Most dating advice focuses on hard and fast rules. If you’ve ever been inspired by Sex and The City, the characters are always giving credentialed advice despite their own lack of success. Call back within two days, don’t double text, wait three dates for hanky panky. But if there was truly a formula as easy as that, wouldn’t we all be happily coupled?
Amy Chan, author of Unsingle: How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts, takes a different approach. Her work centers on the subconscious patterns directing you to who you’re drawn to in the first place, which are patterns most people never examine. We asked her to break it down.
What's the most common unconscious pattern that governs people's dating choices without them realizing it?
“We all have a relationship blueprint, an internal framework formed by our earliest experiences with our caregivers, past relationships, and the messages we absorbed about what love should look and feel like,” Amy says. “It shapes everything from who you’re drawn to, to who you find boring.”
Most people never clock that this blueprint is truly running the show.
“Human beings are drawn to what’s familiar, whether that’s with music, food, or romantic partners,” she explains. Someone who grew up in a chaotic home, where love felt conditional or unpredictable, may find themselves drawn as an adult to partners who are unstable and hard to read, recreating that same emotional experience of anxiety and confusion.
How do you tell the difference between real chemistry and familiar dysfunction?
Amy speaks from experience here. “As someone who used to equate an activated nervous system and anxiety as chemistry, I had to rewire my ‘chemistry compass,'” she says, referring to one of the major concepts from her book. Our internal guidance system for attraction can be calibrated by our past experiences of love. “Mine was broken. It pointed me toward the familiar anxiety of unavailable guys who liked me a little but never enough. Anyone who was genuinely interested in me, or stable and reliable, I dismissed as ‘boring.'”
Of course, she has a litmus test for this. “If you have a history of picking poorly, an instant ten-out-of-ten attraction is more likely a familiar wounding pattern than a healthy match.” Constant anxiety, obsessively checking your phone, spiraling from high to low because someone is hot and cold, that’s not love. “That’s intermittent reinforcement. It’s the same mechanism that hooks gamblers at slot machines,” she says. “Dopesick and lovesick are frighteningly similar.”
Yikes. But fear not, there are ways to detect real connection as well. By contrast, a more enduring connection tends to feel calm and consistent, which “if you’re used to chaos, can initially read as ‘no spark’ or boring.” Amy suggests you let curiosity push you past that phase.
What's the difference between compatibility and chemistry, and why do people confuse them?
People tend to define chemistry as the kind of instant attraction that makes you feel like ripping off your clothes and making out. Amy says that definition is too narrow.
“There’s research on the mere-exposure effect and how attraction can actually build with time and familiarity,” she notes, referencing the psychological phenomenon where repeated exposure to someone increases liking over time.
She also points out that chemistry comes in more than one form, physical being just one slice of the pie. Intellectual, emotional, and spiritual chemistry can matter more depending on the stage of life you’re in. Most people who are single and in their 30’s can attest to changing priorities, and elevated standards, rightfully so.
Compatibility often gets misunderstood, too. “People make the mistake of thinking compatibility means you’re similar people, so they put too much weight on things like shared hobbies,” Amy says. Real compatibility is about alignment on core values and life vision. “If you’re determined to have kids and they never want them, no amount of shared interests or hot sex fixes that.”
Hot… sex… does not… solve… differing… core values. Sorry, just writing that down.
She points to a massive study that gathered data from 43 existing studies and more than 11,000 couples using machine learning to find that traditionally “shiny” traits like height, physical attractiveness, and status showed almost no correlation with long-term relationship happiness. Relationship-specific factors, like how partners treat each other, mattered far more than who either partner was on paper.
Most people have a "type." Should we trust it?
“It depends on whether your chemistry compass is in good working order,” Amy says. Look at your relationship history. If the people you’ve been drawn to were genuinely healthy for you, your type is fine. Keep going.
If your last few relationships weren’t healthy, it’s worth looking at your emotional type instead of your physical or aesthetic one. What’s the emotional experience that keeps repeating? “Once you become aware of your patterns and start pattern interrupting, you get your chemistry compass in working order,” Amy says. From there, attraction starts pointing toward people who are stable and good for you, and your intuition becomes something you can actually trust again.
What question should people be asking early in dating that almost nobody thinks to ask?
Most people spend those first few dates wondering, “Do they like me? Do I need to be hotter to win them over?” But it’s really not about losing 3lbs or getting a new outfit. Amy asks that we flip the question. “Really, the question you should be asking is: how do I feel around this person? Do I feel safe enough to be myself?”
That safety shows up physically before it shows up mentally. “Your nervous system is picking up on subconscious cues that tell you whether you’re safe, and when it registers safety, your body relaxes,” she says. “It’s how you typically feel around your closest friends.” From there, the second question matters just as much: “Do I want to choose this person? Not just, are they going to choose me?”
How do you know if you're dating from readiness, versus loneliness or habit?
Amy pushes back on the idea that you need to be fully healed before you date. “We are always healing,” she says. “Being healed isn’t some magical island you arrive at and stay on forever.”
What actually matters is a combination of three things: intention, capacity, and ability.
Intention means genuinely wanting to build a connection and being willing to put in effort, rather than waiting for fate to deliver someone.
Capacity means being in a season of life that can actually support a new connection. A messy divorce or a ninety-hour work week usually can’t hang.
Ability means having the basic relational skills like communicating clearly, following through, regulating your emotions, and repairing after conflict.
What early behaviors predict long-term success?
Mutual investment is the biggest behavior that shows you and [insert special someone] are two crazy kids who just might make it, according to Amy. “Two people mutually invested in growing and building the relationship… they’re committed to the commitment.” When conflict comes up, (and it will, count on that) the difference isn’t who’s naturally better at handling it. It’s whether both people are working to get better at it together. “It might be messy, and it won’t be perfect, but ultimately, they repair.”
What's the mindset shift that changes how someone shows up while dating?
If dating has you exhausted and convinced there’s no one good left, Amy suggests reframing through what she calls the Dating Funnel, the framework at the center of her book. It breaks dating into five stages:
- Prospecting (meeting people)
- Discovery (dating; usually first couple of dates)
- Evaluation (assessing chemistry and compatibility; typically dates three through twenty)
- Commitment (coupling)
- Retention (staying together)
“Instead of throwing out dating completely, look at where you get stuck in the funnel the most, and apply strategies to help you move forward in that specific area,” she says.
That means most people are only one or two shifts away from a healthier pattern. The problem usually is that they’re running the same subconscious strategy on repeat and mistaking the result for proof that they are broken— they’re not. You’re not. You just need to calibrate your compass.
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