The perfect match

One scene of Woody Allen's Annie Hall I enjoy most is when crazy Woody, upset and confused about his troubled relationship with Annie (Diane Keaton), stops a couple in the street and asks them how they keep a relationship working. The guy basically answers: "Well, she's superficial and so am I, I have no ideas about anything and it's the same for her and we don't ask ourselves questions because we both know we're too stupid fo find answers." The girl nods her head in sign of approval and they walk away hand in hand.

Looking at the whole spectrum of boys & girls business, we may think that the perfect match is the complete opposite of true love, leaving all the shakespearian romantic crap behind and focusing on more solid ground : socio-economic profile, sexual affinities, intellectual symmetries and complementary outdoor activities (like he loves gardening and she likes to read and take a sunbath).
But we may also consider that the perfect match is the modern version of true love. A mere change in designation covering a same reality. And which reality is that? Well, not an easy one to describe, that's for sure...

How many times have we heard people say "She's the woman of my life" or "I'll never find someone like him" with the same intensity as the alchemist who's just found how to turn stone into gold? But in many cases, the morning truth swiftly changes itself into afternoon doubts and evening pleas of reassessment: "Is she really the one?", "Does he fit to my life?", "Will he ever get along with my friends from the gym?"
The doctrine of true love teaches here to send it all to hell, and to comply by one's feelings, no matter the consequences. But in a world of statistics and self-fulfilling prediction, where happiness has been theorized down to the bare bone, consequences do matter. That's where the perfect match doctrine takes over.

Love is still part of the process, but no longer operates as the almighty engine flying the plane through the clouds. It can be there at the take-off - or not, if one can find a substitute. It can be whipped up in air pockets by jealousy and sexual needs. It can be switched off at will when jobs and mortgages repayments require full attention.

The story of humanity shows than men kept trying domesticating the wild to replace it by flower beds. Love is a wild animal, and it needs to be tamed. It has the power to make our lives run out of control, and we don't want that to happen. It has the power to make us question ourselves and the choices we made, and that's too hard to take.

The perfect match doctrine is here to comfort you, by enslaving love to happiness instead of the other way round. It's a useful tool for everyone, especially for those who feel like crying on saturday night watching the English Patient on TV and still want to get up on monday morning with a smile on their face and with plans in their head.