Marriages Spawned From Online Dating As Satisfying As From Traditional Dating

sciencehabit writes "Millions of people first met their spouses through online dating. But how have those marriages fared compared with those of people who met in more traditional venues such as bars or parties? Pretty well, according to a new study. A survey of nearly 20,000 Americans reveals that marriages between people who met online are at least as stable and satisfying as those who first met in the real world—possibly more so."

Comments

Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, if anything it should be better, it's much easier to vet and eliminate chicks online. If they send a message 'how r u 2day??' you know to move on. I met my wife online and have been married for 3 years.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[starworks5]

My Wife and I got married on OKcupid. I have to say that it worked out okay, despite the difficulty of long distance for a year, travelling across the country every 2 months.

However I think that online provides a different veil from what you get IRL, Because your able to filter out what you want to say to a person, though its easier to narrow down interests.

On one side I married a beautiful geek woman who is motivated to change the world, on the other side I didn't know about the extent of the despression / suicidal thoughts from abuse and neglect.

YMMV

Re:Why should it be any different?

[DFurno2003]

"on the other side I didn't know about the extent of the despression / suicidal thoughts from abuse and neglect." Don't worry, her parents weren't going to let that slip to any IRL Suitors either.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[BitZtream]

You do realize you and the GP haven't been married long enough to actually comment right? Your first 10 years are a walk in the park. Tell me how rosey it is after that.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[countach]

I "dated" a woman online, and found out about her depression and suicidal thoughts after a couple of weeks, so I wouldn't assume that online is always a better way to hide stuff. In some cases the distance gives you an objectivity missing from real life. It all depends.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Penguinisto]

I can agree to that.

I met my missus online while farting around online. We spent the first few hours together in a chat at an online forum, tossing sarcasm at a TV documentary on love while it was being broadcast. Found out she lived across town... long story short, we wound up married a little over a year later.

It is amazing how you can not only assess her intelligence, but it's easier to be yourself when you're not distracted by deep green eyes and a gravity-defying bustline.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Penguinisto]

All joking aside, I should add a PS: It's been 7 years since we met.

It's like any other marriage, really... you still have to work at it. You still have to wake up next to her. You still have to debate, argue, compromise, and most importantly? In spite of my peking on a laptop and her messing about on an iPad 3 feet away, you still have to get along in real life.

Online is just one of many ways to meet someone initially... it still takes a shitload of work to make it work.

IMHO? I spite of the rather adventurous life we've led together since (both for good and ill), it's still worth it. :)

Re:Why should it be any different?

[davester666]

I met your wife online two years ago. I concur with your opinion. She's GREAT!

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

You singing my song dude.

Totally the same thing for me, not married yet, but it looks like me and my girl is going that way. Also meet online, in a MMO. Shes a kinda geek, gamer, animal person. We have very much incommon. But, yes some things was unspoken. Left to find out so to speak. The last sentence sadly fits here too. depression from abuse and neglect.

All well wishes, may your marriage last a 100 years!

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who's been online and BBSing since the mid-90s (like many Slashdotters, I assume), I'm a big fan of online interactions, and so online dating sites seem like a "Good Thing" to me.

Now, when I think of online dating sites, I assume that the purpose (for both the users and administrators) is to find a "best" match as quickly as possible. Which is another "Good Thing:" why waste time with invalid matches when you can find the right match quickly, right?

I also assume that the "right" person is someone similar to you. Yes, I know, "opposites attract," but the theme of online dating usually seems to be "find another Christian, like you," or "find another non-drinker, like you," or "find a geek, like you," or.... well, you get the picture: "find another you." So my impression, at least, is that online dating helps you find someone who is either like you or who already likes someone like you.

I'm also a kool-aid-drinking believer in "Innovation," a school of thought which usually proclaims that capital-I Innovation is a Good Thing, and, critically, that Innovation requires Diversity.

Now if you put all my assumptions together (and feel free to tell me what I'm doing when I assume...), you get a situation where online dating ensures homogenity, while the nearly-all-important Innovation requires heterogenity.

So I worry (and it's not my original thought; it's something I've seen elsewhere and keep puzzling over) that online dating is providing the opposite of what we need as a species (i.e. differences, which lead to innovation).

Other than that my list of assumptions is big enough to drive a trainload of trucks through, is there anything here to put my mind at ease? Do online dating matches actually encourage differences? Does homogenity lead to a better end state? Is there something major I'm missing?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[flimflammer]

Your story rings similar to mine. We haven't gotten married yet (known her for several years and been together for almost as long) and I didn't meet her on a dating website but a regular forum that I co-ran. Same kind of girl as mine. The whole depression angle seems to be a common one when you get into relationships online.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[flimflammer]

That is nonsense.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcvos]

People don't advertise their mental illnesses in bars either. You usually find out that stuff by meeting them in person and getting to know them. And you're going to do that anyway, no matter how you met them, as that's the entire point, isn't it?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcvos]

More importantly, you get to focus on interests and personality before you even meet. In bars, you're more likely to focus on looks, on "I'd like to tap that ass", and that's not a great basis for a stable long-term relationship.

My wife of 5.5 years and I originally noticed each other because of our shared interest in sailing, foreign countries and religion (and indeed basic literacy), but it's when we started mailing, and then calling, and then meeting in person, that we discovered how well we matched in other, more subtle and intangible ways. The physical match is important, but so is the mental/psychological match, and that's so easily forgotten when you start with the physical match right away.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcvos]

Can someone please mod parent all the way up?

There's no silver bullet to make relationships work. Online can be an excellent way to meet the right person, but every relationship takes work, commitment and compromise.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[lxs]

Because you're a sad and cynical basement dweller who tries to make himself feel better by putting others down? Funny thing, it turns out that thinking that way only makes you feel worse.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[captainpanic]

How is that going to be different if you had met this girl in a bar or your local handcraft workshop? It's still gonna take a while to get to know a person. Dark emotions that cause depressions will remain hidden for a long time, regardless of how you met.

It is true that email contact is different than talking face-to-face. You have more time to think about what you write. But I would hope that any relation moves away from written to spoken contact soon enough? Even if it is long-distance, there is Skype or phone. You cannot realistically expect to get to know someone before that anyway. But similarly, you cannot realistically expect to know anyone after just a few dates.

The really emotional stuff is gonna take time. Always.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't imagine what the point for species to have differences if that doesn't help in the same environment. And I think, that there are already different species of humans - smart, dumb, beyound any help or similar breakdown and it is waste if smart species don't evolve and procreate, as we really do not need another generation of Kardashians...

Re:Why should it be any different?

[nospam007]

"How is that going to be different if you had met this girl in a bar or your local handcraft workshop? "

That's not the 'normal' way.

The normal way is being forced to sit in your aunt's living-room with tea and cookies while she introduces one of her acquaintances daughter to you.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[r1348]

Don't even tell me about long distance relationships, my wife and I are from two different countries (I'm Italian, she's Polish), and had to fly to each other for 3 years... $deity bless low-cost flights!
Actually I accidentally stumbled on her on ICQ while I was looking for another girl, figures. We were teens back then and we were just good online friends for years, while both of us had other relations IRL.
Then the year I started working I was left home alone for summer while my parents were on vacation, so I decided to invite her to stay at my home. I really didn't have plans, I just wanted to meet an interesting person I've been interacting with for years. One year later we were engaged, but had to wait another two years before getting married as she was finishing her studies.
We're now happily married for 4 years, I know it's not long enough for drawing anything conclusive, but it feels good and I'm not regretting anything.
On a side note, we're pretty different people, she's not really the geeky kind, even though she has a great interest in literature and language (she's got an MA in English Philology), but I find having someone with such different points of view to debate with actually stimulating.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, you get to focus on interests and personality before you even meet. In bars, you're more likely to focus on looks, on "I'd like to tap that ass", and that's not a great basis for a stable long-term relationship.

Well, that physical attraction has served humanity well for thousands of years. Online dating isn't even 100 years old yet.

I'd bet physical attraction will still be around in a thousand years. The gattaca style online dating, not so much.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[ko7]

Of course there is something _major_ you are missing, but that is merely par for the course.

Meeting people online is better with respect to the fact that _petty_ initial-impression-based perceptions that may have pushed you away from someone you saw IRL, yet didn't matter in the long term, won't hold you back from experiencing the companionship of a unique person who has qualities that you would have overlooked, had you looked upon them in person, initialy.

There are good and bad aspects to both approaches.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that going to be different if you had met this girl in a bar or your local handcraft workshop? It's still gonna take a while to get to know a person. Dark emotions that cause depressions will remain hidden for a long time, regardless of how you met.

It is true that email contact is different than talking face-to-face. You have more time to think about what you write. But I would hope that any relation moves away from written to spoken contact soon enough? Even if it is long-distance, there is Skype or phone. You cannot realistically expect to get to know someone before that anyway. But similarly, you cannot realistically expect to know anyone after just a few dates.

The really emotional stuff is gonna take time. Always.

That depends on the person. I met my SO online and she told me about her depression pretty much straight away once it was obvious that it was getting serious. We're both in our 40s and have had relationships before so had an attitude of wanting to get all of the skeletons out of the closest so as not to have any surprises to spring later.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

OKC is the damaged and returned goods section of society. I'm not trying to compare anyone to goods here, men go to that site seeing it as a place to meet potential partners, women go there as a last desperate resort. The reasons are complex but look try a little experiment:

Open one account using the photo of a normal looking guy, Matt Damon type, with some interesting commentary and a few heartfelt thoughts in your profile.

Open another account using the photo of some ripped stud with and add a few thick comments bordering on being abusive towards women.

Six pack will get ten times the attention that joe normal gets, guaranteed, every single time.

That ain't right.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

People don't advertise their mental illnesses in bars either. You usually find out that stuff by meeting them in person and getting to know them. And you're going to do that anyway, no matter how you met them, as that's the entire point, isn't it?

Is 'alcoholism' classified as mental or physical these days?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is nonsense.

And yet, statistically, you couldn't be more wrong.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Salgak1]

Fine. My wife and I just celebrated our 15th anniversary, and WE met on American Singles (which is apparently part of "Spark" now. First time I looked at e-matchmaking sites in ~15 years. While it hasn't been all rainbows and bunnyrabbits (and what marriage IS ???), we're as strong as we started out, and likely stronger. So, , , your point ???

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

OR you can simply not get married and don't take on all the legal and emotional baggage that comes with the most peculiar institution. If a woman doesn't want to be with you unless you get married, she's not after your personality and chiseled jaw buddy.

Re: Why should it be any different?

[Mabhatter]

That's a case for the online portion, because the IRL social quirks would Probably have kept you from talking to each other.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[jaymzter]

Mailing? E-mailing? Is mailing like shipping packages, but with an e-mail you printed instead?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

'how r u 2day" might simply mean she is young - so any red blooded man better check her out... keeping within the bounds of the law that is :-)

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

You do realize you and the GP haven't been married long enough to actually comment right? Your first 10 years are a walk in the park. Tell me how rosey it is after that.

That's why I never/B> marry them...at worst I might live with them awhile , that's kind of like leasing with an option to buy....

If you don't marry them, then, you don't risk losing half your shit when you want to 'upgrade' to a newer, thinner model....

:)

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

Damn, gotta start checking preview first...that should have been:

That's why I never marry them...at worst I might live with them awhile , that's kind of like leasing with an option to buy....

If you don't marry them, then, you don't risk losing half your shit when you want to 'upgrade' to a newer, thinner model....

Re:Why should it be any different?

[filthpickle]

We are pretty much already completely homogenized. I doubt this could have much of an effect. Just read this yesterday, pretty interesting. http://nautil.us/blog/we-are-all-princes-paupers-and-part-of-the-human-family

Re:Why should it be any different?

[darkstar949]

Is 'alcoholism' classified as mental or physical these days?

It's been awhile since I last read about the classification so take this with a grain of salt, but I think it's technically considered to be both. Physical in part because you can develop of a physical dependency that requires detox and mental because you develop a habitual way of drinking and associate a drink with given situations.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

Same kind of girl as mine. The whole depression angle seems to be a common one when you get into relationships online.

That's one thing about NOT getting married younger, once you get past a certain age, what's left out there is largely damaged goods, lots of crazy chicks out there. Not all, but a LOT of them. After a few years, you start catching the good ones coming out of bad marriages, many of those are damaged too, BUT, if you find one coming of marriage that didn't go off the deep end, you have a pretty good, strong minded woman which is kinda nice.

Trouble is with the latter one, you have to possibly put up with kids....ugh. However, meet them a few years after that, often the kids will be old enough to be out of, or just about out of the house, then, you don't really have that much interaction with them, or dependence issues.

But yeah, you gotta watch out, lots of crazies out there...crazies are often fun in the sack, but be careful not to get too close or attached to them, they can really spin your world badly.

Re: Why should it be any different?

[iamhassi]

Oops I need to change my answers after the survey. Met online and even though we dated 4 yrs before getting married it still wasn't enough. I think the fact that they dated and married someone they met online makes it much more likely for them to leave you for someone they find online which makes it very difficult since now you're paranoid about every friend request.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

but it's easier to be yourself when you're not distracted by deep green eyes and a gravity-defying bustline.

pics?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[datavirtue]

I knew this guy who would bail when they started getting mouthy. I like the concept, but he didn't keep girlfriends very long.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[causality]

Meeting people online is better with respect to the fact that _petty_ initial-impression-based perceptions that may have pushed you away from someone you saw IRL, yet didn't matter in the long term, won't hold you back from experiencing the companionship of a unique person who has qualities that you would have overlooked, had you looked upon them in person, initialy.

Assuming one is shallow, inexperienced, or quick to judge, then yes that is true. But did you want to be with someone who has that much emotional growing up to do?

