One man I interviewed described a relationship that began promisingly but quickly took a technological turn for the worse Approximately forty percent of American adults are single, and half of that population claims to have visited an online dating site Like the steady work of the wrecking ball, our culture’s nearly-compulsive demand for personal revelation, emotional exposure, and sharing of feelings threatens the fragile edifice of newly-forming relationships. Transparency and complete access are exactly what you want to avoid in the early stages of romance. Successful courtship – even successful flirtation – require the gradual peeling away of layers, some deliberately constructed, others part of a person’s character and personality, that make us mysteries to each other. Among Pascal’s minor works is an essay, “Discourse on the Passion of Love,” in which he argues for the keen “pleasure of loving without daring to tell it.” “In love,” Pascal writes, “silence is of more avail than speech…there is an eloquence in silence that penetrates more deeply than language can.” Pascal imagined his lovers in each other’s physical presence, watchful of unspoken physical gestures, but not speaking.