Connection & curiosity10 October 20268 min read

Three Questions That Make a Stranger Worth Meeting

What relationship science tells us about attraction, meaningful connection, and why the best introductions go beyond dating profiles.

By the Matchelier team

Imagine being introduced to someone you’ve never met.

You learn they’re 34, work in finance, love traveling, enjoy good food, and spend their weekends with friends.

Sounds nice. But are you excited to meet them?

Probably not yet.

Now imagine learning that every Sunday, they cook dinner for their closest friends because growing up, their grandmother taught them that the best conversations happen around a crowded table.

Suddenly, you have a picture of someone. You can imagine their warmth, their relationships, their values. Perhaps you even catch yourself wondering what it would feel like to join one of those dinners.

That’s the difference between knowing facts about someone and beginning to feel a connection with them.

And increasingly, relationship research suggests that this distinction matters.

Why dating profiles struggle to capture attraction

Most dating apps encourage us to evaluate strangers through a collection of attributes: photographs, height, occupation, education, hobbies, and a few carefully chosen sentences.

But can those details actually tell us whom we’ll be attracted to?

In a fascinating 2017 study published in Psychological Science, researchers Samantha Joel, Paul Eastwick, and Eli Finkel used machine learning to investigate romantic attraction.

Participants answered more than 100 questions about their personalities, preferences, and ideal partners before attending speed-dating events.

The researchers could predict certain general tendencies, such as which individuals were more likely to attract interest overall. But their models couldn’t reliably predict the unique romantic attraction between two specific people.

In other words, knowing a great deal about two people doesn’t necessarily tell us whether they’ll feel something when they meet.

This poses an interesting challenge for matchmaking.

Perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to predict chemistry perfectly. Perhaps it should be to help people discover enough about one another to become genuinely curious about meeting.

The difference between someone impressive and someone lovable

In her book How to Not Die Alone, behavioral scientist Logan Ury introduces a distinction between what she calls the “Prom Date” and the “Life Partner.”

The Prom Date is someone impressive on paper. They’re attractive, accomplished, exciting, and someone you’d be proud to show off.

The Life Partner is someone with whom you could actually build a happy life.

Ury argues that we frequently overvalue easily observable qualities while overlooking characteristics that matter more in lasting relationships: kindness, emotional stability, loyalty, and the ability to grow together.

The problem is that these qualities are difficult to communicate through a traditional dating profile.

Anyone can write, “I’m kind and emotionally available.”

But a personal story about showing up for a friend during a difficult time might reveal something much more meaningful.

This connects beautifully with another influential relationship book: Eight Dates, by John and Julie Gottman and their co-authors.

Drawing on decades of relationship research and clinical experience, the book guides couples through eight meaningful conversations covering trust, conflict, intimacy, money, family, adventure, growth, and dreams.

One of its central ideas is that successful relationships aren’t simply about finding someone who shares all your preferences. They’re about understanding one another’s inner worlds and supporting each other’s needs and aspirations.

What if we could begin discovering those things before even going on a first date?

The science of storytelling and romantic interest

In March 2026, researchers Gurit Birnbaum and Kobi Zholtack published a study with a particularly interesting finding.

Across three experiments involving 594 participants, they compared dating profiles that presented information as ordinary facts with profiles that presented the same information through personal narratives.

The results?

People exposed to story-driven profiles reported greater empathy toward the person being described. That empathy, in turn, was associated with stronger romantic interest.

Importantly, the stories weren’t necessarily communicating more favorable facts. They were communicating information in a way that helped readers experience the person behind it.

The research, published in Psychology of Popular Media, suggests that storytelling may help make online dating feel less like evaluating products and more like encountering human beings.

A separate 2022 study of dating profiles found that profiles perceived as more original were also associated with greater attractiveness and dating intentions. Concrete personal disclosures helped make those profiles feel more original.

Together, these findings raise an intriguing possibility:

What if the best way to introduce two people isn’t to tell them how compatible they are, but to help them appreciate what makes each other special?

Three questions worth asking before a first date

Inspired by this research, we’ve been thinking about three questions that could make an introduction feel more personal, meaningful, and exciting.

They’re not designed to determine whether two strangers are soulmates. No three questions could do that.

Instead, they’re designed to reveal the kinds of stories that might make someone genuinely want to meet.

1. Tell me about a day you wish you could relive, just because it made you so happy. What made it special?

This question reveals something surprisingly intimate: what joy looks like to another person.

Perhaps they remember a spontaneous road trip with friends, a quiet Christmas morning with family, or the first time they performed music in front of an audience.

A memory like this can reveal someone’s passions, relationships, and sense of adventure.

And unlike a list of hobbies, it gives us a glimpse of what they’re actually like when they’re happy.

We don’t just learn what they enjoy. We begin to imagine enjoying life alongside them.

2. What’s a little thing you do to make someone you care about feel special? Can you tell me about a time you did it?

This question gets closer to the qualities Ury encourages us to look for in a long-term partner.

It’s easy to claim that you’re thoughtful, affectionate, or caring.

But how do those qualities appear in everyday life?

Maybe someone always remembers how their best friend takes their coffee. Maybe they leave handwritten notes for people they love. Perhaps they’re the person who quietly handles practical problems when someone close to them feels overwhelmed.

None of these gestures is inherently better than another.

But each reveals something about how a person expresses affection and pays attention to others.

And for the right reader, a seemingly ordinary gesture might be incredibly attractive.

3. What’s a dream you’d love to share with someone you fall in love with, and why does it mean so much to you?

This question draws inspiration from the Gottmans’ emphasis on understanding and supporting a partner’s dreams.

It invites someone to share not just what they want from a relationship, but what kind of life they’re excited to create.

Perhaps they dream of restoring an old farmhouse, raising children in a lively home, spending a summer traveling through South America, or simply building a relationship where Sunday mornings are slow and unhurried.

The answers may reveal practical compatibility. But they also do something more emotionally interesting.

They invite another person to imagine a shared experience.

And sometimes, that little moment of imagination is where curiosity begins.

Of course, questions can’t manufacture chemistry

There’s an important limitation to all of this research.

A captivating story doesn’t guarantee that two people will be romantically compatible. Someone can sound wonderful on paper without there being any chemistry in person.

And the three questions above haven’t themselves been scientifically validated as predictors of attraction or relationship success.

That’s precisely why meeting matters.

The purpose of a meaningful introduction shouldn’t be to replace the first date with a compatibility score or convince two people that they’re destined for each other.

It should be to give them a thoughtful reason to discover what happens when they meet.

Less evaluating. More discovering.

Modern dating often asks us to make decisions about people before we’ve had the opportunity to know them.

We swipe past strangers based on a photograph, eliminate possibilities based on a few preferences, and sometimes overlook people who might have surprised us.

But human beings are richer than their profiles.

Behind every collection of facts is someone with memories, dreams, gestures of affection, contradictions, and stories that can’t be captured in a checklist.

At Matchelier, we’re interested in a different kind of introduction: one that makes room for those stories and helps people approach a potential connection with genuine curiosity.

Because the most meaningful question before a first date might not be:

“How compatible are we?”

It might simply be:

“What is it about this person that makes me want to know more?”

And sometimes, that’s all a beautiful first date needs.