Sadly what you described is the majority. That makes it easy to forget that not everyone operates that way.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grizzley9]

You've been modded Flamebait for some odd reason, bitter Slashdotters? But you're right. 3 years is not a happy, successful, long term marriage. If/when they make it past 10, then we'll talk.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[datavirtue]

How is "English Philology" not geeky. That is awesome. I wish I had a philologist lying around the house.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcvos]

Physical attraction isn't going anywhere, but it's rarely been the sole basis of a relationship. During many of those thousands of years, economic security was a far more important pillar. Sometimes marriages were arranged. Sometimes it was simply a matter of whoever was available in the village. It's only recently that people have gotten really picky with unrealistic romantic expectations. Online dating makes it easier for picky people to find someone suitable.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[tchdab1]

The online factor, to me, is just the way you meet someone. The dating, relationship, spending time, getting to know them, appreciating each other (or not), all that is the same. How you meet someone, that initial encounter, is really almost irrelevant to what happens next (except for getting it to happen at all), unless you want it to mean something important.

But I think some people here are writing about meeting and developing a committed relationship totally online - if so, to me that's, um, crazy.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Kelbear]

I don't think that the way in which you meet a person matter nearly as much as how the two people choose to behave towards each other. It's a long series of compromises on one side or the other or ideally on both sides.

A lot of people hunger to meet that "perfect" mate, but that mindset is a little silly, how could anyone personify such a fantasy? The "perfect" mate is a caricature, not a person, because real people have flaws. Good relationships can work on problems or work around problems, but if the people involved are holding out for perfection they don't work as hard at it.

I completely agree that differences aren't necessarily a bad thing, differences between people can add additional perspective to the relationship. If they learn to appreciate each other's differences, the couple can gain as a whole.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[slim]

But surely after 10 years, "how you met" has faded into insignificance, compared with all the other factors that strengthen or weaken the marriage.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Golddess]

Care to provide a citation then? While I have heard that divorce rate within the first X years is significantly higher than after, I thought it was somewhere around 3-5, not 10.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same story. Long distance, better vetting, beautiful woman, depression thoughts from abandonment/abuse/neglect. Ten years and life gets better every year.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[MisterSquid]

Great comment.

Slashdot seriously could use a "favorite", "like", or "bookmark" button.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[wwphx]

My wife found me online December 2003, we married June 2005, today is our 8th anniversary. We accelerated our wedding plans when we found out her father was terminal with cancer that spread to his brain, he was in good shape for the wedding and was dead 11 days later.

I've come to believe that everyone is damaged goods to one degree or another. She has her problems, some of which can be kind of crippling. I certainly have my problems, which aren't quite as crippling.

I don't think we filtered too much prior to meeting, obviously we weren't dumping all of our emotional background that early. We met FtF two or three months after we started conversing online and on the phone and it basically confirmed the chemistry. We were semi-long distance, 500 miles between us. I was telecommuting, she's an astronomer which gives her long blocks of time off, so traveling to see each other wasn't a big deal. It worked pretty well to get to know each other, and it's continued to work well.

But definitely Your Mileage WILL Vary.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to just point out that women are not goods, but people. All people have baggage, either because they lived, or because they didn't.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[interkin3tic]

And makes the rest of us feel better about our own lives! I may have problems, but at least I'm not lonely or sad enough to resort to being an ass anonymously online in a pathetic attempt to make myself feel better.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcmonkey]

I mean, if anything it should be better, it's much easier to vet and eliminate chicks online. If they send a message 'how r u 2day??' you know to move on. I met my wife online and have been married for 3 years.

And the broads know, if the guy refers to them as "chicks" they move on. ;)

I met my wife on a MUD 20 years ago and we've been married for 10.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[sabri]

But surely after 10 years, "how you met" has faded into insignificance, compared with all the other factors that strengthen or weaken the marriage.

I beg to differ. How you met is very significant. If you meet your future wife in some bar in some small town in some flyover state, you may have actually settled with much less that you desired, simply because the pool of available future spouses was very small at the time.

The long term success of your marriage will be based on its foundation. If the foundation is nothing more than your spouse being a hot chick or hunk, you're gonna have a bad time. If, on the other hand, you and your spouse have matching interests, goals in life and a similar long term plan, you have an actual chance of defeating the divorce odds.

Online datingsites give you the ability to weed out anyone who is out of your league (and vice versa, for tha tmatter), and enable you to match on important stuff, not just the exterior.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[TechHSV]

You must be a chick....

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grishnakh]

Yes, I know, "opposites attract," but the theme of online dating usually seems to be "find another Christian, like you," or "find another non-drinker, like you," or "find a geek, like you," or.... well, you get the picture: "find another you." So my impression, at least, is that online dating helps you find someone who is either like you or who already likes someone like you.

And what's the problem with that? Many people have certain things they're looking for in a partner, and with online dating you can much more quickly find available people who have those characteristics. Many, many Christians do NOT want to date non-Christians; their pastors constantly tell them "don't be unequally yoked" (translation: don't date non-Christians), so they just look for partners at their little church, and of course that's not much of a supply. Online dating lets them find people who go to different churches. Or, my personal problem, I don't drink (beyond a glass of wine once in a while), so I don't frequent bars and I'm not interested in dating alcoholics (which is what you'll likely find at a bar), so personally I had tons of trouble ever finding a date when I was younger; with online dating, you can meet people who also aren't big drinkers. For some odd reason, in America, there are only two primary places to find dates in "meatspace": in bars and in churches. So if you're neither an alcoholic nor a holy-roller, and if you're a male who works in a male-dominated industry (engineering and IT), you might find yourself with few decent options besides online dating.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grishnakh]

Like Reddit you mean? Slashdot would be better if it did everything like Reddit.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grishnakh]

You missed the parent's point: younger people have less baggage, in general. When you meet someone at age 18 and get married in your early 20s, there probably isn't much baggage there (unless they had an abusive upbringing or something). At such a young age, that partner hasn't been through a long string of bad relationships leaving him/her emotionally scarred (or, in the case of some introverts, he/she (usually he) hasn't been through long stretches of time without being able to get a date, and then becoming bitter about it). The older people get, the more baggage they accumulate, and the harder it gets to form a good relationship with someone.

Not to say it's impossible; maybe you'll get lucky and meet someone who's a nice, emotionally-balanced person who got married fairly young, had a really happy marriage, and then their spouse tragically died suddenly of unavoidable causes (auto accident, weird illness, etc.), and is now available for dating again. But that's a rare exception; when you're in your 30s or 40s or more, the vast majority of people who are available for dating are either 1) divorced and have had some very bad relationships, or 2) have been in very few relationships, if any, because they have very serious personality problems.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grishnakh]

Yep, that's the problem with meeting people in bars. You're extremely likely to meet an alcoholic. If you're not an alcoholic yourself, why would you want to deal with that?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[rainmouse]

People don't advertise their mental illnesses in bars either.

Agreed, even after getting to know someone it can be hard to spot tell-tale warning signs. People can spend their life hiding things and get quite good at it. It was only after a girlfriend of mine moved in that her schizophrenia became apparent. She was very good at hiding it but put far less effort into that after she moved in. Warnings like when she yelled at me for listening to her thoughts all the time. That said, maybe I was the one that drove her crazy.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[TheCarp]

You are correct, if you plan to or think you will want to change up lovers, or add new ones, then you should, absolutely, positively AVOID monogamous marriage.

That said, there are still options. There was this one girl I dated, our first conversation was about how neither of us thought monogamy was even particularly desirable and how we both liked the idea of having options. We dated for a year and a half, then got married....and just celebrated our 5th anniversary together, still quite happily non-monogamously married.

Doesn't make dating easier per se, since most people are not so interested and it is the kind of thing you really do need to be somewhat upfront about to do ethically, but, it does have some advantages, like not feeling the need to date, making it a much less stressful activity. Rejection hurts a hell of a lot less when you already have acceptance waiting for you at home; making it a much less stressful activity.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[TheCarp]

I really should use preview and read what I write, before i copy myself, read what I write.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

...as we really do not need another generation of Kardashians...

Yeah, but we're getting one!

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "normal" you mean 19th century...

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

"on the other side I didn't know about the extent of the despression / suicidal thoughts from abuse and neglect."

She was a female on the internet, what else were you expecting exactly?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Addendum: From both people.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also people tend to develop personalities as they get older. Young people, say 18 to mid 20s, don't differ nearly as much in their interests and beliefs as people in their 40s do. It's easier for them to find a compatible person, with whom they can go on to develop in a similar way as they spend their lives together. But as you get older it gets harder to find someone who is highly compatible with you. Those little differences at 20 become big differences at 40.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Quirkz]

It goes both ways, though. Early on when I tried some online dating I spent too long talking via computer before actually meeting, only to find out some part of the physical/personal components didn't match up. Felt like I'd wasted a bunch of time on something that wasn't going to work. Not disagreeing with you, just saying you can go too far the other way.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mvdwege]

Of course, it might just be that you meet so many 'crazy chicks' because sane women know how to spot a misogynistic Neanderthal from miles away.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[stdarg]

For me, it's not too hard to grow to like a person who I didn't immediately like. It's difficult, or maybe impossible, to become attracted to someone who wasn't immediately attractive.

That said, I find many different types attractive as long as they are within a certain range of age, weight, height, skin quality, etc. But if I'm not attracted right away, I probably never will be.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

Of course, it might just be that you meet so many 'crazy chicks' because sane women know how to spot a misogynistic Neanderthal from miles away.

Well, obviously, I don't talk that way about women I'm wanting to get in bed with,that wouldn't be smart.

Heck, the main thing I find that is successful for bagging women, is to have THEM talk about themselves as much as they want.

I've never known a girl that after a date complained that the guy listened too well, or let her talk too much about herself.

And it's a no brainer that you tell them what they want to hear, you're an idiot if you start telling everything you think or feel right off to bat (if ever).

Hell, my idea of commitment is telling them my real name!!

:)

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mdielmann]

Of course, it might just be that you meet so many 'crazy chicks' because sane women know how to spot a misogynistic Neanderthal from miles away.

Well, obviously, I don't talk that way about women I'm wanting to get in bed with,that wouldn't be smart.

Heck, the main thing I find that is successful for bagging women, is to have THEM talk about themselves as much as they want.

I've never known a girl that after a date complained that the guy listened too well, or let her talk too much about herself.

And it's a no brainer that you tell them what they want to hear, you're an idiot if you start telling everything you think or feel right off to bat (if ever).

Hell, my idea of commitment is telling them my real name!!

:)

Marriage isn't about "bagging women" or getting into bed with them, so your whole point and attitude has no overall bearing on the conversation, except the part about potential age-equivalent mates being fewer. I won't even say more "crazies" because I've seen enough people with problems from a variety of age groups over the years. Moreover, marriages where one person just tells the other "what they want to hear" are probably going to be unsatisfying and unsuccessful. Do the world a favor and stick with your series of superficial, commitment-free relationships.

Ladies, not all men think like him. Some of us are willing to tell a woman what we're looking for once we've determined a relationship with her has a chance, as well as being open, honest, and (at least trying to be) considerate. I may not get as many dates as the parent poster, but sometimes quantity doesn't have a quality all its own (and it's still often enough that I remember how everything works).

Re:Why should it be any different?

[MrEricSir]

People don't advertise their mental illnesses in bars either. You usually find out that stuff by meeting them in person and getting to know them. And you're going to do that anyway, no matter how you met them, as that's the entire point, isn't it?

Maybe not for you, me, or your average Slashdot reader. But there certainly are people out there who are socially adept enough to rapdily pick out the problematic types in a crowd.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mdielmann]

More importantly, you get to focus on interests and personality before you even meet. In bars, you're more likely to focus on looks, on "I'd like to tap that ass", and that's not a great basis for a stable long-term relationship.

Well, that physical attraction has served humanity well for thousands of years. Online dating isn't even 100 years old yet.

I'd bet physical attraction will still be around in a thousand years. The gattaca style online dating, not so much.

Physical attraction is a great tool from an evolutionary perspective, especially when you note what "physically attractive" means from era to era (generally, healthy and able to provide for oneself). It tends to improve the chances of your genes getting passed along, which is what evolution is all about. Long-term relationships aren't as important to the successful passing along of genes (I think about five years has been generally accepted as being enough up until the last few generations of humanity). That said, my main requirement for a long-term partner wasn't primarily the viability of her genes, although I find her attractive enough. I like to think that I can work past my instincts to a certain degree, although for all we know that's just a counter-culture instinct evolution has raised to keep mixing in interesting traits.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[e3m4n]

I agree. I met my wife online on an IRC channel back in 1996. She and other room mates were trying to find out more about a friend of mine because one of their group was considering going on a date with him. They were basically trying to find out if he was a creep or safe to meet. When they found out I met them they spent the next 5 hrs asking me every question under the sun. I talked to my future wife a few times but lost track when she graduated college. Then the summer of 1999 she got a new laptop and was messing around and stumbled back into IRC and I happened to be online. We arranged a date a couple days later and got married in may of 2000. Thirteen years later we are still married and have two kids 7 yrs separated in age. When I met my eventual wife on our first date she mentioned some insight she learned in her experience with dating. Everyone has issue and problems. You arent looking for someone problem-free. You're looking for someone with issues you are willing to live with. Pretty insightful actually.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[e3m4n]

funny story about that. When I met my now-wife she had had a previous relationship with a member of her church. They were both volunteer youth group chaperones and he was a deacon of the church. Its the sort of thing every church going person pushes you to engage in, so she did. turns out he had a terrible habbit of buying whores with his free money. When she found out she dumped him like yesterdays news because. well, who wants to risk catching aids to say the least. His issues put her life at risk, directly. She took from that a lesson that everyone has issues, life is about finding someone with issues you're willing to live with and not the ones you are not. So despite that she is fairly religeous (not a bible thumper) and I am a Deist through and through, we've been married 13yrs and have 2 kids without much to do for problems. thats not saying we dont argue from time to time, but its always resolved and usually over stupid shit.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one thing about NOT getting married younger, once you get past a certain age, what's left out there is largely damaged goods

Selection bias.

As we age, we get faster at filtering out douchebags. If only the "damaged goods" are still giving you the time of day, that says more about your personality than it does about women in general. You need to update your game if you want to stay in the running.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[bitt3n]

I met my wife online and have been married for 3 years.

I'm the same way. I've met many people's wives online, and they've all been quite accommodating.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mcvos]

People don't advertise their mental illnesses in bars either. You usually find out that stuff by meeting them in person and getting to know them. And you're going to do that anyway, no matter how you met them, as that's the entire point, isn't it?

Maybe not for you, me, or your average Slashdot reader. But there certainly are people out there who are socially adept enough to rapdily pick out the problematic types in a crowd.

