At Antioch University Seattle in 2005 & 2006 I and other graduate assistants came up with a hypothesis about human relationships which we called "Proximity Theory." Proximity means how physically close an object is to another object. We theorized that how physically close two people were to each other was the most important factor in weather or not those two people would develop a relationship of any kind, in any given amount of time.
When pushing agendas for upcoming meetings, we realized we needed to have "meetings before the meeting," which were smaller group discussions before the time official official meeting. Objections to any given proposal at a meeting needed to be determined and if possible settled before any official meeting actually began. The easiest way for the meetings-before-the-meeting to happen was for people to be working near by each other.
But we soon realized this applied to other relationships as well. When it was all said and done, if you have two attractive and likable heterosexual 17-year-olds who are members of the opposite sex in a room together for a long enough period of time, you will have a teen pregnancy on your hands. That relationship will not form in that time with anyone outside of that room. Proximity.
This needs to be taken into much more careful consideration with today's dating services, singles communities and dating apps. Long-distance is undesirable. It's wasting time, and we only have so much time to give.
