Lana Altunashvili ’27 is a prospective international relations major. She is a James Monroe Scholar and a member of Club Tennis. Contact her at laltunashvili@wm.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
In the wake of Valentine’s Day joy (or suffering), I thought it would be fitting to talk about an ingenious idea that came to me during a casual conversation with a friend over a serious, yet extremely unserious game of pool. The idea, as we came to call it, is the lethal combination, or lethal combo for short and put simply, it identifies characteristics that would make a potential love interest almost unimaginably perfect for you. Three things that, combined in one person, must mean that they are made for you, your soulmate written in the stars or whatever…
Is this idea even somewhat true? Does something besides those three main qualities matter? Does anything? Is the idea of a “perfect person” an outdated, unattainable goal that most people just don’t realize is obsolete?
Let’s start with the backstory. The first week back, my friend and I decided to play pool after dinner knowing that inevitably, we would get too busy to do it any time between then and the last day of classes. We’ll see if that prediction turns out to be right in a few months, but what came out of our snail-paced, embarrassingly bad game of pool was this weird idea of the lethal combo. Listening to her describe someone, I jokingly said, “Oh, he’s got the lethal combo!” which was followed by a few laughs. But then we started thinking aloud… The lethal combo. Some things, in combination with each other, make certain people very attractive to us — and not to get too deep with this, but what are, let’s say, those three things?
Immediately, we came to a problem. “They’ve got to be kind, considerate, clever” etc., etc. The list could keep going with no end in sight. But these are all qualities that you’re supposed to have anyway, aren’t you? You wouldn’t even consider dating someone if they didn’t have some semblance of human decency… I would hope so at least.
Then the three qualities I talk about must be some sort of bonus points. Suppose you are already on good terms with someone, you like them as a person just fine — what would it take to push you over the line of just liking them as a friend? If anything?
As it usually happens, the conversation kept bouncing off every point we made to something a little bit more complicated. Deciding to visualize it a little bit, we came up with the idea of a triangle with one quality at each of the three angles. Now, imagine someone with basic human decency. They’re kind, generous, somewhat smart and generally a good person. It is possible for you to imagine that someone you randomly meet could have two out of three of those qualities. If my lethal combo is being tall, playing tennis and playing a musical instrument, it may not be too surprising if I meet someone who can play tennis and is tall. But somehow, if the person you’re thinking of has all three — it’s so unimaginable, they must be made for you. In other words, it was destined to be.
All kinds of things came up, like having a good sense of humour, being of the same religious beliefs, having doe-eyes… I was already back in my dorm when I thought that maybe the lethal combo doesn’t matter at all. You may have an idea of someone perfect for you in your head, and assign to them endless attributes, but if you meet someone you like, none of that would really matter, would it? How often do we end up dating people we’ve always imagined to date? It’s true, there may be non-negotiable qualities we may want in a partner. Yet for the most part, when you meet someone you ‘click’ with, it’s not the lethal combo that makes them the right person for you. It’s them being who they are. Sometimes, the right people happen to be the most unexpected ones, regardless of whether or not they satisfy the criteria for your “perfect person.”
Let me leave you with this. There are times when someone seems to be right for us and it breaks us to pieces when they turn out not to be. Other times, we think we won’t be compatible with someone, or it won’t work, and despite our fears, we try something and it leads us somewhere better than we could ever have imagined. Quite often, there is no way to tell whether some interactions will lead to a meaningful relationship — the only way to figure that out is to try.