Only in a crowd? Not when they meet one-on-one? Because only then would this be a problem with online dating.

Re: Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fact that they dated and married someone they met online makes it much more likely for them to leave you for someone they find online which makes it very difficult since now you're paranoid about every friend request.

I think maybe you're the one with issues.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Grishnakh]

My wife used to be much more religious and went to "non-denominational" Christian churches years ago. She tells me about how they constantly preached that "unequally yoked" crap, yet in the church there'd be rather few single people, and a 10-to-1 (or worse) ratio of single women to single men. On top of that, while the girls would usually be fairly cute (according to her), the one or two men would be creeps with handlebar mustaches and the like.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I met my missus online while farting around online

That's the great thing about meeting online. You can fart constantly and still make a good impression.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Macgrrl]

While I wouldn't go so far as to call it an open relationship, my husband and I have agreed since we started dating (nearly 20 years ago now) that if either of us were interested in a physical relationship with someone else it was fine provided we told each other about it, preferably in advance. The other partner had the right to veto if they had concerns about the specific 3rd person, but conceptually it was fine. The logic being it's usually the deception in cheating which causes the biggest problem, not the actual sex part.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Common Joe]

My brother and I didn't really bother to date when we were younger, although both of us definitely like women. Once, when he was in high school and I was in college, my Mom asked why we didn't date much and berated us for not asking the girls in our classes out more often -- to take a chance and just date women instead of being so picky. We briefly looked at each other, then looked at our Mom, and in a rapid fire back and forth between us explained to her that we weren't interested in drugs, alcohol, STDs, money moochers, and women who couldn't think. We both emphasized that's what our choices were. It was the last time our Mom ever asked us that.

For the record, we are both married now.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

Well, for most of us, the game IS bagging as many women as possible, until you hit one that makes you want to hang around with her for more time than the others...often at the exclusion of others.

The larger the sampling pool you have, the better chance you have to meet your mate you want to stay with.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[excelsior_gr]

Even the matching interests are irrelevant. I think you pretty much nailed it with "goals in life and a similar long term plan". My parents got married through matchmaking, the really old-fashioned way. I would say they had pretty much zero common interests at the time of their marriage. They had, however, a very powerful motivation: have a family. So they went on to have 3 kids and they still have a happy marriage some 45 years later.

On the other hand, they belong to the generation that gave birth to the baby boomers (I'm not a baby boomer, but our eldest brother probably counts). Maybe having survived a world war as kids had an influence, especially when it comes to defining your life's goals, i.e. "have a family". Also, both of my parents looked pretty good, based on the photos I've seen of their marriage, and maybe that also paves the way somewhat.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[mdielmann]

Well, for most of us, the game IS bagging as many women as possible, until you hit one that makes you want to hang around with her for more time than the others...often at the exclusion of others.

The larger the sampling pool you have, the better chance you have to meet your mate you want to stay with.

Yes, and some people can't think of anything better to do on the weekend than destroying their livers and brains. Most of the people I've met find that game gets old by their mid-thirties, if not sooner. As for an increased sample size improving the odds of finding a suitable mate, I don't see how casual sex helps with finding someone who is emotionally compatible, and bagging women doesn't usually imply that you're trying to get to know them.

Re:Why should it be any different?

[cayenne8]

Yes, and some people can't think of anything better to do on the weekend than destroying their livers and brains. Most of the people I've met find that game gets old by their mid-thirties, if not sooner. As for an increased sample size improving the odds of finding a suitable mate, I don't see how casual sex helps with finding someone who is emotionally compatible, and bagging women doesn't usually imply that you're trying to get to know them.

I don't follow your logic.

You date a LOT of women to increase your chances of finding a suitable mate. While dating women, you date them more that 3 times often, right? Well, you do usually have sex by about the 3rd date if not sooner, because that *is* a big part of a relationship, right?

I mean, if you're dating a woman that is into you, and you don't make a sexual move, they're going to put you in 'friend' zone, which isn't the fun thing it sounds like, it means you are not going to have a full relationship with said woman.

So, yes, dating a lot, even seriously means you are going to be 'bagging' a good number of them...?

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole depression angle seems to be a common one when you get into relationships online.

Same thing happened to me - when I met my girlfriend online, both of us had depression. IMO, it's just the reality of online dating correlating with introversion correlating with depression.

(Posting AC as I've moderated elsewhere.)

Re:Why should it be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Physical attraction alone was enough to carry a relationship when humans were unlikely to live much past age 40.

Now, with life expectancies in the 75+ region, saying "I do" is and should be taken more seriously, with more consideration given to whom you say those words with.

Determined by science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what passes for science on dating sites.

That bad huh?

[pngwen]

Good thing I did it the traditional / free way. I would have felt ripped off it was no better ;P

(Note: I love my wife very much. I just have a twisted sense of humor.)

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is this: I could not do online dating. Even with traditional dating--if I cannot lock eyes with her and see pretty eyes, if her face is beyond cute and into the realm of pretty, if she is not anorexic nor horribly obese, and if her personality is a good match for what I am looking for--that's the woman I would consider dating. Otherwise, rejected as far as dating goes. Maybe friendzone at best.

Yes, my standards are that high--I don't want to be embarassed when others see me with her, nor do I want her to be embarassed when others see her with me.

Online dating--the person representing themselves as a woman could be catfishing and really be a man. Of they could be bisexual. Or they may be a heterosexual woman but they photoshopped their picture. They may want someone's person information and then not give much information themselves.

So again, not interested in online dating.

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Online dating" really just refers to meeting someone online, and does not in any way preclude getting to meet the person in the flesh. It's not like you're suddenly required to commit to marriage to some avatar with a screen name.

Re:That bad huh?

[CaptainLard]

I've heard of low maintenance but if you think $30/mo to meet your wife means getting ripped off, you must have hit the jackpot with her! For the rest of us, cash pours out of our wallets like outdated memes in a slashdot post. Enjoy your early retirement.

Re:That bad huh?

[Penguinisto]

Good thing I did it the traditional / free way. I would have felt ripped off it was no better ;P

(Note: I love my wife very much. I just have a twisted sense of humor.)

Lots of places you can meet for free, even for dating.

Re:That bad huh?

[Cenan]

I've known many guys who talked pretty much like that. High standards that don't apply to themselves, and for some odd reason - they're all single. Baffling.

Re:That bad huh?

[fredgiblet]

I'm fully aware that my standards are too high for what I bring to the table. That's why I don't bother even trying.

Re:That bad huh?

[jalet]

Where are mod points when you need them ???

You made my day, man !

LOL

Re: That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fully aware that my standards are too high for what I bring to the table. That's why I don't bother even trying.

You think you are being funny but you keep it up, you will find yourself an aging bachelor before you know it. Don't buy into the line there's someone for everyone or worse, think they will come to you when the time is right. By the time you figure out none of that is true, you'll be pushing 40 and have all the aches and pains that come with middle age. It's not that it will be too late to start but it will be a lot like arriving at kindergarden on the first day the rest of you friends go off to college and sitting in the maternity ward, you'll feel a lot more like hanging out with the grand dads instead of the dads.

Re:That bad huh?

[Cenan]

I don't want to be embarassed when others see me with her, nor do I want her to be embarassed when others see her with me.

That's not a girlfriend, that's a tattoo.

Online dating--the person representing themselves as a woman could be catfishing and really be a man. Of they could be bisexual. Or they may be a heterosexual woman but they photoshopped their picture. They may want someone's person information and then not give much information themselves.

Online dating is not a substitute for meeting in person, it is a way to extend your reach for a higher chance of meeting someone compatible, and then meeting in person. And so what if the one you've set up a date with turns out to be a lesbian dolphin trainer? Worst case scenario: you wasted an evening and have a new story to tell.

Re:That bad huh?

[flimflammer]

Being delusional about your own appearance definitely breeds this mentality.

Re:That bad huh?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Free? - Normally most people meet in a social setting, Bar, Club, Sports etc ... almost none of these are Free to enter ...

Re:That bad huh?

[fredgiblet]

I'm not the one who posted that.

Re:That bad huh?

[mcvos]

I don't want to be embarassed when others see me with her, nor do I want her to be embarassed when others see her with me.

If you're dating for other people instead of each other, don't bother. Fuck what other people think. If you've found the right person, your real friends will accept him/her. If it's all about image, you're not ready for a serious relationship.

Re:That bad huh?

[mcvos]

I have little faith in commercial dating sites. On the worst ones, people who don't pay can't send messages, but you still see them anyway. So that means the vast majority of profiles you read, are utterly irrelevant. It's okay when people who don't pay can still respond to messages of paid members, though. Still, I frequented a few paid dating sites with little success, and found my wife on one that was either free or cost about $10 a year.

$30/month by itself is no problem, but some dating sites are effectively scams. There are better ones out there.

Re:That bad huh?

[ThirdPrize]

Come on, its not like you meet someone on a $30/M web site, start dating, cancel your subscription and you are suddenly forced to stop dating them. You go on for a few months, contact all the possibles and if there is nothing, then you cancel. Stay on there too long and you just start contacting random ones.

Re:That bad huh?

[tbird81]

Yeah... judging from that comment I wouldn't advise you to try any form of online communication.

Re:That bad huh?

[slim]

The problem is this: I could not do online dating. Even with traditional dating--if I cannot lock eyes with her and see pretty eyes, if her face is beyond cute and into the realm of pretty, if she is not anorexic nor horribly obese, and if her personality is a good match for what I am looking for--that's the woman I would consider dating. Otherwise, rejected as far as dating goes. Maybe friendzone at best.

Jeez, you're looking for too much.

The way I approached online dating is, it would introduce me to interesting women, and we would go for a date. Perhaps a meal, a chat, a chaste kiss at the end. That's usually better than sitting alone in front of the TV, even if there's no attraction whatsoever. For me, it never got awkward enough that a date had to be abandoned, although I know that happens -- what the hell, at least you have a war story.

And that's all I looked for in online dating. If we both had a great time, then a second date would happen, but that's a bonus.

After a few of these kinds of dates -- fewer than I anticipated, actually -- I found myself on a third, fourth, fifth date, and now we share a mortgage. Romance!

Re: That bad huh?

[Rich0]

You think you are being funny but you keep it up, you will find yourself an aging bachelor before you know it. Don't buy into the line there's someone for everyone or worse, think they will come to you when the time is right.

There are certainly worse things to be in life than an aging bachelor. Being married to somebody who drives you crazy is certainly one of them! My advice: be picky, and be content to never marry.

Re:That bad huh?

[pngwen]

Ah, but with online dating, you have $30/mo plus the cost of the dates. I met my wife for free, but I certainly did not court her for free!

Re: That bad huh?

[parkinglot777]

You think you are being funny but you keep it up, you will find yourself an aging bachelor before you know it. Don't buy into the line there's someone for everyone or worse, think they will come to you when the time is right. By the time you figure out none of that is true, you'll be pushing 40 and have all the aches and pains that come with middle age.

Regardless the standard or how picky you are, some people are not meant to be married. They were told (or believe) that marry is the ultimate goal of life and they expect that everything will always be fine once married. Or even worse, some believe that they will be able to figure out how married works once they get married. Sadly, many of them never grow out of their fantasy, and in the end they are not able to hold on a married. Some of them keep trying and never get the idea that they are not capable of being married. There should be some thing like "Too many tries, account frozen" thing for married. ;)

Therefore, the issues are NOT your standard or when you are going to marry. Half of the issue would be from the other (spouse), and the other half is from you. If you cannot admit to life after married (not capable of being married), regardless how good your spouse is, you will always fail to hold the married and be unhappy.

Re:That bad huh?

[mcvos]

It's entirely unclear to me what you're trying to say here. Of course you shouldn't quit after your first try, but that doesn't change the fact that some dating sites are scams. It's vital for the effectiveness of a dating site that non-payers can at least respond to your messages.

Re: That bad huh?

[datavirtue]

I worked with a guy when I was about 19 who was around 50+. He was ugly as sin but he said women were hounding the hell out of him. He claims it is because at that age when they are single their options are limited and they are desperate to snag a man--looks be damned.

Re: That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are these people with aches and pains at 40? Seriously, I want to know.

Re:That bad huh?

[NeoMorphy]

I have little faith in commercial dating sites. On the worst ones, people who don't pay can't send messages, but you still see them anyway. So that means the vast majority of profiles you read, are utterly irrelevant. It's okay when people who don't pay can still respond to messages of paid members, though.

I agree, the commercial ones are horrible. You try to reach out to 20 profiles, but it turns out that only one is a paid member, but you don't know that so your ego goes south. Then, when your membership is almost done, you get a lot of "members" who are interested in you, you pay for another month and none of them reply back. They're run like a total scam!

As others have mentioned, including yourself, there are free sites that are much better than the commercial ones. Makes a huge difference when all members can reply back!

Re:That bad huh?

[slim]

if the one you've set up a date with turns out to be a lesbian dolphin trainer?

AWESOME!

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, worst case is you find yourself chained to the wall in the appartment of a serial killer.

Re:That bad huh?

[sharkey]

If cash pouring out of the wallet would lead to being able to pour hot grits down a petrified Natalie Portman's pants ....

Re: That bad huh?

[Grishnakh]

Ones who have been abusing their bodies probably. Just look at Lindsay Lohan: she's going to have tons of aches and pains when she hits 40 (IF she survives that long).

Re: That bad huh?

[smooth wombat]

Don't you know? The vast majority of the U.S. is on life support which is why we have all the commercials for every kind of pill and flim-flam product to cure what ails you along with having to pay for someone else's health care even if you're fit and healthy.

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free? - Normally most people meet in a social setting, Bar, Club, Sports etc ... almost none of these are Free to enter ...

For hookups maybe. Most people meet through friends or family. Parties and get-togethers are free to enter. I met my fiancee at a baby shower.

Re:That bad huh?

[mcvos]

I have seen one commercial site where non-paying members could respond to messages. They couldn't initiate contact, but contacting them wasn't futile. That's really the only way to do paid membership right.

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one determine if a dolphin is lesbian?

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

For hookups maybe. Most people meet through friends or family. Parties and get-togethers are free to enter. I met my fiancee at a baby shower.

