It is remarkably easy to conduct a flawless postmortem of someone else’s dating behavior. Give yourself ten minutes and a sympathetic friend, and you can usually identify the mixed signals, strange habits, questionable priorities, and exact moment another person made the wrong choice.
Looking at your own pattern takes more nerve. Paul Harkins gives The Refrigerator Test much of its personality by allowing that second examination to happen too, turning relationship observations back toward the person doing the observing.
Other People Make Excellent Case Studies
Dating gives you plenty to notice. Someone communicates in a way you cannot decipher, repeats a story they clearly think is charming, or announces a preference that suddenly explains several confusing things at once.
The evidence points outward, which makes interpretation enjoyable. You get to be the perceptive one who spotted the pattern.
