There are countless reasons why two people don’t hit it off on a first date. Most are perfectly legitimate. But there is one that drives a hardworking matchmaker crazy.
“There just wasn’t any spark.”
Spark, chemistry, x-factor, zing — curse you, whatever you are. For five years, the editors of Date Lab have been sending single Washingtonians out on blind dates and recounting the highs (and lows) for our readers. And after wining and dining 250 couples — 20-somethings, senior citizens, straight, gay, rich, not-so-rich, and nearly every race on the Census form — the one thing we know is this: No matter how perfect a pair seems on paper, no matter how sure we are that the spark will ignite, there’s no predicting when that indefinable romantic catalyst will show itself.
The same is true for coupling up in the real world. Dating Web sites use carefully calibrated algorithms to match potential partners; singles mixers disguised as kickball teams and networking events put the emphasis on socializing; friends fix up their buddies based on intuition (and wishful thinking). And still, the path to romance is littered with mismatches.
But each week, we’ve waded into the dating pool with optimism. Now, as Date Lab celebrates its fifth anniversary, we look at where some of our experiments in sparkage have led.
THIS WAY TO THE LAB
When Date Lab launched, it wasn’t with the intent of being a marriage machine. Nor was it mere lowbrow entertainment. The idea, modeled on a New York Post feature called Meet Market, was to examine dating and “this humongous role that it plays in people’s lives,” says Sandy Fernandez, a former Washington Post Magazine editor who helped guide Date Lab through its first few years.
The feature “took the reporting DNA and the values of The Washington Post and put them into this area of life that I think a lot of people would say is frivolous, but it’s really not,” Fernandez says. “It’s really talking about that search for partnership and meaning that pretty much everyone is on.”
From the start, Date Lab has stuck to a few fundamental principles. First, the matching process is human: no formulas or science involved, just a couple of editors sifting through thousands of questionnaires to find potential pairs. Second, our fix-ups are truly blind — the only thing participants know about the person they’re about to meet is his or her first name. And finally, while Date Lab can’t always aim for a “perfect” couple, we’ve vowed to never intentionally send out a bad match just for fireworks’ sake.
That the concept would succeed wasn’t exactly a given. After all, in real life, dating can be downright dull. Dinner. Stilted conversation. Furtive glances at the clock. And for it to work, we would need a steady stream of adventurers willing to put their personal life in our pages (and sign a pretty extensive legal release). Would buttoned-down Washingtonians play along?
Not only did daters sign up, but when the first dates went out in 2006, “we immediately knew that we had something,” Fernandez says. “There was a beauty to the realness of it.” Five years later, we have 4,000 applications from people hoping we’ve got a match for them.
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