Apparently, Dating Has a 6-6-6 Rule Now

I recently learned about something called the 6-6-6 dating rule, and my first reaction was: How am I just hearing about this? Apparently, in certain corners of modern dating, the desirable man should be six feet tall, earn six figures, and have six-pack abs. Another version involves a different six, but I have four daughters and would like to finish this essay without making Thanksgiving weird. To be fair, there’s little evidence that armies of single women are actually roaming America with 6-6-6 checklists. It’s more internet meme than mating constitution. Still, memes become popular because they exaggerate something we recognize, and this one feels like a tiny window into what dating has become: less Who is this person? and more Does this person meet the minimum system requirements?

I say this as someone who has been married for 30 years, which means I entered the dating market when your romantic algorithm was basically proximity, courage, and whether somebody gave you their phone number. There was no swiping, ghosting, breadcrumbing, orbiting, soft launching, or situationships. We just called most of that being a jerk. Today, more than half of Americans under 30 have used a dating site or app, according to Pew, and 37% of adults say these platforms provide too many choices. That last number interests me because humanity spent thousands of years trying to meet more eligible people, finally built a device capable of putting thousands of them in our pockets, and promptly became annoyed that none of them were quite right.

Research suggests abundance may actually change how we evaluate people. Studies of online dating have found evidence of choice overload and even a “rejection mindset,” where exposure to more potential partners can make people increasingly inclined to reject the next one. In other words, the more options we have, the easier it becomes to believe someone better is waiting just beyond the next swipe. Modern dating can start to resemble standing in front of Netflix for 45 minutes, scrolling through 8,000 perfectly reasonable choices before announcing, “There’s nothing on.” Except now the rejected movie has feelings and was apparently only 5’11”.

I don’t think this means young people are shallow. If anything, I feel for them. We raised them inside optimization culture. We taught them to compare colleges by rankings, careers by salaries, restaurants by stars, vacations by reviews, bodies by likes, and lives by followers, then seemed genuinely surprised when they started applying filters to romance. If you can sort, rank, review, upgrade, and return nearly everything else, why wouldn’t you eventually wonder whether your boyfriend is available in a slightly taller version with better abdominal definition?

The problem isn’t standards. I have four daughters; I am enthusiastically pro-standard. Have high standards for kindness, honesty, emotional maturity, curiosity, responsibility, and how someone behaves when they’re angry, disappointed, tired, or wrong, but there is a difference between standards and specifications. Standards ask whether someone can build a life with you. Specifications ask whether they photograph well standing beside you. One is about character while the other is basically ordering a human being like a luxury SUV.

Thirty years of marriage has also taught me that almost none of the qualities that keep two people together appear on a dating profile. Relationship research consistently points toward things like responsiveness… the feeling that your partner understands, cares about, and supports you. Unfortunately, no filter exists for “will remain emotionally functional when the water heater dies three days before Christmas.” No checkbox for “can apologize without immediately presenting a 14-slide defense of why they were technically correct.” No verified badge for “will still make you laugh during the years when life isn’t particularly funny.” Those qualities reveal themselves slowly, usually long after the résumé stops mattering.

That’s why 6-6-6 fascinates me. It isn’t really about height, money, or abs. It’s about what happens when infinite choice collides with imperfect humans. Young people are dating with another possibility perpetually glowing in their pocket, and I wonder whether that makes it harder to experience one of love’s most important transitions: the moment you stop asking whether there’s someone better and start discovering what’s extraordinary about the imperfect person you’ve chosen.

Because eventually the six-pack goes, careers wobble, bodies change, money comes and goes. Hair begins relocating to places nobody authorized. Life aggressively edits the profile you originally signed up for and what’s left isn’t 6-6-6.

It’s character, friendship, humor, generosity, forgiveness, and someone who keeps choosing you after acquiring overwhelming evidence that you’re occasionally unbearable.

Which, after 30 years of marriage, sounds considerably more impressive than abs.

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