Making your own choices is always better than choosing the social acceptable choice or the choices that you are forced to.

I had an idea once that if a couple that wanted to marry would commit to building a nest egg of ten or twenty thousand dollars before being permitted to wed, it would be a test of their compatibility. Or how about building a house together. That can test even the best couples. My point is that in the dating situation, we don't always see how another person reacts to a variety of very trying situations. (Maybe the government will fund a study .

Interesting, but perhaps the study parameters need to be a little broader. I agree that it's ideal for people who don't fit into a cookie-cutter mold since it broadens their pool of potential candidates. But they used subjects from Tinder? They give the stats for how long people stay together who married via on-line dating, but what percentage of people using Tinder actually married?

Even sounding all negative, I think the internet is providing vast opportunties for meeting people. I think, tho, that the traditional dating sites may not be the best vehicles for that, and that there is still a lot of misuse going on.

I would have thought that a technologically savvy person would be able to go back on to a similar site when they get bored or curious. With the expanse of options I'd imagine the effect being detrimental. Now cheating is a click away.

"you want another life, I'll give you another life...the afterlife" A quote from a local man who pleaded guilty to killing his wife with a hammer after she told him about meeting her soulmate online.

I see this as just a law of averages. Meeting someone is random and one can be drawn to another for a variety of reasons, looks, personality or whatever. I was in that boat 4 times and the first two did not work out. Getting to know someone first is especially important particularly when one matures and knows more of what wants. I think online dating can help with the getting to know someone first aspect. It is a more methodological approach to an important aspect of one’s life. Again, luck and circumstances play a big role. I wonder, how does the successfulness of arranged marriages stack up?

As long as they stay on internet and do not meet maybe>

I think it is great getting to know someone asynchronously over time as well as in person. It affords a chance to meet special people you would have never met otherwise. And the better you get to know someone, the better the foundation of the relationship.

I am thinking that is because it is a process frought with obstacles and disappointments. If you do manage to weather the storm and find someone, its bound to be pretty solid and long lasting. You do not want to go through that again

I feel like yes most people use online dating as a way to cheat. As someone who is chronically single I have not had very much luck on online dating, it seems to me that online dating is mostly for people to hook up or to have a temporary fix for an emotional void in their life and I can definitely see where that appeals to married people and especially those who are going through a rough patch. But anyone who has actually online dated can tell you that it is very difficult to navigate and we would much rather be married I think most of us. So it really just depends on what your experiences were like. If you didn't date a lot before you got married or you didn't really look around or you didn't really go through struggle to find someone, I can see where the grass look Greener because of online dating but for most of us who have actually struggled to meet someone and had to turn to online dating, only to have that not help, I think the idea that online dating is ruining happy marriages is a little ridiculous. Bad people with anonymity that the internet allows is ruining marriages. Before they used to have to go to a bar out of town to pick up someone to cheat with and now they can just log onto their computer but I don't believe that online dating is increasing divorce rates, I believe that due to our integration into technology people are getting caught more. It is a little bit more difficult now when your whole life is on your phone to remain anonymous everywhere you go and everything that you do. Your spouse is bound to find out. I married very very young and it was the last relationship I will ever have with a man. We have been divorced for 8 years and online dating did cause him to leave me I guess but we were very unhappy because I was gay and he wouldn't let me out of the marriage. I will say this, that when he left for some girl he wouldn't had never actually met in person, after that I ran into a girl on a dating site who happened to be bisexual and interested in me and she told me that he had driven a long way to have sex with her in another town when he told me that he was studying and he couldn't do it in the house, for college or whatever. So the realization that I was at home alone with the children always and it turns out that he had cheated on me multiple times under false pretenses of having to go to work or having to stay the night at a friend's house to get College done... That made me really frustrated with the availability of online dating but I think what the problem is is that online When someone tells you that they are married, there is that an anemone there and you don't really have to deal with the consequences so a lot of people do not care as much or they are more easily manipulated into believing that the person who is cheating is not doing anything wrong. You can tell somebody on the internet that your wife is horrible and they will believe you, for instance, but in real life I feel like more investigative work is done or you might even bump into that person or know them in your Social Circles.

Interesting study. Its how people meet these days. Met my two ex-husbands in bars -one performing and the other drinking pitchers of Stout in a drinking contest. Bars don't work for mature singles anymore.

If you're going to do the dirty then you just are.

Makes sense. Proximity of thoughts and ideas rather than location.

interesting take on this !

My guess is that online dating is forcing people to give some thought as to what they want in a mate instead of just responding to superficial responses. Perhaps we should have predating counseling similar to premarital counseling if it doesn't already exist. I wish that had existed back in 1962. would have prevented a big life changing error.