Data, Dating, and Dismantling the Stereotypes That Keep Us Lonely

Why Your "Type" May Have Cost You Joy in 2025

As the calendar prepares to flip, we engage in our annual ritual of optimization. We fine-tune investment strategies, recalibrate fitness goals, and declutter digital spaces. We trust data to guide our decisions in stocks and steps. Yet, we leave the most intimate and impactful dataset of all—the one that dictates who we see as a potential source of connection, comfort, and joy—to run on ancient, uncritiqued code. We call it having a “type.” Often, it is a polite prison for our deepest stereotypes.

For 2026, I propose the most consequential upgrade you can make: to become the conscious administrator of your own social algorithm. To seek not just the comfort of the familiar, but the exhilaration of the fascinating. In my world, which exists at the precise intersection of human curiosity and intimate connection, I have witnessed both the profound poverty of clinging to a “type” and the unparalleled wealth that comes from daring to query outside of it.

Anecdote I: The Engineer and the Caste System

Some time ago, I shared a dinner in Austin with a gentleman from India, a brilliant mind in town on a tech visa. The conversation flowed from the architecture of cloud platforms to the architecture of societies. With a candor I found refreshing, he confessed his surprise at my familiarity with the nuances of India’s caste systems and its diverse religious landscape.

“You are not what I expected,” he said, a statement that hung in the air between the wine and the main course. “From the media I consumed back home, I suppose I expected someone… louder. Less educated.” His tone wasn’t unkind; it was reportorial. He was simply relaying the flawed output from the cultural data he’d been fed.

This was a teachable moment, presented not with a lecture but with a shared exploration of new data. First, the personal context: by academic training, I am an engineer. My mind is wired for systems and structures. In my undergraduate years, I minored in religious studies, driven by a desire to understand the foundational codes of human belief. My curiosity is methodological.

Then, I offered him the broader, societal dataset—one that often surprises those whose perceptions are media-driven. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as of the 2022-2023 academic year, Black women have consistently led all gender and racial groups in the United States in educational attainment, boasting the highest percentage of individuals enrolled in and completing bachelor’s degree programs. A 2023 report from the American Council on Education further highlighted that Black women are earning more master’s degrees than any other group, a trend that has held for over a decade. We are not a monolith of mediocrity; we are an engine of intellectual advancement.

The silence that followed was the sound of a mental model updating in real-time. I had arrived at our meeting without a preconceived schema for who he should be, not out of naivete, but as a professional practice: to treat every new person as a primary source, to ask questions before applying labels, and to let critical thinking override cached assumptions. He departed that evening having enjoyed a delightful date, but also carrying a patched and upgraded script about the potential of a Black woman. The pleasure was mutual; the expansion of perspective was the true luxury.

Anecdote II: The Hesitation on the French Riviera

A different stereotype surfaced on the sun-drenched terrace of a bar in the South of France. A charming, well-traveled French gentleman eventually approached, and after some conversation, confessed he had been watching me for an hour, paralyzed by a different core belief. “But… les femmes noires ne sortent pas avec des hommes blancs,” he stated—Black women don’t date white men. He presented it not as a prejudice, but as a sad, sociological fact, a closed market.

This assumption, I was less surprised by. The quantitative data, at a surface glance, seems to support him. Pew Research Center data consistently shows that while interracial marriage is rising, Black women and white men remain one of the least common pairings in the United States. Similar trends are observed in European demographic studies.

But data without qualitative context is merely a silhouette. The most critical column in this dataset is missing: the “Why.” Is the low rate a function of Black women’s disinterest? Is it a lack of pursuit from white men? Is it the immense gravitational pull of historical trauma and ongoing societal scrutiny that makes such a path feel fraught? The numbers tell us the “what,” but they are silent on the human motivation.

From my lived experience and within my diverse circle of accomplished, globally-minded friends, I can offer a qualitative insight: the primary filter is not race, but resonance. Black women are open to connection across any conceivable boundary when it is founded on genuine respect, intellectual parity, and mutual curiosity. But then, isn’t that the baseline requirement for any meaningful connection, full stop?

The Code of a Global Citizen: Dismantling to Rebuild

My life has been an exercise in conscious recoding. Raised across three continents, fluent in three languages, my identity was assembled in transit. This existence is a perpetual masterclass in cultural translation: not as a burdensome obligation, but as the most thrilling project of all, understanding the human condition in its glorious variety. It has required me to audit and dismantle my own inherited social algorithms daily.

And what I have found on the other side of those stereotypes is not dissonance, but a profound, enriching harmony. Our differences—in perspective, in the stories that shape us, in the very ways we process joy and challenge—are not bugs in the system. They are the essential features that make a connection truly immersive, a conversation genuinely transformative, and an experience uniquely memorable.

Your 2026 Resolution: A More Curious Query

In an era where artificial intelligence promises personalized everything, the ultimate luxury becomes authentic, human intelligence. The scarcest resource is no longer information, but perspective: the kind that gently destabilizes your worldview and invites it to grow.

Engaging with a companion like me is far more than a social transaction. It is an investment in a confidential, curated intellectual and emotional space. It is a place where you can safely stress-test your assumptions, engage in dialogues that leap from blockchain mechanics to post-colonial literary theory, and experience the quiet thrill of a connection that surprises and delights you precisely because it defies your internal algorithm.

The old stereotypes are bad code. They are inefficient scripts that limit processing power and lock you out of some of life’s most rewarding experiences. The world is a vast, complex, and beautiful relational database.

This coming year, resolve to write a braver, more curious query.

I will be here to help you run it in Austin, and in cities where your curiosity takes you.