To young for me.

Re:That bad huh?

[Culture20]

And so what if the one you've set up a date with turns out to be a lesbian dolphin trainer?

What I'd like to know is how she became so specialized as to only train lesbian dolphins.

Re:That bad huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then, when your membership is almost done, you get a lot of "members" who are interested in you, you pay for another month and none of them reply back. They're run like a total scam!

What's really funny is the filler profiles are easy to spot. They share the same likes, dislikes, etc. (Things I can't live without: chapstick and diet coke!)

Re:That bad huh?

[daftna]

I know a lesbian dolphin trainer that is quite fetching! To respond to the GP: Just because someone is online doesn't mean they aren't highly desirable. I met my highly intelligent, fun and hot girlfriend through okcupid and the chances of meeting her normally would have been slim to nil since at the time she rarely had time to go out due to school. After any type of introduction it's just two people and a relationship. Sure she might initially think you're awesome because Chuck Norris introduced her to you saying you are more badass than he is but eventually she will realize the truth.

As satisfying as...

[morcego]

Marriages Spawned From Online Dating As Satisfying As From Traditional Dating: NOT AT ALL.

Re:As satisfying as...

[CaptainLard]

So you met someone through a friend/bar/etc AND someone online AND got both of them to marry you? You're the man, man (or woman?) I count my lucky stars I found just one girl that puts up with me. Funny story though, I met her in college and had one great date and then met her again several years later through a dating site (got married about 2 years after that). Does that count as traditional, online or both? Either way, so far so good...that should counter your anecdote. Good luck next time!

Re:As satisfying as...

[morcego]

Hitchhiker's humor? Hum? Hum?
Please turn back your geek card at the door, on your way out.

Re:As satisfying as...

[Black Parrot]

Not having a girlfriend on line as depressing as not having a girlfriend in the real world.

FTFY.

Re:As satisfying as...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I haven't read anything Hitchhikers in a while and do not recognize whatever you were referring to. Maybe it was just a little too obscure.

Re:As satisfying as...

[Anonymous Coward]

you're pathetic.. get a spine and some stones man...and self respect. "puts up with me".. is this the message feminism teaches guys now?

Re:As satisfying as...

[Cenan]

Acting like an asshat turns her on at home huh? Good for you.

Having a sense of how it is to walk a mile in somebody's shoes goes a long way towards being happy in a relationship. That goes both ways, and has nothing to do with feminism, it is what smart people do, instead of acting like a retarded caveman.

Re:As satisfying as...

[Anonymous Coward]

She said she felt satisfied by my ePeen.

Re:As satisfying as...

[CaptainLard]

you're pathetic..

Says the AC. In my country a woman is free to leave a relationship if she so chooses. "Puts up with me" means I get to do all the crazy shit I like to do to AND still have an awesome wife that can think for herself. Perhaps your culture doesn't accept that women can have their own ideas but frankly I find it idiotic when a society decides to dismiss the ideas (good OR bad) of half their population out of hand.

Re:As satisfying as...

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you judge somebody, walk a mile in their shoes. Then you're a mile away, and you've got their shoes!

Re:As satisfying as...

[Anonymous Coward]

You completely missed the point of the reply.

Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[Minupla]

My wife and I met on a text MUSH in the 90s. Got married 10 years ago next may.

It worked for us!

Min

Re:Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[BitZtream]

A MUSH is entirely different than some online dating site. A MUSH requires actual socialization, not fuck-buddy-dates, which is what dating sites are better suited for.

Re:Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[Calydor]

That depends a lot on the MUSH.

Re:Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[Dominare]

Same, except it was a MUD and our 10th was last Feb. :)

Re:Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[flimflammer]

There were/are MUSHes out there that would terrify you to the core.

Re:Almost 10 yrs and so far so good.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got married, this clearly did not worked for YOU. Worked for HER... :P

Not a good comparison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Online dating, as a general statement, tends to have fewer minorities and trailer trash.

objective

[countach]

Online dating can be a bit more objective, in that you can look at thousands of profiles and only contact exactly the kind of people you are interested in. Of course, there is a big difference between a profile and reality, but it ought to be more objective and get you closer to what you want, quicker, than meeting whoever happens to catch your eye at a bar.

Communication is the key

[WegianWarrior]

Caveat: I meet my Significant Other online, although not on a dating site.
The benefit of meeting online is that you're pretty much forced to talk, and talk, and talk. It's not like you can take them to a movie and then then make out in the back of the car - instead you'll have to show them that you're a likeable person they would like to spend more time with. Goes double when you're on different continents and all that... before either party gets on a plane both parties needs to be sure that they are comfertable with seeing this person they have talked to for a while. On the other hand, the guy you ran into in the coffee-shop who ask you out to see a movie may be the biggest creep in modern history - and if you let him drive you home he knows where you live :/
TL:DR; Online dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other before meeting.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

You hint that you may be a woman. i love you

Re:Communication is the key

[fahrbot-bot]

The benefit of meeting online is that you're pretty much forced to talk, and talk, and talk. It's not like you can take them to a movie and then then make out in the back of the car - instead you'll have to show them that you're a likeable person they would like to spend more time with. On the other hand, the guy you ran into in the coffee-shop who ask you out to see a movie may be the biggest creep in modern history

Ya. Now if only there were a way to meet and talk and talk and talk with a person face-to-face, in-real-life, instead of *having* to go to a movie and then make out in the car...

TL:DR; Online dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other before meeting.

IRL dating works because you must talk and reveal yourself to the other *during* the meeting.

As for me, I met my wife in 1985 (when I was 22 and she 41) when I helped her to set up her new home (after she separated from her second husband). After a few days, she offered to pay me for all my work and I suggested she take me out to dinner instead. We were together for 20.5 years before she died in 2006 of a brain tumor - just seven weeks after diagnosis. (I haven't dated anyone since.) Remember Sue...

YMMV

Re:Communication is the key

[countach]

Wow, a woman 19 years older. That's unusual. Even more so that it lasted.

"Now if only there were a way to meet and talk and talk and talk with a person face-to-face, in-real-life, instead of *having* to go to a movie and then make out in the car."

Ha ha. The reality is, in real life there will be an expectation of some kind of physical contact rather soonish (unless you are in Iran or something), and that can tend to muddle things. In your case, you got to know her through NOT dating, so you got to know her a bit prior to any such expectations.

Re:Communication is the key

[Rudisaurus]

Your memorial site for Sue is a thing of beauty. It brought me to tears. Thank you for sharing it with us. Sue was as lucky to have you in her life as you were to have her in yours.

Re:Communication is the key

[bzipitidoo]

I expect the single life is my lot. Even apart from my own blunders, or just the stigma of being too "white and nerdy", I'd have thought I'd have a bit more success. But I have gotten nowhere. Talk and talk on dating sites, maybe for weeks, seeming like we have much in common, and then suddenly she stops responding. What did I say wrong? What happened? I don't know. Communication? What communication?

Could be some were just using men. Maybe she was married, and misrepresented herself as single, or any number of other lies. I have no idea how common that is. But I think most people are mostly sincere and mostly honest. A few times, I did get a reason of sorts. One was a divorced woman who told me that her husband left her without a word of explanation, and she had no idea why. Hmm. A few weeks later, she told me she "wasn't ready", which sounded screwy to me. Another was a Life Coach, which, upon reading a bit about what that was, sounded like potentially a downright evil career. After a few weeks, told me she didn't want to chat with me any more, unless I wanted to be a customer and pay her money for advice on what I should do with my life! Had me wondering if the entire purpose of the conversation was just an attempt to drum up some business. Felt as if I'd been given directions to a party, only to discover upon arriving that there was nothing there, and worse, that I'd crossed a minefield to get to the place and that my correspondent knew all about that part.

Perhaps it's not me especially, it's the environment. Seems in recent times, the economy has been bad most years, and this stresses and depresses people. I fancy people aren't much interested in the pursuit of happiness, and are definitely less interested in having children, when life sucks. Also, we have the obesity epidemic. It's harder to get excited over someone who can't climb a stairway because they're too fat. And when that fat person is you, and you can hardly stand to look at yourself in the mirror, how can you feel confident enough to date? I wonder how many morbidly obese women have given up all hope and don't even bother trying? A review I saw of OKCupid complained that the women there weren't serious, and I'm thinking there may be something to that. I wonder how spoiled we all are. Are people's expectations so sky high that no one can meet them? I read a bit about some sisters of one of the King Louises of France. They didn't want to marry any man who was not worthy of them, and declined many offers. Seemed they were holding out for a king of a major nation. They ended up never marrying. Many daughters of nobility were pushed into nunneries, which were the dumping grounds for excess children. A noble might produce many daughters before he finally had enough sons to have good odds of one living long enough to succeed him. Also, some of the women in nunneries were the victims of rape by a nobleman, which in those days was considered the fault of the woman. But these sisters of King Louis weren't driven into the religious life, they just couldn't settle for any man. I wonder if we've all become a bit more like that.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

There are not as much couples, where women are older, but from my experience it is nothing extraordinary - I have encountered quite a bit of people, where women were older and they had very strong relationship, because they both knew what they wanted. Also females in some cases does look so good, that nobody can tell that they are actually older.
That does not work for me - I look younger than I am and IRL I either attract children or a wee bit older women(with children), who all have the same intention - nonlasting relationship. Also that does not work very well in online dating.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry for your loss.

But to come and bash someones comments for doing something different from your own choices shouldn't be ignored just because you have a sad story to brush it off with.

Learn from the study IRL and Online relationships are of equal merit.

The story is for people like you.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

For god's sake! Don't blame others! Take a courage and ask some of them out! It has to be about fun and your entertainment(and with this mindset it is also much easier to entertain others), not some serious work of selection. Make some mistakes to learn, if you are strugling to grasp it from others... because by this time you would have developed already some sense of feeling when chatting online is too long. At least get someone to fall in love, then heartbreakingly break-up and then be depressed for the rest of your life... and you'll definitelly have much better neural system than me and get over it in quicker ways.

As for stigma for being too much "white and nerdy". If you are white, then there is no problem in finding dark colored women, as there is plenty of them who are looking just for white men, though this reason sounds too desperate for me.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Totally agree. I'm sorry you had to lose her.

Posting AC as I've already modded parent and GP up.

Re:Communication is the key

[slim]

When I was "doing" online dating, I took the view that meeting up should be done pretty early on. Two weeks of chatting online, maximum, before meeting for a coffee, or a meal, or whatever.

Why:
  - If they don't want to meet in person, they're timewasters. It may not be their fault -- but this is going nowhere. Feel free to keep talking to them online, if it gives you pleasure, but expect no more to come of it.
  - Only by meeting up, can you establish whether there's a real mutual attraction. If there's none, you might continue to be friends anyway. But if romance isn't on the cards, it's worth knowing early.
  - It's nerve jangling, but it's fun!

If you're morbidly obese, then quite separate from wanting companionship, you should do something about it. Seriously. But I expect you know that.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

As a woman who's been on a dating site recently, I think your mistake is talking for too long before asking her out. If a guy goes for too long before asking me out I lose interest. Not looking for a pen pal.

(Yes I know I could ask them out, but I prefer not to and right now I have enough options that I don't have to.)

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect the single life is my lot. Even apart from my own blunders, or just the stigma of being too "white and nerdy", I'd have thought I'd have a bit more success. But I have gotten nowhere. Talk and talk on dating sites, maybe for weeks, seeming like we have much in common, and then suddenly she stops responding. What did I say wrong? What happened? I don't know. Communication? What communication?

Talk and talk for weeks? Maybe if she is halfway across the country and things are going well. Othewise, if she is local, then grow a pair and ask her out. They are looking for men, not scared little boys.

Re:Communication is the key

[mark-t]

Or, you know, maybe some people are just more comfortable actually getting to know the person first.

Re:Communication is the key

[mark-t]

The "mistake" was not his... since it's not particularly a mistake to feel like you want to know a person before asking them out on a date. Some people are okay with taking somebody who is still practically a stranger on a date, not everybody is, and not everybody can feel like they know somebody that well after just a couple of online chat or emails.

In fact, I'd argue the mistake is theirs, for not being communicative enough about their intentions. If they want somebody who moves faster, they should say so. Or at the very least, honestly let the guy go by telling him that they aren't feeling any sort of chemistry of connection with them, and admit that they think further communication would probably just be a waste of time at that point, as soon as they realize that they aren't interested in them, instead of just ignoring their messages.

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

The one who made the mistake is the one who is unhappy with the resulting situation. Their is no one right or wrong style of communication. If your style isn't getting the results you want, consider changing it. And also consider that, in your 20s at least, women tend to have more options on dating sites.

Re:Communication is the key

[slim]

Well, if staying comfortable was the aim, then you'd have a point.

One disadvantage of covering every topic under the sun before meeting in person, is that they're all useful fillers for uncomfortable silences!

Re:Communication is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

(Yes I know I could ask them out, but I'm too pretentious to.)

FTFY

Re:Communication is the key

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Talk and talk on dating sites, maybe for weeks, seeming like we have much in common, and then suddenly she stops responding. What did I say wrong? What happened? I don't know. Communication? What communication?

Stop talking, and start meeting. Seriously, I met my lovely GF on OKcupid.
This is how I liked to work. Two or three messages, Then phone call. If phone call goes well meet. Meeting usually coffee an hour to two hours before mealtime, so you can suggest lunch, or dinner if meeting goes really well. Pay for lunch, or dinner.
Post meet (if you liked her), send a message. email, dating site, or text, saying that you had a good time, and you would like to see her again.

A couple of last things:
Bring flowers/ stuffed animal, ETC to first date. (I once brought a cordless drill, it had come up in our conversation.)
If the opportunity presents itself, pay for her beverage.
Hold the door for her.
If you are standing around the parking lot, talking for a long time, she probably wants you to kiss her.
Keep the parking lot kiss low key.

Re:Communication is the key

[mark-t]

The one who made the mistake is the one who is unhappy with the resulting situationThat oversimplifies it.

The mistake was made by whoeever was not honest about what they were trying to do or were interested in.

What do you expect

[Anonymous Coward]

20,000 desperate old men find 20,000 Russian / Thai wives who actually rock up to escape their country.

