Harry Style's engagement proves the taxi cab theory

I'm happy for him, genuinely...

The taxi cab theory: a dating concept popularised by Sex and the City, referring to the idea that men commit to, or marry someone, based on timing, rather than finding the ‘right’ person.

In Season 3 of Sex and the City, Miranda shares with Charlotte why her whirlwind romance with Trey isn’t special or fate, but instead is happening just because he is in a stage in his life when he wants to settle down.

“It's not fate, his light is on, that's all”, she explains straight-faced.

“Men are like cabs; when they’re available, their light goes on. They wake up one day, and they decide they’re ready to settle down, have babies, whatever, then they turn their light on.”

The next woman who sticks her hand out on the street to hop in ends up as his wife.

It’s not often I agree with Miranda, but as I enter my 30s, I see men in my age bracket switch on their lights, proving the theory to be pretty accurate.

Harry Styles is now 32. He has four solo albums, all debuting at number one; he’s toured the world 10x over, seen Pope Leo XIV get elected, he’s taken up running. What else is there for a boy from Cheshire to do, other than marry the next available person?

I’m aware of how anti-feminist this sounds. I want to let it be known that I am certain Zoë Kraviz is an incredible woman with her own talent and credibility. But it’s also likely that it just so happens that she’s dating Harry at the same time he has his light on. Because let’s be real, if they were dating 5 or 6 years ago, they probably wouldn’t have got engaged.

A tweet allegedly posted and then deleted by Harry’s ex, Olivia Wilde reads as follows:

While the tweet has been debunked as fake, it still has a point. While nobody owes you anything for how much time you invest in a relationship, getting engaged after 8ish months seems pretty quick, we can all agree. But just like how love was fast-tracked for Charlotte and Trey, it seems the same is happening for Zoë and Harry.

Hopeless romantics will double down on the ‘when you know, you know’ concept, but as Miranda cynically quips back to that, “It’s not fate, it’s dumb luck”. As we all know, our close and personal friend Harry has a colourful dating history, having been in relationships with many remarkable women. From Camille Rowe to Taylor Russell, he has been with a slew of women equally as amazing as Zoë, yet none of those ended with an engagement ring.

If rumours are to be believed, in 2024, he and Taylor Russell broke up after hitting a rough patch, and a source close to Harry claimed that he was ready to ‘start a family and enter the next phase of his life’. While it didn’t work out with Taylor, two years later… cue Zoë. It’s clear that Harry has mentally decided to put down roots with someone, and his next romance will be the one he does it with.

Can you imagine Taylor seeing the news? Her eyes must have rolled into another dimension.

Does commitment have less to do with compatibility and more to do with proximity?

A 2022 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that commitment was most often triggered when someone crossed a ‘psychological threshold’ rather than finding the perfect person. That psychological threshold is the moment a person realises that it’s less work to nurture what they already have rather than start from scratch searching for someone new. They said it’s the moment “the perceived benefits of the relationship outweigh the appeal of alternatives”.

For the record, I don’t think it’s exclusively men who do this either; women can do it too, they’re just more subtle about it.

Personally, I like to call it the musical chairs theory. The music is loud, and life is all dandy during your 20s, then suddenly the music stops, and your age starts getting serious as you near your mid 30s. In that moment, all you can do is grab the nearest chair, or in this case, person, near you and sit on it. It’s a blind scramble to quickly build a life with someone, and anyone perfectly adequate will do. When dating becomes too exhausting to continue, settling down with someone you don’t hate is sometimes easier than continuing the search and risk never finding anyone at all. Or worse, especially if you’re a woman, you risk missing your fertile years. If a family is what you want, you'd better get ready for the music to stop and to park your bum on the closest available human chair.

Reading back on the above, I’m not sure if I’m coming across as the cynical eldest daughter of divorced parents or the disgruntled Harry Styles fan more. But the fact is, Miranda had a point. I’m not sure if most people really do find ‘the one’ so much as they settle for the one who's there at the same time they can’t be arsed to look anymore. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a perfectly lovely life with that person either. Showing someone that level of commitment is romance; love matters too, it just flourishes best when your taxi light is on.