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The 37% Rule Says This Is How Many People You Should Date Before Choosing One

Get enough experience to know what you actually want

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There’s a mathematical theory that claims to know exactly when you’ve dated enough people to make a smart decision about settling down. It’s called the 37% rule, and it comes from optimal stopping theory—a branch of mathematics that, of course, someone eventually applied to romance.

Psychology Today notes the theory has been used to solve everything from hiring decisions to real estate, and the dating version works the same way. Before you’ve dated anyone, you have no real baseline for what’s out there. So the theory suggests spending the first 37% of your dating life purely in observation mode, treating those relationships as data points rather than candidates. Once you’ve cleared that threshold, you commit to........

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