Uhhh...

[Obfuscant]

This is like saying that raspberry pies baked with raspberries you go to the store to buy taste the same as raspberry pies baked with raspberries your spouse buys from the store. Same raspberries, same cook, just a different way of getting the starting ingredients.

Re:Uhhh...

[commodore73]

Nope. Proximity limits who you can date in reality. The internet eliminates that limitation. If you live in a town of very few people, your chances of meeting the right person are...different.

Re:Uhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this is very very important. The dating pool for a modern human is magnitudes larger than it was even 20 years ago. This changes everything and increases the ability of finding someone compatible quite significantly.

OkCupid not mentioned in the study?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or is does it smell of bias that okcupid is not one of the dating sites that they explicitly name in their study?

ANd the other stats!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

80% percent on marriages from online dating result in divorce! I would post the site or stat, but I read it some time back.
This "study" only shows how stupid studies can be..

Re:ANd the other stats!!!!!!!!

[fredgiblet]

What makes that statistic more valid than this study?

Re:ANd the other stats!!!!!!!!

[tbird81]

I'd guess the "80%" thing can be measured with official records. Divorces and marriages are usually recorded by the state.

Re:ANd the other stats!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Online dating is a relatively new phenomenon and more appealing to the under 50 demographic, so that statistic (if true) is hardly surprising or informative. Very few marriages from online dating have had time to end in any other way but divorce (death being the alternative).

Re:ANd the other stats!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

go ahead and do it then...we're waiting

captain jerkoff up there pulled "80%" out of his ass...why should we believe a word of it?

Adopt-a-pet

[Macchendra]

I want the stats on relationships started in the adopt-a-pet thread in the usenet group alt.sex.bondage.personals.

Re:Adopt-a-pet

[Anonymous Coward]

I want the stats on relationships started in the adopt-a-pet thread in the usenet group alt.sex.bondage.personals.

9 Years so far and working pretty well for us.

Right honey?

"Mmmmrhmmmmph".

Just remember, silence is golden, and a ball gag is around 14 dollars at stockroom.com.

YMMV

Re:Adopt-a-pet

[LynnwoodRooster]

Reminds me of this saying:

DUCT TAPE: Turns "NO NO NO!" into "Mmm Mmm Mmm!"

Re:Adopt-a-pet

[Anonymous Coward]

rofl @ this thread xD

It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people prior to the 90s had to settle for whoever they met in a 50 mile radius of their place of birth?

Re:It expands your dating circle

[NeoMorphy]

How many people prior to the 90s had to settle for whoever they met in a 50 mile radius of their place of birth?

Thank you! Somebody who get's it.

It's amazing how many idiots can't grasp this simple concept. The biggest advantage of online dating is it allows you to network yourself in the dating world more effectively. It's not like you can go into a bar and yell "I'm a computer geek who is looking for a single intelligent and attractive woman who is interested in techies who look like me! I'm going to Comic Con this weekend, any takers?", Nobody?? Fine, I'm off to the next bar.

What if your soul mate doesn't hang out in bars, or other social venues? Not much chance of it happening, is it?

IRL?? What do you Neo-Luddites think happens? Do you think we all jump into virtual reality and live our lives there? Of course IRL meetings happen, it's part of the process. Online interaction is not substituted for face-to-face interaction, it's a step before face-to-face interaction. Even better, it facilitates face-to-face interactions between people who would otherwise never meet, even though they are a good match.

For those "The old-fashion way is the best, I walked up to my future wife and started talking to her", really? Do you have psychic powers that let you home in on the right one? Or did you marry the first girl who would talk to you?

I met my current wife on OkCupid, and OMG I can't believe how much I am in love with her. She's awesome! Would I have met her without online resources? Not likely. Different states, different circles etc. But we were able to discover someone that extremely interested us. There was no other way it could have happened, other than developing psychic powers!

Am I the only one who thinks it's very bizarre that there are people interacting on an online forum who don't understand the concept of people interacting online?

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there are plenty of other nerds such as yourself that get it. ;)

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

For those "The old-fashion way is the best, I walked up to my future wife and started talking to her", really? Do you have psychic powers that let you home in on the right one? Or did you marry the first girl who would talk to you?

Yes. Of course I didn't walk up TO HER, she walked up to me... It's been 30 years, and now the kids are grown and while it was "love" at first, it has been just fine lately... never a "soul mate" situation. Maybe it is time to move on and do a more scientific pick this time...

Of course - even with a "perfect" match, there is nothing to say people don't change.

Re:It expands your dating circle

[serviscope_minor]

Am I the only one who thinks it's very bizarre that there are people interacting on an online forum who don't understand the concept of people interacting online?

Well, if you'd met by cracking a joke about Soviet Russia, first posting a link to goatse and then berating her for using vi instead of EMACS, we'd all understand perfectly.

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have psychic powers that let you home in on the right one?

Yes? Dating in general doesn't appeal to me, because I'm never actively looking. I do notice subtle things about other people, and I know exactly how weird I am compared to some of them (it's like being psychic). I'm too much of a dreamer to be happy living an ordinary life with a normal person, and I wont risk compromising for the sake of comfort. If I encounter Mrs. Right, I'll notice her or she'll notice me because we have some connection (similar quirks and physical attraction). If I stay single forever, then I'm happy persuing my dreams full-time.

The psychic fail method, aka. love at first mind meld.

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thank you! Somebody who get's it. It's amazing how many idiots can't grasp this simple concept. "

Speaking of grasping simple concepts, that apostrophe means you wrote "get is", or something that belongs to a "get". So, about these idiots...

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Tempest_2084]

Exactly. I tried 'traditional' dating for several years, but I could never meet anyone in my area that shared my interests, values, or my outlook on what I wanted out of life (being in a small town area didn't help). I had to go all the way across country to find the woman for me (I was in Michigan and she was in California). Without online dating I would never have found her and would probably still be trying in vain to find someone local. We've been married for 3.5 years and have never been happier.

Re:It expands your dating circle

[fermion]

Janeane Garofalo had a line on Dr. Katz where she talking about the insanity of a world where you marry whomever has the locker next to you in high school. Funny episode.

If I were the marrying kind, a person within 10 miles of where I grew up would not be so bad. The worst relationships were with people who were not.

In terms of online versus 'traditional', I would say my friends who go online fall into three camps. The first is those who are looking to get married, and just need to find someone else who is looking to get married. Online is a good way to meet a reasonable person who is going willing to work to fit lives together. Since it is about marriage, there is no wasted time wining and dining people who just want to play.

The second is the person who is looking for a very particular mate to marry. The objective is to marry, but now there is rubric. Online lets you match a rubric to a various possibilities. I have one friend to do this, every date looked fundamentally the same, eventually found one that was acceptable to marry. In all fairness this friend did in desperation try to expand the mold, but just wasn't able to make it work, so online it was.

Then there is just sex. Looking for an unoffensive lover is part of the service of these sites. Which is also part of traditional dating. Or personals in the newspaper. Or going on vacation.

Re:It expands your dating circle

[Anonymous Coward]

People who use OMG and Luddite in a sentence should move on over to liberals are us and be banished and real men don't overuse exclamation points.

maybe I am reading this wrong

[Osgeld]

online dating has as much chance of long term success as picking up a drunk chick in a bar?

Re:maybe I am reading this wrong

[countach]

Ha ha. I assume the survey assumes first that you married the drunk chick, which I guess doesn't usually happen. (Unless you are in Vegas).

re Online Dating is Out!

[jelizondo]

Married, twice (1); divorced, twice(2). If online dating results are as stable and satisfying as those IRL, forget it.

Maybe I should try another tack?...

5'8" Male. Geek. Grown children. Looking for a...

In slashdot? Aw shucks! Forget it! Probably I will get a dog posing as girl...

For the curious: married (1) five years and (2) eighteen years

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta start with baby steps. Consider what others here commented about weeding out lots of potentially unnecessary mistakes thanks to profiles. For something so digital and REMOVED from interaction, having matching results is a pretty efficient result. It is also proof of concept of a process that *can* be refined to be better than the IRL version.

About stability and satisfaction: MOVE to a different country with better retention rates. The downside is that ouside the US online dating is probably orders of magnitude MORE shunned, so maybe it is a catch-22

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, that is a whopping 53% divorce rate in the USA. Dating anyone in a place where a coin flip has a fairer chance of success than you creeps me out.
The marriage rate is 7%, so only 3% succeed in a country with 150 million potential straight couples.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[jelizondo]

I usually don't respond to Anonymous Cowards but this time it's just too good to pass..

I live in Mexico, where the official divorce rate is 15% (per the article linked) versus 53% in the U.S. (Disclosure: I am a Mexican national, married twice to Mexicans.)

Funny thing, off the top of my head I can mention two close friends, both married 30+ years: one couple has spelt is separate rooms for years, the other one officially is still married, but they live in separate houses.

Why won't they divorce? Social pressure: family ties, what would the neighbors think?, I couldn't go to church being divorced...

You are mistaken lower divorce rates do not mean happier marriages... Just enduring hell.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[xenobyte]

Married, twice (1); divorced, twice(2). If online dating results are as stable and satisfying as those IRL, forget it.

Maybe I should try another tack?...

5'8" Male. Geek. Grown children. Looking for a...

In slashdot? Aw shucks! Forget it! Probably I will get a dog posing as girl...

For the curious: married (1) five years and (2) eighteen years

Welcome to the Internet - where men are men, the women are men and the children are FBI agents posing as children...

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those divorces are by serial divorcees? I mean, 66% of Newt Gingrich's marriages ended in divorce; him and other people are raising the average.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.htm

"The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced. Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers say."

And I don't think that 7% figure is accurate ... it's more like 0.7% of the population getting married any given year, and 0.3% per year getting divorced. At that rate, more people are dying (0.8%/year overall, assume 0.4% for married people who make up half the population) than getting divorced.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are mistaken lower divorce rates do not mean happier marriages... Just enduring hell.

You are wrong. Happy marriages have a very strong casual link to longer marriages.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Eivind]

Yeah. I've said the same thing to some Iranian friends of mine. The higher divorce-rate in Norway compared to Iran, is not a sign that marriages work less well here. It's just a sign that people have a CHOICE, and can actually divorce rather than spend the rest of their lives in a miserable love-less marriage.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Funny thing, off the top of my head I can mention two close friends, both married 30+ years: one couple has spelt is separate rooms for years,

See, that's part of the problem right there. You're supposed to use the bedroom for sexual activities, not just academic pursuits...

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of Iran - they don't have choice in first place of whom to marry. It is different world - everything is arranged by parents, and if parents have arranged marriage, where wife is ugly, man(I mean - son) has no rights to object... it is not just about female rights. Though in my case I asked complaining guy(who was as ugly as Ahmedinezad - and even smaller) how it comes, that he has 2 children from ugly wife... other than that he was living in Europe and rarely visited home, apart from sending money to his wife.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[eulernet]

You are mistaken lower divorce rates do not mean happier marriages... Just enduring hell.

While I agree with you that it's better to divorce than living miserably, I would like to add that you should not expect your marriage to be happy, because it will probably not be happy.
In fact, the most stable marriages are arranged ones, because people don't have a choice, so they tend to adapt to the situation, they can only accept the other.
Meanwhile, people who marry because they love each other do only accept the other as they are at a given moment.
But people change, and after a few years, the change can be so dramatic that the new situation is impossible to stand.
Love becomes gradually hate.
I like to say that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
The real love is accepting the other as he/she is, and encouraging him/her to become a better person.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[garutnivore]

While the first couple you mention may indeed be sleeping in separate rooms because of a bad marriage, their sleeping arrangement is the sole evidence presented to us that the marriage is bad. There are many reasons for sleeping in separate rooms, sleeping disorders in particular, none of which are an indication regarding the quality of the marriage.

Other than that, I agree.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[geminidomino]

And I don't think that 7% figure is accurate ... it's more like 0.7% of the population getting married any given year, and 0.3% per year getting divorced. At that rate, more people are dying (0.8%/year overall, assume 0.4% for married people who make up half the population) than getting divorced.

By that rate, more people are also dying than getting MARRIED.

"Better dead than wed," indeed.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[datavirtue]

There is a couple in my town who have separate houses. His is supposedly filled with comic books. They have grown children in college. I think the separate house thing would be awesome, that way you are not up each others ass and it can be like dating or something. Nothing wrong with it.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[benjfowler]

'separate rooms' == bad relationship?

Not necessarily, especially if one of the partners snores/farts like a trooper.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[phorm]

Korea has similar issues. Among the boomer gen, getting divorced is basically like saying "there's something wrong with me and I can't maintain a marriage." Getting remarried - and having your family accept the new spouse - is even harder, ESPECIALLY if you have kids.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't think that 7% figure is accurate ... it's more like 0.7% of the population getting married any given year, and 0.3% per year getting divorced.

GP here.
You were correct, it's actually 7 per-THOUSAND, not percent, but I read it wrong.
What nobody is tackling in this thread is that marriage has become a bold step rather than the norm. If what is at the top is caused to be this bad, then everything underneath, has a rotten value. If we similarly tracked worldwide hook-ups and break-ups we'd see how bad the world today, even given that there's supposedly less pressure beyond the surroundings of a marriage. I don't care about serial divorcees. It'd be neat to see how many failed relationships people burn through in their lifetime. That will tell why marriage enrollment is so low.

Here, I'll even fix your broken link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[David_W]

Welcome to the Internet - where men are men, the women are men and the children are FBI agents posing as children...

...but some of the men are really women. Enjoy!

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Eivind]

That's true for some. But the people of Iran are diverse, and most young people have some influence over whom they marry. This can range from a pretty free choice (though often with more constraints than we're used to) to "which one of these 4 candidates do you prefer ?" kinda choice.

Overall, I'd say men in Iran has more freedom than women, but you are completely correct that the restrictive religion dominating society there poses severe limitations on the freedom of both genders.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[t1oracle]

Unless you are part of the ruling class. Then you can have who ever you want, even if they don't want you. :-)

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[t1oracle]

People have unhappy marriages because they stop doing the things for their spouse that they used to do when the relationship was new. They've gotten complacent, stopped doing the extra effort, and then they are surprised to find out that the love feelings just isn't as strong anymore.

