I picked up Pride and Prejudice in a second hand bookstore for 75p. It’s my third copy of the book.

This time, my reading of it gave me an insight into a possible reason why, in general, people have increasingly high standards about who they are willing to date, marry or shack up with. I’ve mentioned this before and it seems to be a common enough complaint.

Back in the 1700s and 1800s, women counted themselves lucky if they found a man with enough money to live on and didn’t beat you up. Mr Okay was acceptable (I’m simplifying — the social class was a consideration too). Elizabeth and Jane Bennett were fortunate to find husbands they actually loved and respected but I think most people would have ‘settled’ as Charlotte Lucas did with Mr Collins.

Our list of ‘must haves’ is longer now. Not only are we looking for partners that are basically decent people, but they must also be attractive, successful, intelligent, share our interests, and there’s got to be ‘chemistry’.

Why do we expect to find such perfection in partnership? Why do friends worry about us ‘settling’ for less than we deserve? Why don’t people persevere in okay relationships?

I would like to propose that, alongside female empowerment and the relaxation of social class boundaries, one of the key drivers for our increased fussiness is the invention of the automobile. I heard somewhere that the invention of the car was a revolution in social relations because now, instead of having to marry someone in your village, you could hop over to the next village, or the next, to find a mate.

Because we have more people to choose from, the chances of finding someone compatible in multiple ways has increased. With rising access comes rising expectations.

This leads me to conclude that with the invention of time travel, our demands and expectations will increase yet again. I’ve always thought that if your Mr or Miss Perfect was the wrong age or born before you or exists in the future, then you’d feel pretty cheated. Time travel would solve that.

And then, we would become even fussier when interplanetary and intergalactic space travel is invented. That opens up the whole field of Mr and Miss Perfects that aren’t human. We’d need not settle for any old human ever again.