If you’re running a business, conventional wisdom states that you’re a much more effective business owner if you study business in school, create well thought-out business plans, and analyze your business’s performance diligently. But if someone went to school to learn about how to pick a life partner and take part in a healthy relationship, if they charted out a detailed plan of action to find one, and if they kept their progress organized rigorously in a spreadsheet, society says they’re A) an over-rational robot, B) way too concerned about this, and C) a huge weirdo.

No, when it comes to dating, society frowns upon thinking too much about it, instead opting for things like relying on fate, going with your gut, and hoping for the best. The respectable way to meet a life partner is by dumb luck, by bumping into them randomly or being introduced to them from within your little pool.

As the article mentions later, it's not just the society, it's also biology. Well, in the ancient evolutionary environment "your little pool" is all humans that don't try to kill you at the first sight, so it makes sense to find a mate there; and the pool does not change dramatically, so you can pick right now.

if we want to find a happy marriage, we need to think small—we need to look at marriage up close and see that it’s built not out of anything poetic, but out of 20,000 mundane Wednesdays.

No one wants to spend 50 years fake laughing. A life partner doubles as a career/life therapist, and if you don’t respect the way someone thinks, you’re not going to want to tell them your thoughts on work each day, or on anything else interesting that pops into your head, because you won’t really care that much what they have to say about it. Secrets are poison to a relationship, because they form an invisible wall inside the relationship, leaving both people somewhat alone in the world—and besides, who wants to spend 50 years lying or worrying about hiding something?

This is probably also a greater problem now than in the past, because the increasing inferential distances make communication more difficult.