I came to that understanding from reading this: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/

There is a lot of good stuff in there and I think if more people followed advice like that, fewer relationships would go south. Of course, you have to be willing and nothing will help you if you are selfish. Some people simply are too selfish for a long term relationship to work.

Re:re Online Dating is Out!

[Eivind]

Hypocrisy is always higher where norms are stricter. People *pretend* in public to adhere to very strict rules, but in practice they're human, so in private they're no better than the rest of us.

Demand celibacy from priests, and see what happens. It's not unique to Iran. Thus when puritanical conservative folks complain about "moral degradation", they're really just complaining that ordinary folks do in public the stuff they've -always- been doing in private.

The considered search

[Anonymous Coward]

paid off well for me. I decided to advertise my availability in a local print medium (several years before the Web was available), rather than depending on fate to provide. We've been married 19 years now. The time and money I spent on my advertisement, on meeting the respondents for coffee, and on taking the time to think about how I felt in their company were the most important investment I've ever made.

I suspect that introducing just the least bit of conscious selection into the otherwise (for me, at least) overwhelmingly irrational and mysterious process of mate selection favorably biases the outcome. For me, a favorable outcome meant finding a woman who was wildly unsuited "on paper" for me, but who has been a true and steadfast friend, bringing out the best in me and to my continuing delight, in her as well.

In short, the results in TFA do not surprise me. Addition of thought to a complicated, important process usually improves the outcome.

3 whole years?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

My god you guys sure went the distance!

Alternative to going to a bar

[Anonymous Coward]

I met my wife of 4 years years, been together 9+, via eHarmony. When I was using it, I was looking for someone and just didn't want to hit the bar scene or try to figure out some way to introduce my shy ass self to women. I saw it as a better alternative to traditional dating. FWIW, she was my 5th or 6th date on eHarmony.

Yeah, helps to find that one-in-a-million

[raymorris]

I was looking for a special lady, a one-in-a-million. (Okay, so maybe one in ten thousand.). It's REALLY hard to meet and sift through a thousand women just meeting people around town. I tried, and I did have brief conversations with 60-120 or so, and had lunch with 20-30. Online, I had more available women to see, with tools to narrow it down before starting up a conversation.

I married my one-in-a-million five years ago.

(My first marriage taught me that choosing from the five or ten available women in my social circle was a REALLY bad idea.)

Re:Yeah, helps to find that one-in-a-million

[countach]

That's good. I'm curious since you were so specific about what you were looking for... what were you looking for? Super beautiful and smart, or something very specific?

Re:Yeah, helps to find that one-in-a-million

[Anonymous Coward]

"(My first marriage taught me that choosing from the five or ten available women in my social circle was a REALLY bad idea.)"

You got to choose, be grateful you insensitive clod.

Re:Yeah, helps to find that one-in-a-million

[Anonymous Coward]

(My first marriage taught me that choosing from the five or ten available women in my social circle was a REALLY bad idea.)

Funny, mine told me (and keeps telling me) the exact opposite.

Stable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "stable" and "marriage" do not really go together in this day and age. At least in the USA, where divorce rates exceed 54% in most states and are fast approaching 60%.

Married 11 years after meeting online

[shadowofwind]

Downside: Online relationships are kind of unnatural, you go through various stages of intimacy and its largely in your head. Its easy for the relationship to stray too far from reality, and even if you maintain perfect objectivity intellectually, there's still a kind of emotional disconnect, like you've missed something that you can't quite replace.

Upside: Its way easier to find someone who shares your values and is otherwise compatible with you. Modern life is so strongly partitioned into different kinds of careers and social settings, it can be almost impossible to meet a compatible person just by offline social networking. A lot of times people get hooked up with someone in high school or college that they don't actually fit very well with, they were just the closest thing in proximity. Online matches can be a lot better in that regard.

I'd say that if you live in a big metropolitan area, and date online, you're probably best off dating people who are close enough that not much of the relationship is online except for the original contact. That doesn't work if you don't live in such an area of course, which was the case for me.

I think an alternative to dating online that can work for a lot of people is graduate school. When I was an undergrad, two out of more than a hundred students in my major were women, and one was middle aged and married. I think the ratios are a lot more favorable than that now though, and the women who go to graduate school are different than undergraduates also.

Re:Married 11 years after meeting online

[fredgiblet]

You're suggesting that people sign up for college just to date?

Re:Married 11 years after meeting online

[shadowofwind]

If more school is something that fits you well anyway, and you're happier doing that than whatever you would be doing otherwise, sure. That's not why I went back to school, but I can see the timing of that would work for some people.

If you don't like the rut you're in, you get out of it. If you live in a region of a mobile society that has few to no intelligent, single women in the workforce, and meeting single intelligent women is something that's important to you, then you go to where the women are. Relocating to a company in a bigger city could work for a lot of people, but for me that wouldn't be any more radical than going to graduate school.

Re:Married 11 years after meeting online

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in college, you're unlikely to find intelligent people. It's mostly just rote memorization geniuses who will never do anything innovative.

Re:Married 11 years after meeting online

[Anonymous Coward]

never heard of a woman going to get her MRS in college?

Re:Married 11 years after meeting online

[countach]

"there's still a kind of emotional disconnect"...

True, but at least you know about the disconnect, and don't fool yourself too much about it. In real life when you are fooled, there is no reality check to bring you back to earth.

Simple reason

[Tablizer]

because we can change the aspect ratio of our dicks in Photoshop

Re:Simple reason

[Anonymous Coward]

because we can change the aspect ratio of our dicks in Photoshop

I got a Division by Zero error

No shit....

[sm177y2300]

Where you meet has nothing to do with relationship stability.

Agreed, myt story

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend and I met through a dating service when I was living in Russia. We've lived happily for two years, have a child, and I wouldn't change anything in how we met, or the wonderful times we've spent all over the world since (we've lived in Russia, the Ukraine, Mexico, Switzerland and San Francisco since). The best part about the on-line dating aspect was that we could spend lots and lots of time discussing various topics of interest to both of us, comparing our values, and otherwise communicating in a cool way that would've taken a lot longer in-person.

Another great aspect of on-line dating is that you aren't limited to one person at a time. You can screen (and be screened) much faster, and you can then cherry pick with whom you'll invest time for the in-person dates and so on.

Disclaimer: at the time I was the VP of technology for Badoo, so I was in a position to use the service as much as I could or wanted. I didn't have to pay for the additional services (e.g. gifts, Super Powers, etc.) so it was easy for us to spend as much time on the service as we wished. My opinions on the subject are biased because of this -- but I'd still recommend anyone looking for a mate to try the on-line dating service that better works for their tastes.

Cheers!

E

Agreed - my story

[ciurana]

Dang it - I wasn't logged on last time and my post ended in Anonymous Coward limbo...

My girlfriend and I met through a dating service when I was living in Russia. We've lived happily for two years, have a child, and I wouldn't change anything in how we met, or the wonderful times we've spent all over the world since (we've lived in Russia, the Ukraine, Mexico, Switzerland and San Francisco since). The best part about the on-line dating aspect was that we could spend lots and lots of time discussing various topics of interest to both of us, comparing our values, and otherwise communicating in a cool way that would've taken a lot longer in-person.

Another great aspect of on-line dating is that you aren't limited to one person at a time. You can screen (and be screened) much faster, and you can then cherry pick with whom you'll invest time for the in-person dates and so on.

Disclaimer: at the time I was the VP of technology for Badoo, so I was in a position to use the service as much as I could or wanted. I didn't have to pay for the additional services (e.g. gifts, Super Powers, etc.) so it was easy for us to spend as much time on the service as we wished. My opinions on the subject are biased because of this -- but I'd still recommend anyone looking for a mate to try the on-line dating service that better works for their tastes.

Cheers!

E

Re:Agreed - my story

[AmiMoJo]

You can screen (and be screened) much faster, and you can then cherry pick with whom you'll invest time for the in-person dates and so on.

Depends to a greater extent if you are male or female. The ratio of men to women is often 40:1 or thereabouts, so for women they can pick and choose but men not so much.

Re:Agreed - my story

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't matter though. you still have a huge pool of women to choose from. when you're in a bar, you don't think that the only competition are the men currently in the bar, do you? compete, just like everybody else. there are still a huge amount of women online so you can still pick and choose who you talk to.

Re:Agreed - my story

[ciurana]

Depends to a greater extent if you are male or female. The ratio of men to women is often 40:1 or thereabouts, so for women they can pick and choose but men not so much.

True - that was another interesting thing about Badoo in Russia - the ratio of men to women is closer to 5:1 (or was at the time). Other services in Russia/Ukraine/etc. had lower ratios. It seemed that women are more adept at on-line dating in those countries. Badoo in the US, at the same time, was a total ghetto. It had evolved only from minority groups, lots more men than women, and we had to winnow out quite a few "professionals" all the time. The kinds of women who used the service in Russia was very different from the US peeps: many university-educated girls, good jobs, nice people. There were pros, sure, like in all dating services. But I was always surprised at how good a demographic we had there compared to other markets -- the contrast was astounding.

From Badoo I had a chance to date a plastic surgeon, a nuclear scientist (no shit -- went to the university in Obninsk), several business women, and my fiancée who has a very nice for a major luxury firm there. The number of nice girls was very high. I have no idea what it's like now -- I haven't had a need for the service since I met my fiancée and left the company.

Cheers!

Re:Agreed - my story

[ciurana]

One more thing I thought about:

OkCupid, Match.com and everyone else go to painful lengths to do the questionnaire and focus on "relationship" -- that's a huge barrier to entry for new people. It's just too annoying and boring. Newer services like Badoo, Kizzle, Twoo, etc. focus more on "meeting new people" and letting things evolve from there. Post a couple of photos, say a little about yourself, and you're off using the system. I always found Match et. al. a pain in the ass.

Cheers!

Online or off

[EzInKy]

Online or off, just about everyone has to hide half of themselves to attract the other sex. Yeah, I know that sounds weird...but not everyone is 100% he-man or 100% she-male. We all have degrees of separation.

Re:Online or off

[VortexCortex]

Online or off, just about everyone has to hide half of themselves to attract the other sex.

I've found the opposite is true. Offline, you have to start off showing only the half of yourself you don't mind everyone seeing. However, Online you can show whatever half you want up front, and then graduate to showing your full self. Just because you start off with the web cam aimed at your face doesn't mean you can't tilt it down... Or, you could just start off with the web cam aimed at your crotch, and build a "satisfying" relationship from there.

It's true that a 1st date IRL can lead to sex right then and there, but a one night cyber-stand is basically masturbation, but you'll still be fist pumping especially after you're married, so it makes no difference either way. I kind of like having a mute button.

Re:Online or off

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

or 100% she-male.

I think that might mean something different than what you meant to type. Perhaps google can help.
(I suggest turning safe search on.

What about arranged marriages?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 56 posts and nobody asked about arranged marriages? Or other forms of pair bonding. I am disappointed in you nerds.

Re:What about arranged marriages?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was originally 'arranged' with a family friend's daughter in another country. The selection made by our families because the families are close and that she was of known upbringing and she was relatively pretty. My family took me to their country and we visited her with her fully knowing it was a marriage meeting and we both agreed to the arrangement. We left and started the paperwork to have her come over our country. The girl got cold feet after a few months and asked to back out of the arrangement. Turns out she was interested in a guy in her own country. I started using online sites and ended up finding a much better match. I was actually relieved because in the arrangement, the girl wasn't well educated, didn't speak english, and there was a pretty big age gap (10yrs).

Arranged might work, but only for the right reasons. Sometimes when I think about it, I feel like I was set up in an arrangement because my family didn't think I could do any better than the girl they chose.

Now, I've just recently got married to someone that is a PhD in bio here and just a year younger than I, and she is absolutely gorgeous. Kinda gives the previous generation something to chew on when they decide to set up an arrangement...

Marriage Satisfaction Correlation To Meeting Means

[Anonymous Coward]

My ultra-orthodox Jewish grandparents lived in a society where fixed marriage was pretty much the norm, and that's what they did as well. Anecdotaly, it never seemed to me like that generation had worse marriage. More rigorous methods are unavailable: there probably aren't reliable questionaires in fixed-marriage societies, and other posters have pointed out that divorce rates can be misleading. I wonder if the key to a happy marriage is just managing your expectations.

Why stop there?

[Noah69]

I actually went one step further and had an online wedding. It went surprisingly well until it became obvious that my future wife couldn't hold a positive K/D and was called a n00b faggot by the pastor. Worst day of my life, I even spent like five bucks on a custom suit character skin.

Oh man

[no-body]

It's a fantasy and illusion - why should there be any difference at all?

Kinder garten

[Anonymous Coward]

kindergardeners make the best wives. Ask mohammed, or uriah (2 samual 12, little lamb).

A young pretty girl will be a better bride than a college woman.
Also note deuteronomy 22 28-29 (in hebrew)

Lola

[RedHackTea]

I met a girl recently at a bar where she approached and asked me to dance under electric candlelight. Her voice was dark brown like sweet molasses, like a guy actually. I'm not the most physical guy, but whenever she hugs me, it almost breaks my spine. She said that she'll make me a man soon... I hope it works out.

Irksome studies

[WinstonWolfIT]

Online matchmaking no better? No worse? What have we learned that's useful? How about a useful level of detail, such as who is more likely to benefit meeting in person vs who is more likely to benefit going online? Break it down by profession, by star sign, by fetish, it doesn't matter. Tell me how to improve my odds, don't tell me the whole damn thing is a crap-shoot because I already knew that.

Man in the mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

What people just don't seem to get is that the quality of your marriage depends on YOU! YOU are the person that defines your marriage to at least 75%.

Marrying someone else seems to be the easy solution these days. But I have a feeling that you'll end up in the exact same spot unless you change yourself in that process. So, want to improve your marriage? Start by looking at the man in the mirror.

Re:Man in the mirror

[tbird81]

I had a brief relationship with him. Didn't end well, I was pretty young at the time. I got a good settlement though.

Re:Man in the mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

wait, if the individual is responsible for 75%... would that mean, together as a couple, you're responsible for 150% of the marriage? marriage still takes two people. it's true you have to be happy with yourself, but you're kidding yourself i you think you're mainly responsible for the marriage. it should be an equal relationship, otherwise its doomed to begin with. though, i guess some people are happy with servants instead of wives...

