The Original Dorm Compatibility Theory
One of my first questions for a potential suitor is, “where did you live, on campus, freshman year?” This is not me running out of small talk ideas, this is me calculating our compatibility. Because if I don’t see us getting married and having three children I’m going to scan the bar for someone who looks a little bit more like my future husband, thank you very much!
This is important information to gather from your new acquaintance because your freshman year housing affects your ability to connect with specific people. I believe that for specific college dorms, there is a strict compatibility sequence in which you can only have a long-term relationship (aka a successful marriage) if you and your partner lived in the same dorm during your freshman year. For instance, those who lived in my dorm, Mary Markley Hall, are only compatible with those who currently live or have also lived in Markley.
This means that a current Markley resident is indeed compatible with a former Markley resident, a veteran, if you will. Additionally, two former residents, and two current residents might also feel a heightened sense of attraction for one another albeit emotional or physical. I say both emotional and physical (AKA sexual) because I truly have no large-scale evidence for first year living situation is the best litmus test for monogamous romantic compatibility.
However, I think that the easy answer is “culture.” Varying dorm culture. Cross-cultural differences in dorms. Similar to any other city, ethnicity, or workplace, there are just some unexplainable cultural forces that have a tendency to unite any two people of the same fabric. For instance, I get along with long-islanders pretty well, probably because I’M FROM LAWNG ISLAND. We have a lot in common to talk about, and we tawk about it in the same way! Perhaps you and your suitor just have more to chat about.
Another confounding variable could be that you simply have more mutual friends with each other than those of mixed dorm relationships. This is likely due to your proximity during the first few socially formative months of college, and how your friends may have been based on location and accessibility.
Most of my findings have come from my “research.” Or rather, my analyses have been a running tabulation of my conversations with the people I meet that have gone to Michigan, lived in Markley, and married their Markley Sweetheart. I also constantly assess my and my friends’ romantic success or failures with potential suitors, asking them, “oh my god, did he live in Markley?” after they describe a pleasant interaction with literally any cisgender male. Keep in mind that I’m using my own social sphere, which is largely upper-middle class heterosexual cisgender white women, to describe the intricacies of this intra-dorm compatibility theory. Please feel free to ignore my heteronormativity and appropriate the implications of these findings for queer relationships. Ugh I hate the patriarchy but I don’t actively do anything about it.
A limitation of this theory is the temporal inaccuracy. I can’t tell how long you and your inter-dorm relationship will last, I can only tell you that it’s a ticking time bomb :/ aww sad.
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