What nine intentional dates look like.

You ran nine dates over twelve weeks. Three calibration, six selection, with one no-show that didn’t count. So we have eight dates of usable signal. You filled four of nine invitations. The five you skipped tell us something specific, more on that below.

Your first three dates set the bar at 6.0.

Your first three dates averaged 6.0 on Compatibility. That number is your line. Anyone who clears it on the markers that actually predict the long arc, commitment, appreciation, curiosity, healthy conflict, is worth taking seriously. Anyone who doesn’t, isn’t, no matter how high the spark.

The next six showed the pattern, clearly.

Of your six dates past the bar, three were high-Spark, low-Compatibility, and they were the ones who matched your type the closest (8.4/10 type-match on average). Two were lower-Spark but cleared the bar easily. One was somewhere in the middle on both axes and we just don’t learn much from it. The pattern your opening conversation named, the pull toward people who feel electric in the first hour and fade by week three, showed up clean in the data.

The pattern is doing a job.

Gottman’s research on relationship stability is consistent on this: the things that predict whether a relationship lasts have almost nothing to do with chemistry, and a lot to do with appreciation, curiosity, and how disagreements get handled. Attachment theory adds the frame: what feels electric is often activation, the familiar pull a known shape brings when someone is just inconsistent enough that you have to chase a little. The pattern probably helped once, when the alternative was something harder. It served you, and now it’s ready to soften.

Two people cleared the bar. Both were the same person.

Date 5 and Date 9 were the same human, eight weeks apart. The first time you noticed the markers but flinched at the absence of spark. The second time, after watching the pattern repeat with two more high-spark candidates, the spark had caught up. Date 9 was the highest combined Spark and Compatibility score in the practice. That isn’t a coincidence. The opening conversation gave you a reason to go back. You learned to read your own dates.

What to change going forward.

Three things. First, take Date 5/9 seriously. Verification phase exists for this. Stedi keeps tracking the four markers across the next stretch of dates with this person, watching whether commitment, appreciation, curiosity, and conflict trend up or down. Second, the invitations you skipped, “different decade energy,” “different pace of love language,” “from outside the apps,” were the ones that would have stretched you most. If verification doesn’t hold, those are where you go next. Third, the pull toward Date 1 / Date 4 / Date 8 isn’t your real preference. Your reflections say so. Trust them more than the spark next time.

The bottom line.

You ran the practice. Your reflections answered. Date 9 is the lead. You have a bar, calibration 6.0, that anyone you date next has to clear. Whether that’s Jordan, or someone Stedi hasn’t met yet. You have a pattern named in your own words and shown in your own scores. The next decision is yours. Verify with Jordan, keep dating new people against the bar, or run a second practice. The framework just gave you the floor to stand on, and a bar you keep using.

Generated from your Type Profile, your nine date cards, and decades of research from Gottman, Bowlby, Mikulincer & Shaver, and the optimal-stopping math behind the 37% rule. Informed inference applied to your specific dates. Working hypotheses, not certainties.