“Four dates in I'd met their sister on Instagram, their ex in a rumour, and them almost not at all.”

I could have told you their entire history and almost nothing about how they behave when a plan falls through. That is the strange part of dating now: you can accumulate an enormous amount of information about a person while learning nothing about what it is like to be close to one.

Research feels like progress and it is not the same thing. The useful facts are duller and slower to arrive. How they are when they are tired. Whether the second plan happens as easily as the first. None of that is on a profile.