A collection of personal ads dating from the nineteenth century, as put together by Rutgers University history professor Pam Epstein.

Is there anything those looking for love in the twenty-first century can learn from our ancestors? Probably what not to do, rather than what to do, I’d say.

Deutsche Bank recently crunched the numbers and reached the conclusion that Sydney is the most expensive place on Earth for dating:

Using a price parity calculation, DB has created the “cheap date” index which consists of i) a standard bouquet of roses, ii) cab rides, iii) pizza, iv) a soft drink, v) two movies tickets and vi) a couple of beers. What the “hit rate” of said basket of products in achieving the desired goal is unclear, but what is clear is that while the disparity between the most expensive (Sydney, Australia) and least expensive (Mumbai, India) place for a cheap date is vast at over 250%, and even a cheap date in Mumbai will set one back some $88.30 (and rising… the price that is).

That’s I switched my operations to the NSW Central Coast…

The chances of ever meeting your soul mate seem to be pretty remote, if these calculations are anything to go by. Could it be that the soul mate concept is as mythical as it is romantic?

The odds of running into your soul mate are incredibly small. The number of strangers we make eye contact with each day is hard to estimate. It can vary from almost none (shut-ins or people in small towns) to many thousands (a police officer in Times Square). Let’s suppose you lock eyes with an average of a few dozen new strangers each day. (I’m pretty introverted, so for me that’s definitely a generous estimate.) If 10% of them are close to your age, that’s around 50,000 people in a lifetime. Given that you have 500,000,000 potential soul mates, it means you’ll only find true love in one lifetime out of ten thousand.

In other words, if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with?

“Object-sexuals” are people who develop close and intimate connections with inanimate objects such as bridges, walls, or structures like the Eiffel Tower, and are the subject of a documentary titled Married to the Eiffel Tower.

Naisho is married to the Eiffel Tower. She has a passion for inanimate objects, and her mission is to fight the stigma surrounding the disorder and create a global network of sufferers – like Amy, in love with a church organ, and Eija Riita, who married the Berlin Wall.

(Thanks Coffee Girl… the real CG, not the person posing as her via email recently.)

We know money can’t buy love, but can an equation help you find it… or are some things best left to chance?

Despite these handicaps, if you know how many candidates there are, there is a simple rule to maximize the chance of finding the best mate: sample the first K candidates without selecting any of them, and then take the first subsequent candidate who is the best of all you have seen. K depends on N, the total number of candidates you will see. As N gets big, K moves toward 1/e times N, where e is 2.71… So sample 36.9% of the candidates, then take the first candidate who is the best you have seen. This gives a 36.9% chance of ending up with Ms (in my case) Right.

The one, true love, great concepts for rom-com screenwriters and writers of pulp romance fiction, but not the rest of us.

The relatively recent cultural narrative of The One – the idea that everyone has a soulmate whom they are destined to love for ever, and that your life will always be incomplete if you fail to meet, mate and move in with that person – is not only implausible, but also cruel. It implies that those who do not find their One will somehow never be complete, that those who divorce, who live and raise children alone, or who find alternative arrangements for happiness, have somehow failed as human beings. To my mind, that’s a decidedly unromantic idea.

Splitscreen: A Love Story… which was filmed only with the camera of a mobile phone.

British designers Concept Shed have gone one better than the makers of supermarket self serve check outs, with the creation of an AutoWed Wedding Vending Machine, known as Minister Marvin.

See it in action here.

US social commentator and writer Pamela Haag has declared the twenty-first century to be the age of the postromantic marriage in her new book Marriage Confidential, and identifies five new types of alliance, that are based on obligation and convenience, rather than love and romance.

The workhorse wife is the exhausted breadwinner to her dream-chasing husband. It’s one version of a semihappy marriage, in the modern style. It goes like this: husband Joe wants to become a poet, sculptor, pro golfer or other financially stressed professional, while wife Jane is the frazzled, high-achieving breadwinner for both in a career that she doesn’t find especially fulfilling.

New York’s Bronx Zoo is giving lovers the – strictly limited – opportunity to name one of their 58,000 Madagascar hissing Cockroachs for their partner, in return for a ten dollar donation.

Naming a roach in honor of someone near and dear to your heart shows that you’ve noticed how resilient, resourceful, and loyal that person is. Or maybe it’s in recognition of your one and only’s virility, or strength in the face of high radiation. You’re not afraid to say, “Baby, you’re a roach!”

It’s certainly cheaper than a dozen red roses.