Re:Man in the mirror

[locopuyo]

My cpu does not encompass the dynamics of human peer bonding.

Worked well for me

[Bruinwar]

Anicdotal yes, but.... I met my late wife back in 1996 in IRC (a gaming channel ha, imagine). She moved from LA to live with me in Michigan (again, imagine ha!) We were married in 1997 & were happy for 14 years until cancer took her from me. One thing about online chat was how much we ummm... chatted. The crazies & the bullshitters were picked out rather quickly, they couldn't keep the crazy/bullshit straight.

Again, when I felt I was ready, using an online dating service I've met an absolutely wonderful woman. We have so much in common it's scary. I don't think it is as good of a vetting system as IRC was though. I got lucky.

My opinion is online is actually better than the old ways.

Similar interests?

[benjfowler]

I'm unsure how online dating going to be better than IRL dating, when you're excluding a whole slab of potential marriage partners, because they happen to not be interested in the same stuff as you?

Re:Similar interests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm unsure how online dating going to be better than IRL dating, when you're excluding a whole slab of potential marriage partners, because they happen to not be interested in the same stuff as you?

This is one of the many excuses my ball and chain uses as justification for her shitty treatment of me. Never marry an unrepentant stubborn perfectionist who expects you to KNOW what she wants without any indication from her. Oh, I'm very sure that I've not been the world's best husband, but what can I do when she won't communicate?

I don't mind taking part in some of her interests, and have actually learned to enjoy them, but there is no reciprocation here. My interests are of no value to her, and therefore are complete wastes of time that I could use to do something "constructive", whatever the hell that means. $DEITY forbid she simply accepts that I enjoy them and leave them at that.

We are about *this* close to divorcing - the only thing stopping us is that we have a teenage son together. We fear that it will affect him adversely, though I suspect he will be fine as long as we don't have a nasty breakup. We've agreed to pursue the divorce mutually if it comes to that. We are going to give counseling a try, but I predict that I'll be single before the year is out. We did counseling before, and it helped, but she then slipped back into the same behaviors that caused the rift in the first place. Unless she makes a dramatic and sincere effort to change her ways I see little hope in salvaging a 17 year marriage. I've changed my ways multiple times over the years for her, but it is never enough, as the bar keeps being placed higher and higher. I'm done walking in her direction until she starts taking steps in my direction.

After the all but inevitable divorce I will probably be a bachelor until the day I die, unless fortune smiles upon me. I know I'm going to be more discriminating the next time around.

Anyway, thanks for reading; I don't want or need advice here, just doing a bit of venting. Posting AC for obvious reasons.

Re:Similar interests?

[neminem]

Good for you. I seriously don't understand why people want to stay in relationships that both of them hate, and I also don't understand why people want to be in relationships with someone they have nothing in common with and enjoy none of the same things.

(I say this as someone whose parents divorced when I was a kid, and I had really no issue with it. I really agree with you completely: what messes up a kid isn't divorce, it's messiness. Parents screaming at each other and fighting over them, that would mess up a kid. Not being able to see one of their parents ever because the other wanted total custody and had a better lawyer, and screw what the kid wants: that would mess up a kid. But parents just living in different houses? So what? Actually, I rather liked it once I got over the initial sadness at not seeing both of them every day: my mom hated game consoles, so once they got divorced, I could play my NES more.)

Kids these days

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day, we had NEWSPAPER PERSONALS. This is just a newfangled twist on the same old stuff.

This just in....

[overlook77]

stab wounds sustained from combat found to be just as painful as those received from civilian robberies.

8 year relationship via IRC

[Anonymous Coward]

I met a girl around year 2000 via IRC. We had a mostly great relationship that ended after 8 years.

Digression

[Catmeat]

Online is just one of many ways to meet someone initially... it still takes a shitload of work to make it work.

Bit of a digression, but during the UKs recent Gay Marriage debate, an awful lot of conservative/religious commentators were spouting endlessly about how 'natural' marriage is.

If that's so, why do married people always go on about what hard work it is. Surly 'natural'='easy'.

Re:Digression

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like giving birth! ;)

Re:Digression

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's so, why do married people always go on about what hard work it is. Surly 'natural'='easy'.

Fucking is a lot of hard work, and it's perfectly natural. And don't call me surly!

Re:Digression

[microTodd]

to continue the digression....

An interesting thought. But is your premise, natural=easy, true?

Childbirth is completely natural. Easy? Hell no.

What about "living off the land"? Hunter/gather is a more "natural" way to live. A lot harder than shopping at Publix.

So maybe natural != easy.

Re:Digression

[Dcnjoe60]

to continue the digression....

An interesting thought. But is your premise, natural=easy, true?

Childbirth is completely natural. Easy? Hell no.

What about "living off the land"? Hunter/gather is a more "natural" way to live. A lot harder than shopping at Publix.

So maybe natural != easy.

Childbirth is easy. Millions of women all over the planet deliver babies every day and then go back to work in the fields. It is easy, but also very painful, but painful doesn't mean it is difficult (calculus is difficult).

Living off the land is a lot simpler than shopping at Publix. What is needed to shop at Publix? Well, you need funds to pay for the goods and you need transportation to get there and to get the goods back. How do you acquire those funds? You need to work a job. What is required to work that job? There are direct things like certain skills and equipment and many indirect things, probably like electricity and the like. How is all of that acquired? Skills usually comes from training or education, equipment needs to be manufactured and electricity, well that is a whole long list of additional requirements needed. Anyway, the list goes on and on and on.

Living off the land is not necessarily easy, but when you compare what is truly involved in both methods, you will find that it is a lot less complicated than shopping at Publix.

Re:Digression

[Dcnjoe60]

Online is just one of many ways to meet someone initially... it still takes a shitload of work to make it work.

Bit of a digression, but during the UKs recent Gay Marriage debate, an awful lot of conservative/religious commentators were spouting endlessly about how 'natural' marriage is.

If that's so, why do married people always go on about what hard work it is. Surly 'natural'='easy'.

Fusion is natural, too. Controlling it on the other hand is the hard part.

Re:Digression

[Slashdot Parent]

Childbirth is easy. Millions of women all over the planet deliver babies every day and then go back to work in the fields.

My wife would have bled to death during childbirth had she not been in a great hospital receiving great care. Saving her life didn't look easy, judging by the doctors' stress level.

Re:Digression

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an a$$

Re:Digression

[Slashdot Parent]

Surly[sic] 'natural'='easy'.

Plenty in life is natural but not easy. Just look at "natural disasters".

Why do married people always go on about what hard work it is.[sic]

Because the only married couples who talk about marriage being hard work are the ones who are struggling with it. If you find it difficult to be in a relationship with a person, you should consider that you might be with the wrong person, or that one or both of you could work on your relationship skills (communication, respect, trust, etc.)

I've never found it difficult to be married to my wife. We've faced very difficult situations together, but the key word there is "together".

Re:Digression

[CannonballHead]

Natural is definitely not always easy.

Lots of things come naturally. Like war. Humans seem to like to kill each other. Is war "easy?" No. Some job professions seem to come "naturally" to people, too. How about farming? Definitely not easy.

If things that come "naturally" were easy, then life would be easy (after all, most people do what is "natural" to them; not too many people consciously and intentionally seek out things they feel are unnatural to do). And life is not "easy." For most.

Re:Digression

[Dcnjoe60]

Childbirth is easy. Millions of women all over the planet deliver babies every day and then go back to work in the fields.

My wife would have bled to death during childbirth had she not been in a great hospital receiving great care. Saving her life didn't look easy, judging by the doctors' stress level.

Your wife's experience is not representative of the biological process involved that woman have been going through since homo sapiens started as a species. Hospitals, particularly those with modern maternity facilities are a relatively new phenomenon and not available to most of the world's women. The world wide mortality rate for women during child birth is 1.5% (1500/100,000). In the US it is .01% (10/100,000). Since most of the births, these days, are happening in second and third world countries without access to hospitals, it would seem that over all, while there are risks associated with child birth, the process itself is well understood and considered simple (your wife's experience, not withstanding).

The point being that if childbirth was such a complicated thing, how would the human species ever survived to the point where we could create the modern hospital system? The human gestation rate is very long and if it were fraught with peril, one would expect that nature would have us reproduce more like bunnies than we do, or we would never have made it.

Re:Digression

[stdarg]

Childbirth is easy. Millions of women all over the planet deliver babies every day and then go back to work in the fields. It is easy, but also very painful, but painful doesn't mean it is difficult (calculus is difficult).

Childbirth is an example of something that is not physically easy. Dealing with the death of a loved one is an example of something that is not emotionally easy. Calculus is an example of something that is not intellectually easy.

By calling childbirth easy, you're using your own definition of easy that doesn't take into account things that most people think of when using the word .

Living off the land is a lot simpler than shopping at Publix.

Shopping at Publix is actually simpler, which is why most people in the world don't live off the land when a Publix is available.

Living off the land is not necessarily easy, but when you compare what is truly involved in both methods, you will find that it is a lot less complicated than shopping at Publix.

It's like you're taking the mentality of living off the land, i.e. doing everything yourself, and then applying that to something that's really easy in a society (like a grocery store), and weighing the effort of each one as if it were done by an individual. But that's not how it works. I'm not concerned with the complexity of the economy, transportation, or education.. that was all done by others and I take advantage of it for free.

The availability of existing resources has to be taken into account when evaluating "easy" vs "hard" or "complex" vs "simple". Just like it would be simpler to live off the land in the Garden of Eden than it would be to live off the land on the Moon where you'd need a lot of modern technology to survive more than a few minutes, let alone live a normal life.

Re:Digression

[Dcnjoe60]

I guess if your definition of easy is that you shift the work to everybody else versus doing it for yourself then yes, shopping at Publix is easier than living off the land. OTOH if you look beyond the individual and look at the effort involved to enable one to shop at Publix versus living off the land, then a whole lot more work is involved.

Childbirth is easy (I've done it three times). It is painful, it is labor intensive (no pun intended) but it is not rocket science. For the most part there isn't even any mental process necessary as one's body takes over. I've also run marathons and from my experience, after 26 miles, yes, childbirth is easier. But, just because something is easy, however does not mean it is enjoyable or pleasant. Tieing a string to one's tooth and to a door knob and slamming the door is an easy way to extract a tooth, it is neither pleasant or enjoyable.

The problem with terms like easy and hard is that they are subjective. Simpler and more complex, while still maintaining a modicum of subjectivity, are much more straight forward. By definition a simpler process is an easier process compared to a complex process, is it not? Therefore growing your own food or living off the land is a simpler process than shopping at Publix. It does not mean it is better, or desirable. Only that it is less complex and therefore easier.

From a philosophical discussion the less complex the task the easier the task. From that framework, childbirth is no more complicated a process than squat, push, push some more and pick up the baby. Not to minimize what we woman go through, but those are the basic steps. A C-section is much more complex. fpr instance, but in many cases is also more desirable.

Back to the original statement that started this discussion was the notion that just because something was natural did not make it easy. And yet, natural is the most basic and therefore simplist path their is. Take food production, whether you grow your own or you purchase it at the store, the first step in the process is that it has to be grown. Then it has to be harvested and then stored. Both growing your own or purchasing it has these three basic steps. If you do grow your own, you are done until you wash it and cook it. However, there are many more steps involved to get it from the farmer to the shelf at Publix and then finally to your home. So, by definition, the many more steps, mean the process is more complex. Ergo, natural is simpler. The same methodology can be applied to living off the land or any number of processes. In each one, natural, or the closer one is to natural will yield the simpler result and simpler, being less complex is easier.

All of that said, it does not mean that simpler or easier is more desirable. There are many, many, reasons why just the opposite would be true and often the more complex process may ultimately be the more efficient use of resources or money. But even if it is more desirable, that doesn't make it simpler or easier.

Re:Digression

[stdarg]

I guess if your definition of easy is that you shift the work to everybody else versus doing it for yourself then yes, shopping at Publix is easier than living off the land. OTOH if you look beyond the individual and look at the effort involved to enable one to shop at Publix versus living off the land, then a whole lot more work is involved.

No that's the whole point, less overall work is involved. Using trade and specialization allows people to live off each other with less effort than working individually. The total effort of everybody involved is lower, and the individual effort is lower. It's because when you work in an organized system, the same amount of effort goes further than working on your own.

What's going to be faster and easier.. 10 specialists building 10 houses together (a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, some framers, etc), or 10 individuals building 10 houses separately with each one taking care of every facet? An organized system is more complex, but the individual effort is lower and the effect of the effort is higher.

The problem with terms like easy and hard is that they are subjective. Simpler and more complex, while still maintaining a modicum of subjectivity, are much more straight forward. By definition a simpler process is an easier process compared to a complex process, is it not?

A simpler process is easier to follow (as in understand intellectually) but not necessarily easier to do.

How to fly:
1. Find a huge bird and kill it
2. Strap the wings to your arms
3. Flap like a bird really really hard

Conceptually it's easy to understand and it's in fact possible if you had the power to weight ratio of a bird. But you don't. So it will never work.

How to fly:
1. Get an education ...
10000. Get a job ...
20000. Buy a plane ticket

It's thousands of times longer and more complex than the first list, but still easier to do.

Take food production, whether you grow your own or you purchase it at the store, the first step in the process is that it has to be grown. Then it has to be harvested and then stored. Both growing your own or purchasing it has these three basic steps. If you do grow your own, you are done until you wash it and cook it.

For something basic like fresh produce, you're right. It's simpler (though not easier) to grow your own.

As soon as you get more complex, though, the balance shifts. Say instead of growing an apple, we're talking about bread. Bread has more than one ingredient and it doesn't grow on trees, so now we're looking at the following basic steps:
1. Grow wheat
2. Harvest wheat
3. Grind wheat into flour
4. Raise a cow
5. Get the cow pregant
6. Milk the cow
7. Travel to the ocean
8. Harvest salt by evaporating water
9... I honestly don't know how you get yeast, I guess you'll need to search the Earth until you find some naturally occurring yeast
10. Build your own oven
11. Harvest wood for your oven ...
20. Oh yeah, I think there's eggs in bread too, so raise some chickens ...
30. Forgot the sugar. Umm. Travel to a climate where you can raise some sugar cane.
31. Get the sugar out of the cane, I'm not sure how. ...
40. Is your flour still good? You may need to grow another crop of wheat ...

