Richa Pearl Singh, 40 years

I'll be honest with you—after watching friends go through divorce, navigating my own relationship's ups and downs, and seeing nieces and nephews starting to date, I've noticed something. We spend so much time worrying about chemistry and attraction, but we completely overlook the two things that actually matter in the long run: values and hobbies.

Here's what I mean. You meet someone, there's a spark, the conversation flows easily over dinner. You both love the same Netflix shows, you laugh at each other's jokes, and suddenly you're thinking this could be it. Fast forward six months, a year, maybe five years, and you're sitting across from each other wondering how you got here. The spark is gone, but more than that—you realize you've been living parallel lives the entire time.

The values mismatch is usually the first crack to show. Maybe you discover that your idea of financial responsibility means saving for retirement and having a cushion, while theirs means living for today and worrying about tomorrow when it comes. Or you value family time and Sunday dinners with the kids, but they see weekends as their time to decompress alone. Neither person is wrong, exactly, but you're fundamentally incompatible.

I've seen this play out in my own circle more times than I can count. My friend Neha married someone who seemed perfect on paper—good job, kind, attractive. But she wanted to save money for her kids' college funds, and he wanted to upgrade to a luxury car every three years. Small thing, right? Except it wasn't. It was about what they each believed mattered in life, and those beliefs were worlds apart.

Then there's the hobbies issue, which people dismiss as trivial until they're living it. I'm not saying you need to do everything together—God knows that's suffocating. But you need something in common beyond watching TV on the couch. When one person lives for hiking and outdoor adventures every weekend, and the other person's idea of a perfect Saturday is browsing antique stores and going to brunch, someone is always compromising. And after years of compromising, resentment builds.

What really gets me is how avoidable this all is. We ask "What do you do for work?" and "Where did you grow up?" but we don't ask "What does a good life look like to you twenty years from now?" or "How do you actually like spending your free time—not on a first date, but on a random Tuesday?" We mistake compatibility for chemistry, and we pay for it later.

The truth is, shared values and overlapping interests aren't everything, but they're the foundation. They're what keep you connected when the butterflies fade and real life sets in. They're what give you something to talk about, something to build together, something to come back to when things get hard.

So if you're out there dating, do yourself a favor. Look past the immediate attraction and ask the deeper questions. Pay attention to how someone spends their time and what they think matters. Because in the end, that's what you'll be living with—not the perfect first date, but the everyday reality of two people trying to build a life together. And if your values and interests don't at least point in the same direction, you're already starting uphill.