Widen The Aperture
Serial daters aren't unlucky — they're matching reality against a broken model in their head
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 91%
McLeod's diagnosis of the serial dater, drawn from being one himself: the problem isn't supply, it's the model. Most people carry an internal template of what a good relationship or partner should look like — his own was that it stays sexy and fun every time, with no fighting, a permanent happily-ever-after — and they spend dates hunting for a reason the reality in front of them fails to match. Some models are narrow on attributes (a height floor, a job type); some are narrow on the felt experience of the relationship itself. Either way the behaviour is the same: skate past people at the first mismatch. The fix is not more dates but editing the model — widening the aperture, giving people more of a chance, and seeing things through further before deciding.
Origin
McLeod says he was one of those people: not a huge number of first dates, but a long run of two-to-six-week relationships that he ended the moment something felt quote-unquote wrong. His near-miss with Kate — a person he would have passed over entirely if the stakes hadn't stopped him — is the evidence that broke the model.
Core principles
- 01The bottleneck is the model in your head, not the pool of available people.
- 02A narrow model makes you a no-hunter: you scan for disqualifiers.
- 03Shopping lists of features systematically eliminate the person you'd actually be happy with.
- 04The honeymoon ending isn't failure; it's where the real work begins.
- 05Widening the aperture means seeing things through, not lowering standards.
How to run it
- 1
Write down the model you're actually running
Make the implicit template explicit — both the attribute filters (height, job, income) and the felt-experience expectations (never fight, always exciting).
Pro tip Notice which criteria you've never said out loud; those are usually the narrowest.
Watch out The felt-experience half of the model does more damage than the attribute half and is far less visible.
- 2
Audit the arithmetic of your filters
Count how much of the population each criterion removes when stacked — salary, height, race, plus being single.
Watch out Bartlett notes calculators exist that show your combined criteria can cut out roughly 98% of people, sometimes returning a 0.0% chance.
- 3
Catch yourself hunting for the no
On a date, notice when you're scanning for a reason to disqualify rather than a reason to continue.
Pro tip Ask what you'd conclude about this person if you weren't holding them against the template.
Watch out A pattern of two-to-six-week relationships that end at the first friction is the signature of this behaviour.
- 4
Widen the aperture and see it through
Deliberately change the model — give people more of a chance and let the connection run longer before judging it.
Pro tip People in successful relationships routinely say their partner wouldn't have made their own shopping list.
Watch out Expect the first months after the honeymoon period to be where the real work starts; that discomfort is not evidence you chose wrong.
In the wild
His template was a relationship that stayed sexy and fun every single time, with no fighting and a happily-ever-after ending — so anything short of it triggered an exit within weeks.
→ Years of short relationships, and the recognition that he'd passed over many viable people.
McLeod observes that people who end up in successful relationships frequently say that if they'd written down all the features they were looking for, they would have missed this person entirely.
→ Evidence that the shopping-list method filters out the very outcome it's meant to find.
Common mistakes
Treating dating as a pure numbers game
McLeod's own pre-Kate assumption was that you just get through enough people and then it's happily ever after — which ignores that the filter itself is what's failing.
Reading the end of the honeymoon as incompatibility
When the first few perfect months ended for McLeod and Kate, his instinct was to run; the intimacy and love only formed because circumstances made leaving impossible.
Is it for you?
Best for
Prolific daters with a long run of short relationships who can't work out why nothing progresses.
Not ideal for
People whose criteria protect genuine safety, values or dealbreaker compatibility — those aren't the narrowness this addresses.
From the transcript
“some of us have models in our head that are exceedingly narrow”
“you go out and you're just looking for some reason to say no because it doesn't fit your model”
“widen that aperture a bit and give people more of a chance”
“I skipped over and passed over so much because it just didn't fit this like model I had in my head”
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Justin McLeod