I'm leaving out hundreds of substeps though. You don't just will a cow into existence, it has to come from somewhere (I guess travel somewhere and domesticate a cow-like animal, use selective breeding for 20 generations, maybe you end up with a cow?). You don't just grind wheat into flour with your teeth either, you'll need at least some wood or stone tools.

Now imagine a small community.
Guy 1:
1. Grow lots of wheat
2. Harvest wheat
3. Sell wheat
4. Buy bread

Guy 2:
1. Raise cows
2. Sell milk and butter
3. Buy bread

G

Re:Digression

[TranquilVoid]

You're equating easy with simple, as if intellectual ease is the only type. Easiness is the amount of effort. Childbirth, on average, takes a lot of physical and emotional effort but not much intellectual effort.

I agree that a good rule of thumb is that 'natural' implies simpler. Then if easy != simple, and natural == simple, then loosely natural != easy :)

Natural has a couple of defintions; that which occurs in nature (homosexuality, rape, theft, murder) and a more metaphysical definition of what should occur according to some ideal (no rape, no theft, no murder and, in the opinion of the anti-gay marriage camp, no homosexuality). I think the original marriage=hard poster is simultaneously using both to create a conundrum.

Nothing new...

[Hans Lehmann]

My own parents met through online dating, though back then the Internet was only available on paper. They were together nearly 40 years and raised 4 kids.

Re:Nothing new...

[Anonymous Coward]

why did this get modded down?

I mean the parent obviously has little to no grasp of how to communicate

tech sites are 90% morons

Study sponsored by eHarmony!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The study was sponsored by eHarmony. Isn't that sort of important? Shouldn't the summary tell you that materially important information so you don't waste time with this article? That's like a military-industrial complex former government official working at a consulting agency telling us China is hacking us. What else would you expect? Next up: Vatican sponsored survey reveals the Pope is Catholic!

Re:Study sponsored by eHarmony!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

did you notice that two-thirds of those involved with the study do not work for eHarmony AND that eHarmony had to agree beforehand to publish all results no matter what conclusions were arrived at?

Actually from my experience... Better...

[Lumpy]

First wife was traditional, ended in a horrible train wreck as she was insane.
Current Wife met via the internet and 11 years later we are still the best of friends and still madly in love with each other.

From my experience, Meeting a mate IRL is a recipe for failure, you get infatuated with their looks and not their mind first.

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[Dcnjoe60]

First wife was traditional, ended in a horrible train wreck as she was insane.
Current Wife met via the internet and 11 years later we are still the best of friends and still madly in love with each other.

From my experience, Meeting a mate IRL is a recipe for failure, you get infatuated with their looks and not their mind first.

And you would chalk this up solely because you met on the internet or to some other factor? According to the article, it is all because of the internet.

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience, Meeting a mate IRL is a recipe for failure

I wonder how people managed for thousands of years before the internet was invented!

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[Slashdot Parent]

Uhh. Could your current, happy relationship possibly have been due to your life experience, which helped you avoid marrying a second train wreck? I find it hard to believe that looks play a diminished role in online dating, given how little attention photoless profiles receive.

I think we all have to have a misfire of a relationship (or several misfires). Personally, I had two before having met my wife. One, I dated only for her looks, and the second was an unhealthy rebound from the first. The second was batshit insane, by the way. Mercifully, I didn't marry either one of them.

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[HeckRuler]

With lives that were nasty, brutish, and short.

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[Lumpy]

By divorcing them and then marrying another, or killing the wife they dont like anymore. Which is still legal in some countries.

Try learning some history.

Re:Actually from my experience... Better...

[TranquilVoid]

I find it hard to believe that looks play a diminished role in online dating

I tend to agree, although there are two competing principles at work;

1. IRL, politness forces you to interact with people irrespective of their looks. Online you can click them away.
2. Online, you have to communicate verbally much more, you aren't forced to scrutinise them visually

Re:The free way?

[ulricr]

there are tons of free dating sites. I met my wife and mother of two children online for free, on" plenty of fish", a very popular site in Canada

An Exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Met the EX on-line in 2005 - just happen to be eHarmony too. Married ~ 1 year later in 2006.
One caveat: at the time I was mid-40's, after spending ~15 years alone after first wife died.
The "match" through eHarmony seemed to be "spot on" - which was rather amazing.
Things were pretty good, until she hit a "major" life crisis: her mom passed away in 2008. It was down-hill after that, in some not so pretty ways. Yes, relationships take work, no matter how they start out. But Life can throw you some pretty major curve balls.
She moved out in 2012, officially divorced Jan this year.
Met my new "SO" in Dec 2012, on-line (OurTime) on a real "fluke" - we've been together 6 mos now and couldn't be happier! ! !
Anything's possible, same as with the chance meeting on the street corner - think the Adjustment Bureau. . .
YMMV.

Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has mentioned Facebook? Thats how I met my hot young wife ;-)
4 years into it, and its had rough patches. **fingers crossed**
Generational gaps between partners can be tough. But the sex is always great.

Meeting circumstances don't matter

[markkezner]

Ask anyone who has dated around enough and they'll tell you that the circumstances under which you first meet don't matter for much. Sure, for a few weeks she'll be "my new OkCupid girl" or "my new Barnes and Noble girl" to you, but that fades. At that point I typically don't think too much about how we met and think more about what's going on in the present moment.

Does this count?

[boristdog]

I married the best friend of a woman I met online.

They are no longer friends.

Who'd have imagined...

[__aaltlg1547]

... that it matters more who and how you treat each other than how you met?

Really?

[Dcnjoe60]

Online dating that has been available en masse has existed for how long, a decade? The non-statistically valid study looks at marriages less than 7 years old to determine that if you met online and got married, your marriage is just as satisfying as traditional dating. That seems like an awfully short time frame to compare marriage against. Even if it was a statistically valid study, at best the conclusion could be that for the first seven years of marriage, marriages spawned from on-line dating and traditional dating are equally satisfying.

On a different note, don't most online dating sites work by setting up traditional dating? The purpose of eHarmony (mentioned in the article) is not to find somebody for cyberdate, but to find somebody to actually date. As such, what the study actually shows, if the sample were valid, would be that meeting a potential mate online versus in the traditional way (whatever that would be) produces the same satisfaction if the the relationship ends up in marriage. That would make sense as the online service provides the introduction, but the couple must still build the relationship.

But then, maybe I'm missing something and people really are dating on line and never meeting until they walk down the aisle.

About 20 things, appearance not too important

[raymorris]

That's an interesting question.

I looked over my previous relationships, romantic and otherwise, and made a list of problems, and what caused them. Mainly, things about ME that caused them.
From that list, I worked on a list of what I was looking for. There were a few things I wanted IN a relationship, like honesty. Relationships are (I thought) hard work, so I needed to look at what I was getting FROM the relationship, and there were a few things specific to the kind of PERSON I wanted to be with. I wish I were a home right now, where I stil have my list around somewhere. I can remember a few, though:

Characteristics of the relationship I wanted:
      Honesty
      Trust
      Mutual respect (both politeness and some admiration)
      Peace, not drama (home should be a refuge)

If I'm going to work hard on a relationship, what do I want to gain from it?:
        Companionship (we should really be present, not mentally somewhere else)
        Fun! (Willing to get up and do things, try new things. What else does "fun" mean to me?)
        A reasonable sex life
        Encouragement

What kind of person
        From above - honest, trusting, respectful, no drama queens, reasonable sexual attitudes
        Good mother or no kids - I don't want to marry a "bad" mom

There were a couple more that I don't recall. Reading over the list from time to time, I proceeded to try to BE those things. If I want an honest, respectful woman, I better be an honest, respectful man, for example. I prayed for help on most of that. I had to read it a few times to remind myself.

After meeting my wife, I found something else that's near the top of the list for marriage. When I'm not sure of something, when I'm "of two minds" about something,
I think about it, discuss it, or read more information to make a decision. I don't yell and argue with myself, of course. That would be ridiculous. When a married couple is of two minds about something, can they not also think about it, discuss it, and get more information, just as one would do if you were split between two options? My wife and I do that, for the most part. I don't think we've ever really argued - just discussed and learned moe information until a decision became clear.

If your mouth is hurting you, you do not get angry at your mouth. Rather, you care for it, identifying the problem and tending to it to stop the hurt. In a marriage, if a mouth causes pain, doesn't it make sense that the couple should find the problem and take care of it, rather than getting angry at the hurt from the mouth? It doesn't matter if it's the mouth I was born with causing me pain or if it's the mouth my wife was born with causing me pain, as a life-long couple we deal with either in pretty much the same way. So I've added to my list this instruction:

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh" (Genesis 2 verse 24)

(Yes, I've learned that implies it's wise to be very careful who you cleave unto and become one flesh with!)

Sneaky

[pellik]

So now, after all these years, Sneakers finally starts to look implausible. Not because of some dramatic change in technology, but because computer dating services discredit the antagonist.

eh

[sociocapitalist]

Marriages Spawned From Online Dating As Unsatisfying As From Traditional Dating

FTFY

It comes down to honesty.

[intermodal]

If a person is honest online, you'll get to know each other more than just superficially spending time together, and if they're lying, they'll pretty much show their hand once you meet in person before too long. I met my wife online (introduced by a mutual friend from online) and we've been married 11 years next month.

Re:It comes down to honesty.

[slim]

Yeah, a friend of mine (since married with two kids, to a woman he met on a dating site), went to meet someone he'd been talking to on the site. It was immediately clear that she'd lied about her physical appearance, her job, and a number of other things.

Her actual physical appearance, and job, would not have been a problem for him. That she had lied, was game over.

Re:Marriage Satisfaction Correlation To Meeting Me

[NeoMorphy]

Some of us want a passionate and loving relationship, not a business relationship. I grew up witnessing so many married couples putting up with a spouse who they no longer had a loving relationship with, because they felt it was the "right thing to do". Because of that, I put up with my first marriage even though my spouse decided it was okay to be an abusive bitch. Other men complain about the same thing, so isn't normal? No, it is not! When she decided to have an affair that led to our divorce, it turned out to be a blessing, because I would have otherwise stuck it out in hell.

Now I'm married to someone who loves and respects me, and I love and respect her as well! Don't lower your expectations unless they are unreasonable. Instead, you should realize that you have a right to a healthy loving relationship.

Sure

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

They all end up in equally in divorce anyways.

Wonder if this one ever found a boyfriend yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP4NMoJcFd4

Re:Marriage Satisfaction Correlation To Meeting Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the quote says: "Happiness isn't getting what you want, it's wanting what you get."

My wife and I met online

[Jason Levine]

My wife and I met online. In a Yahoo Chat Room of all places. She had forgotten that she was even signed in. I signed in just looking to kill some time before I headed to sleep. She contacted me when she saw "Nice Jewish boy looking for nice Jewish girl" - something I put in my profile on a whim a few weeks earlier. We began to chat and quickly found we had a lot in common. I immediately knew there was something special about her.

A month later (after many late nights chatting online and on the phone), we met in person. (Public place halfway between us just in case either of us turned out to be secretly crazy.) We had a great time. So much so that, when it came time to leave, we had a hard time saying goodbye. (We kept saying goodbye for about 30 minutes.)

We started long-distance dating until I asked her to marry me about 10 months after we first met online. We were married a little over a year after that and are approaching our 12 year anniversary.

If my previous dating experience (or lack thereof) is any indication, online dating was perfectly suited to me. Of course, that might just be because I find online communication easier than face-to-face communication in general.

Fun fact: We still find ourselves communicating via "online methods" even when we're just one room away and especially if we don't want the kids to overhear us. ;-)

Re:Marriage Satisfaction Correlation To Meeting Me

[swb]

I think there's a pretty wide gulf between a marriage that grows familiar and perhaps unexciting ("a business relationship") and "putting up with...an abusive bitch." I think most marriages in modern society lose their luster to some extent just as anything working and familiar loses its luster after a while.

I got a 70" LCD TV last year and it was awesome for a while and now it's just TV. Occasionally I marvel at the picture quality or the size and I wouldn't trade it for a different TV, at least not without careful situation.

I think what people expect isn't really very normal -- that their marriage is going to be a constant source of excitement and stimulation and their spouse is going to be the only person in their life to supply this. That's as abnormal as me basing my entire life around my TV.

I think people do get into ruts where they find their spouse less fulfilling but I think you have to work at those issues with your spouse and yourself to make sure you're not expecting them to fix something wrong in your own life.

I met differently

[Anonymous Coward]

I met whilst working for a college. I received a work order to service a machine and was presented with the opportunity for outside work to "please repair the laptop of a friend". I did so without seeing the "friend". The friend called me two days later to thank me. I declined to collect the offered payment, but accepted a dinner invitation. A year later she was my wife.

I don't trust it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust people I meet online, and I don't trust random people I meet in real life either.
In real life I can at least tell that the person I'm talking to is not actually a guy, or a kid or whatever.
And then there's always the worry: is it some scammer trying to get my docs?
Is it a serial killer trying to get me to some place?
BTW, I think these same things when talking to people in the real world.
I always want to meet in a setting where I know at least one or two other people.
This makes meeting people quite hard as you can probably imagine.

Re:I don't trust it

[Anonymous Coward]

you sound like an aspergic paranoid schizophrenic.

probably better for you and the rest of the human race if you stay in your basement

Hmmm

[fyngyrz]

marriages spawned from online dating as satisfying as from traditional dating

Well, I suppose the lawyers will be happy to hear that.

Perfect mates

[fyngyrz]

No, you're missing two things. One is the concept that the perfect mate -- not the perfect person, which is nonsense -- has flaws, as we all do. The other is that perfection as a mate isn't necessarily a permanent characteristic, because people also change.

I met a great gal online...

[DiEx-15]

...On The Sims Online. So it is safe to say that MMOs have the same effect as dating sites, but you get more for $15 a month (or free if you go the F2P route...) and there isn't any laws saying that PvP is considered "domestic abuse".