How you can find the one: I’ve studied love for 10 years so I know all the relationship mistakes women make. Take my test to find out EXACTLY what’s stopping you from happiness, by Harvard expert LOGAN URY

You might think that love should be effortless. You fall in love, you don’t think your way into it.

So why do so many of us struggle to find it?

Here’s the truth: while love may well be a natural instinct, dating isn’t. Great relationships are built, not discovered. We’re not born knowing how to choose the right partner, how to recognise long-term potential, or how to stop ourselves making the same dating mistakes over and over again.

Those are skills we have to learn. And, unromantic as it sounds, science can help us do that.

I’m a behavioural scientist-turned-dating coach. I studied psychology at Harvard and later ran Google’s behavioural science team.

Behavioural science is the study of decision making – a way to peel back the layers of our mind, peek inside and see why we make certain choices.

At Google, I applied these lessons to marketing and product design. But for the past ten years, I’ve applied them to romantic relationships. Who we choose as a partner is one of the most important decisions we’ll ever make.

Our love lives are shaped by a series of decisions: when to put yourself out there, who to date, when to walk away and when to commit.

People often struggle to find love because of dating blind spots – patterns of behaviour, or ways of thinking, that hold people back,

but which they cannot identify on their own. Their brains are quietly steering them towards familiar, flawed choices.

I have found that most people fall into one of three clear groups, or what I call the Three Dating Tendencies. Each group highlights unrealistic expectations a person may be experiencing – of romantic relationships, of their partner, or of themselves.

Most people recognise themselves immediately in one tendency more than the others. But it’s helpful to understand all three because you will likely end up dating someone (or are dating someone now!) with one of the other tendencies.

Once you know which tendency you lean towards, a lot of your dating history will suddenly make sense.

You’ll understand where you are now and why past relationships unfolded the way they did.

Once we’ve illuminated your dating blind spots, the key is to make different decisions moving forward, so that you can finally find the love you’re looking for.

To help you identify your dating tendency, there’s a short quiz on the opposite page, or go to my website to complete it at loganury.com/quiz.

Now read on to discover how to boost your chances of finding love in 2026.

THE ROMANTICISER

You want the soulmate, the happily ever after, the whole fairy tale. You love love. You trust that when it’s meant to happen, it will.

Romanticisers tend to believe that the right relationship should feel obvious, effortless and magical from the start.

When a relationship doesn’t feel perfect, they assume it isn’t right, rather than that it is something they could work on

Take my client, Maya. Twenty minutes into our first session she sobbed: ‘I know he’s out there. He just hasn’t found me yet.’

Maya was convinced the perfect man was waiting just around the corner, and that fate would eventually bring them together.

Like many Romanticisers, Maya had a very specific vision of her future partner, right down to his height, the length of his hair and the colour of his eyes. When someone didn’t match that image, she didn’t give them a chance.

That mindset can also shape what happens once someone like Maya is in a relationship.

When they start dating someone they believe is ‘the one’, their sky-high expectations can propel the relationship forward.

But when the relationship hits an obstacle they give up rather than trying to overcome it.

Real love is built through effort, repair and commitment over time. It’s not discovered fully formed in a single, magical moment.

If you relate to Maya’s way of thinking, there are some key changes you can make that will help turn your dating patterns around…

FIRST, stop waiting for love to happen to you. What’s romantic isn’t how you met, it’s that you met at all!

Love is created by putting yourself in situations where connections can actually develop.

Signing up to dating apps, saying yes to invitations and initiating conversations can all give love somewhere to begin.

SECOND, let go of rigid ideas of what a partner should look like. Many Romanticisers are filtering people out too quickly based on a fantasy image shaped by films, early crushes or cultural ideals.

Letting go of perfection is not settling, it’s making room for possibility.

THE THIRD and toughest change is to move from the ‘soulmate’ mindset – the belief that once you find the right person everything will be effortless – to the ‘work it out’ mindset, which comes with the knowledge that relationships take work and shift over time.

If you’re putting in effort, you’re doing it right, not wrong.

THE MAXIMISER

You like to research. You weigh your options carefully. You want to be confident you’ve made the right choice before you commit.

Maximisers believe that with enough searching, analysing and comparing, they can find the perfect partner and feel completely certain about their decision.

The problem is dating doesn’t work that way. There is no way to meet everyone. There is no point at which you can say you have seen all the available options.

Maximisers are often driven not only by the fear of missing out, but also by the fear of making the wrong decision.

In dating, this shows up in familiar ways. You might be happy in your relationship, but you keep wondering who else could be out there. You might struggle to commit, focusing on what’s missing rather than what’s working.

You might leave happy relationships because you can’t shake the thought that you could be happier with someone else.

If this pattern describes you, how can you change?

FIRST, stop thinking that the key to happiness is endless comparison. You will never have all the data. Focus on what qualities this person has, rather than looking for what is missing.

SECOND, learn to commit before certainty arrives. It’s not about finding the perfect person, it’s about finding someone wonderful and then building that great relationship alongside them.

Once we do commit, our brains help us invest and focus on what’s working, but that process only begins after a decision is made.

THIRD, accept that uncertainty is not a sign of failure, it’s part of choosing another human being. Every meaningful commitment involves a leap, not a guarantee.

THE HESITATER

You don’t think you’re ready to date yet. You want to feel confident, settled and complete before you put yourself out there.

Hesitaters tell themselves they will start once they have lost weight, healed from their last relationship, built their confidence, sorted their finances or got everything else in order.

Many Hesitaters want a relationship deeply, but fear getting it wrong. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of exposing parts of themselves they don’t yet feel proud of. Waiting feels safer than risking disappointment.

Take Jing. When she came to me in her early 30s, she was intelligent, thoughtful and professionally successful. She had built a life she liked. 

What she hadn’t done was date. She told herself she wasn’t ready yet, and that she needed more time before putting herself out there.

The problem is that no one ever feels fully ready. There is no point at which you wake up entirely confident, healed and complete.

And yet people still date, fall in love, make mistakes and build relationships anyway – and Hesitaters can too.

So what can Hesitaters do to get over their hang-ups?

FIRST, set a start date. Behavioural science shows that vague intentions rarely turn into action. Short, concrete deadlines work far better.

Instead of waiting to feel confident, choose a specific date to begin dating – but no more than three weeks in the future.

SECOND, limit preparation so it doesn’t become avoidance. Some preparation is good: download the dating apps, pick out your favourite outfits. But preparation should support dating, not replace it.

THIRD, get your practice in. Dating confidence comes from dating, not from thinking about dating. It’s a skill and, like any skill, it improves with practice.

FINALLY, accept discomfort. Dating is uncomfortable, especially at the beginning. Some dates will be disappointing. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. You have to learn to treat early missteps as information, rather than as evidence that you’re not ready.