Colton_Sommers

Colton Sommers: Love, Data, and the Long Way Home I'm Colton. I was born here, thirty-five years ago, in the front bedroom of a house on Cathies Lane, Wantirna South. After a couple of decades of, well, *wandering*—through university labs, strange bedrooms, and the chaotic geography of modern dating—I ended up right back where I started. I’m a sexologist and relationship researcher by trade, and these days, I also write about my hometown for the CamoWallet project over at camowallet.app. It’s a strange gig, but it keeps me grounded. Looking at the place you're from through a professional lens? It changes you. My past is, I guess, a patchwork of academic pursuit and... let's call it extensive field research. I've been a counsellor, a data analyst for a now-defunct dating app, and a lecturer who made more than a few conservative faculty members deeply uncomfortable. The throughline? I've always been obsessed with the gap between what we say we want in love and what we actually do. Especially when money gets involved. It’s a mess, honestly. A beautiful, heartbreaking, fascinating mess. March 14th, 1991. Wantirna South was different then. The big Knox City shopping centre was there, of course, a gleaming hub compared to the paddocks that were slowly being swallowed by new estates. My parents still talk about the drive to the old Dandenong Hospital for the check-ups, but I arrived early. Impatient, maybe. Born at home, on a Thursday, with the autumn light slanting through the windows and the distant sound of lawnmowers from the neighbours on Wantirna Road. Dr. Morrison made it with about twenty minutes to spare, or so the family legend goes. My first view of the world wasn't a sterile room, but the silhouette of the Dandenong Ranges against a hazy sky. Living back here now, in a small apartment complex near the corner of Burwood Highway and Stud Road, I see the suburb with a kind of double vision. There’s the place I knew as a kid—the bike tracks along the Blind Creek Trail, the smell of the donut shop at Knox, the long bus rides to school. And then there’s the place I see now. It’s a hub of quiet, middle-class complexity. The coffee shops are full of people swiping on Tinder, couples having hushed, intense conversations about mortgages, teenagers navigating their first relationships in the very same parks where I once mucked around with my mates. For me, it’s all here. The whole damn cycle of human connection, playing out against a backdrop of shopping centres and service stations. Growing up here was... safe. Maybe too safe. I went to Waverley Christian College, which felt like a bubble. My rebellion wasn't loud—it was intellectual. I was the kid in year 10 who checked out a library book on human sexuality, more out of confusion than defiance. The confusion stuck. The big events weren't parties or grand adventures. They were small, tectonic shifts. The first time I held a girl's hand at the movies in Knox. The gut-wrenching confusion of a first heartbreak, sitting alone by the lake at Jells Park, watching the ducks not give a damn. That contrast—between the orderly streets and the chaotic feelings of the people on them—that’s what planted the seed. I had to understand why we build these orderly lives but feel so disorderly inside. Look, I’m not the guy with all the answers. I’ve been in love maybe four times. Real, bone-deep love. I’ve also been an idiot. I’ve chased validation, confused lust for connection, and once, briefly, dated someone primarily because they drove a very nice car. (It was a Mercedes. I’m not proud of it). That experience, that *friction* between my academic knowledge and my very human stupidity, is what I try to bring to my work. It’s not about being a flawless expert on a pedestal. It’s about being a competent guide who’s also tripped over the same roots. When someone tells me about the anxiety of splitting a bill on a first date, I don't just have a study to cite. I have the memory of that exact, sweaty-palmed moment. My professional life has been a bit of a walking tour through the underbelly of romance. I did a stint with the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society at La Trobe, crunching numbers on relationship satisfaction. Later, I consulted for a dating app—one of the big ones—where my job was to tell them that their algorithm was making people miserable. They didn't love that. They wanted data on engagement, not loneliness. So I left. Now, my activity is split. I run a small, private practice from a quiet office on High Street Road, seeing couples and individuals. And I write. For CamoWallet, I get to be a kind of chronicler. I write about the city through the lens of what I know: relationships. A Guide to First Date Spots in Knox for the Financially Cautious. How the Real Estate Market on Wantirna Road Affects Relationship Timelines. It's niche, but it's mine. It connects the dots. So, this is my city. Wantirna South. Not a destination, but a place where people live. Where they fall in and out of love in the aisles of Woolworths. Where they argue about money on the drive home from a restaurant on Burwood Highway. Where kids like me, confused and curious, start a journey that takes them away, only to bring them back to see it all more clearly. The geographical names aren't just markers on a map to me. They're chapters. The roundabout on Lewis Road. The footbridge over the EastLink. They’re all just coordinates on the messy, beautiful map of being human. And I’m lucky enough to call it home.