Ten Ways to Find Love by Dr Lisa Portolan

Reviewed by Norrie Sanders

In ancient times – before 1995 – one way to find a soulmate was a blind date. In that year, the first on-line dating service began and quickly evolved into the opposite of blind dating. Bios and pics mean that within milliseconds, you can know all about a person, sufficient to swipe left or right and consign your potential soulmate to oblivion or bliss. What could possibly go wrong?

We all hear, and maybe experience, lots of online dating stories. Most seem to be negative: ghosting, stalking, faked images, liars, weirdos, lewd photo requests and even crimes. But occasionally we hear of happy relationships and even marriages. So how can we make sense of all this?

Well, luckily, Lisa Portman decided to do her doctorate on the topic. The resulting thesis and textbook have been thoughtfully condensed into an easily digestible guide, offering 10 ways to find love and another 10 on how to keep it. The book has a self-help feel but is strongly evidence based, through individual interviews and focus groups, complemented by published literature. The research design is not spelled out in the short book, so it is not always clear where her conclusions come from. However, there is a ring of authority that makes this distinction academic.

Dr Portman mostly resists the urge to proselytise, instead letting her many interviewees do a lot of the talking. She is also careful to point out that she only analysed a small number of dating sites, but many are very familiar names with huge numbers of users.

Her goal was not so much to analyse the apps themselves, but to use the lens of dating apps to consider the question …why do we think love is a requirement for a life well-lived? [p9]. Early on, she delivers a central paradox. People who use the apps, it seems, are looking for love, but most don’t think a big love can be found on the internet [p10]. Worse, the culture of the dating apps has forced many people to curate an image of themselves that is not strictly truthful and so distrust and disrespect are common. The result is that in an age where face-to-face encounters with potential mates are scarce, dating apps frequently disappoint. Instead, many cling to a notion that a lucky face-to-face encounter – the meet-cute [p19] – is the door to true romance.

One of the modern make/break criteria is the notion of a spark between two newly introduced people. For some people, no spark means no future. Based on her research, her advice on this is nuanced:

…one date can’t determine whether there’s a spark. You need multiple dates to figure out if there’s a flame that can be stoked. However, …[this] only applies if there is a sense of potential compatibility [p150].

The second half of the book also draws on experiences of her interviewees but is less about dating apps and more about sustaining long-term relationships. This is familiar territory in self-help books, but for readers who have been drawn to her dating app analysis and are still looking for love, the lessons are at least succinct and sensible.

Although the obvious targets for this book are people who use, or plan to use, dating sites, it is also valuable for those who want to make sense of the topic and better understand the social mores of modern dating. And beyond that, for those of us already in long term relationships, it is a great opportunity to reflect and realise that there is still plenty of room to improve.

Dr Lisa Portolan is an academic and researcher from Sydney. She has published several books, including Love, Intimacy and Online Dating: How a global pandemic redefined intimacy, and is a regular guest on Australian television programs and radio. 

10 ways to find love…and how to keep it

(February 2025)

by Dr Lisa Portolan

Echo Publishing

ISBN: 9781760689667

$29.99 (Paperback); 272pp

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