toilet paper on the bathroom hanger? Do you want children? If so, what would you do if, hypothetically, a future child came out as gay? Oh, also, here are four sentences. Could you please identify the one that contains a homophone?
Stewart quickly closed the tab. “It was so absurd to me,” said Stewart, 32. “I texted him back saying, ‘I’m not going to answer that.’ This is excessive.” He tweeted about the encounter, joking that dating in 2023 had come to this, though many women responded that they didn’t blame their partner for asking.
“Why spend money and waste good outfits and time if they don’t match?” read an answer.
Stewart later went back to Hinge’s match and asked why he needed what appeared to be “a job application” to date her.
“The premise was, if a guy is interested in her, why wouldn’t he want to answer those questions?” Stewart said. “If he doesn’t want to take the time, then he’s not interested.”
Stewart disagreed. “I thought it sounded a bit elitist,” he said. “She is asking me to spend all this time deciding whether or not I am a worthy candidate. But what do I get out of it? If we’re getting to know each other, it should be mutual.”
So, it didn’t work. But Stewart is far from the first man asked to undergo an evaluation before taking a conversation from dating apps to real life. An increasing number of people are using dating forms or written questions to weed out time-wasting romantics.
of tinder end of year review found that in 2022, “stances on social issues could make or break a match.” About 75% of singles demanded that their partners be “respectful or engaged with social issues.” Do you want to make an appointment? You better be willing to let go of your past voting history or the last time you went to a protest.
Philippa Wilson, a 29-year-old woman from Kingston, Jamaica, went viral in 2021 after she tweeted a Google form that asked 11 questions about potential dates, essentially asking men to “sell themselves.”
Wilson ended up with about 700 responses from men around the world. After analyzing a few joke responses, he estimated that about 300 were actual contenders. “I got my friends together, we broke our knuckles and we went to work with all of them,” he told The Guardian. He reduced the crowd to 30 men. He ended up dating about four of them.
Kennedy, a 26-year-old Taylor Swift fan from Vancouver, also created her own Google Form to combat pandemic-era loneliness. “I figured if I was going to risk getting sick, it should at least be with someone worth getting to know,” she said. (Kennedy asked that her last name not be used.)
Like Swiftie, she wanted to know what potential dates thought of the sometimes divisive singer. “If someone said, ‘No, I really don’t like his music,’ that’s okay because I knew I could talk them out of it if we went out,” Kennedy said. “But if they answered something like ‘No, she sucks’ or ‘All she does is write about her hundreds of boyfriends,’ I would delete them immediately because it’s okay if her music isn’t your thing, but if you have a weird hate for her. , makes me think you hate women.”
At first, Kennedy appreciated people’s responses. “Everyone’s personalities shone with his responses, and the dates I went on worked out well,” he said. But when someone posted the form on Reddit, she was suddenly bombarded by trolls who harassed her and criticized her appearance. So a word of warning: “I would tell women who want to do this to watch out for incels.”
But can a pop quiz lead to love? While it may not be the most romantic way to get a date, more women are taking a page out of the HR playbook and analyzing matches before making the time for them. Consider it a faster version of the New York Times. 36 questions that lead to love. The study behind the questions, conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron, explored how asking a series of personal questions to strangers can speed up intimacy.
And by personal, Aron and his team meant staff. His investigations were a little more intense than those raised by Stewart’s partner.
Example: “Of all the people in your family, which death would you find most disturbing?” But both ideas are similar: let’s get rid of the rags, quickly.
jeff guenther is a TikTok influencer who goes by the name Therapy Jeff, as well as a Portland-based licensed professional therapist. Most of Guenther’s videos encourage his audience of over 2 million to examine themselves and the people in their lives. Her suggestions for “12 Really Great Second Date Questions” include “how long does the honeymoon phase usually last for you?” and “what is the most endearing thing about you?”.
After taking time off from dating himself, Guenther returns to the scene. He has noticed his own influence: on some of his first dates, some of his matches have asked him questions about his videos. And, surprise: he hates it.
“The vast majority of my videos are about questions to ask yourself, or a first date, or a second date, or a long-term relationship, and I feel like I’ve created a monster,” Guenther said. “I’m like, oh my gosh, what have I done?” Gunther said. “When you turn something into human resources, that’s so unattractive.”
But he still understands the need to know absolutely everything about someone. “Dating takes a lot of energy, and going on a date with someone takes up an hour or two of your life when you could be doing something more stimulating,” Guenther said. “Some people’s love language is to ask questions. I have 2.3 million followers on TikTok because people eat this shit. Ninety percent of my followers are women, so I think these types of questions resonate with them more than men.”
None of Guenther’s questions are meant to be asked in rapid succession, knockout round style. He encourages people to perk up during natural conversation, and believes all questioning is best left for real-life interactions: not Google forms.
“On first dates, you feel the vibes, you see how it feels to be in someone’s presence, you see the banter and the chemistry,” she said. “Then you can add a handful of questions for first dates.”
As a couples counselor, Guenther sees the damage that occurs when people fall in love too quickly without asking the decisive questions. “People will find out the things they don’t like about their partner too late, because they’re so attached and in love with that person,” she said. “They’ll be together for years, and then they’ll find out that someone is insecure about having kids when they really want them. It’s important to highlight all the important things up front, but perhaps in a less overwhelming way than with a Google Form.”
Taylor Swift fan Kennedy fell for one of the more serious candidates who responded. “I found my soul mate, who answered most of my questions correctly,” he said. “It’s nice to have a few things in common, but having a couple of differences adds a little spice to the relationship.”
Wilson did not finish finding a partner through her 11 questions and is still single. She gave up on the Google form for now. The men she met through her questionnaire were kind and respectful, but she never felt a real spark.
“At the end of the day, the guys were everything you’d put on a piece of paper: fun, talented, driven, driven and good with kids,” Wilson said. “But just because a guy is good on paper doesn’t mean he’s good for me.”
