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 Guest
Editorial:
Marriages From Online Dating Sites... Enough Already!
by James
Houran, Ph.D.
(June
2007) Recently I did interviews about online dating
sites with ABCnews.com and Time
magazine. Normally
I’m a passionate advocate about the opportunities
for singles that online dating provides, but this
time I went on rants. Many services are walking along
a treacherous slope – and they’re taking
their customers with them.
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The
trend for compatibility testing and long-term relationships
started in the mid-1950s by the “Father of
American Marriage Counseling” Paul Popenoe
and later refined and popularized in the mainstream
by Dr. Glenn Wilson and Jon Cousins has only increased. eHarmony no
longer has the exclusive on compatibility testing
in the public’s eye, and a
multitude of services (both paid and free) now offer
testing in an effort to appeal to the long-term relationship
crowd. As I’ve revealed before in
several papers and presentations, these tests are
often invalid and a waste of time and money. My work
debunking certain compatibility tests was also the
impetus for an investigative feature story entitled “Love
Machines” by
Jennifer Hahn in Los Angeles City Beat (February,
2005), and another feature story delving into the
reality of compatibility tests appeared in the February
2007 issue of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (“Love.com” by
Josephine Marcotty). But just as the media is becoming
increasingly skeptical about this all, some sites
now have their own blogs to promote their “academic
advisory panels and serious research studies into
compatibility.” My
own research team started this trend when we were
working full-time at a particular online dating site,
but the recent carbon copies lack credibility and
authority. What we have are groups of authors, nice
sounding university affiliations and academicians
generally interested in relationships. Yet, nowhere
do we see these teams with published, compatibility
experts, and more importantly, tests and measurements
experts who ground their work in the statistical
gold standard of modern test theory! And yet, ignorant
industry insiders with their own blogs and consulting
services portray these developments as advancements
that are good for online daters. Sometimes I don’t
know whether to laugh or cry.
Unfortunately,
online dating sites don’t stop their claims with “we
are the most scientific in the industry” messaging and advertising. Unfortunately,
touting marriage results is now a major part of many sites’ business
strategies. To be blatant, emphasizing marriage and marriage sustenance is
done largely by services to continue to expand their business. As a researcher
and a clinician, I see this as an extremely sad and misleading trend. To me,
it sends entirely the wrong message on many levels to online daters.
Successful
marriages are wonderful institutions that should be
celebrated. Clearly, there’s
nothing wrong with the concept of marriage, but it’s misleading to portray
marriage as the best or only indicator of relationship quality or “success.” Relationship
quality has two primary components: relationship satisfaction (is the couple
happy) and relationship stability (has the couple been together over time).
Now we all know couples who’ve been married a long time but are not necessarily
happy or satisfied, and we all know newlyweds who are in bliss but haven’t
yet had their relationship tested over time. Furthermore, it’s a sad
fact that marriage is a statistical failure in many societies. The absolute
latest annual divorce rate is 0.37 % for the “year” ending Nov.
30, 2004, given in the latest Monthly
Vital Statistics Report. Since every
divorce involves two people, the percentage becomes somewhat more meaningful
if you double it – in this case 0.74% of the entire population gets divorced
every year! The news gets even worse when you consider
that this rate is only
for the states that keep track of the number of divorces (California, Colorado,
Indiana and Louisiana don’t).
Online
courtships can lead to genuine and lasting relationships.
Online courtships can also be rooted in honesty and
appropriate levels of self-disclosure. But, I don’t see many (if any)
online dating sites coaching or educating customers on how to develop, nurture
and sustain relationships in a mature and safe way via the Internet. Eventually,
couples must meet offline and take the relationship to a new, more intimate
level if it is to survive and thrive. By contrast, online relationships that
stay online are pretty much doomed. Communicating solely through email, instant
messaging, webcams and other cyber tools misleads both people because that
communication fails to take into account tone of voice, facial expressions,
energy levels and even physical chemistry.
But
some experts argue that online daters as a group
tend to be more interested in marriage and therefore
more inclined to jump the gun. So, what do you think
happens when online daters seeking long-term relationships
see bright and bold messaging that says things like “Twice
as Many Marriages as Any Other Site in the World” or “90
People Married Every Day on our Site”? Promoting – and
even implicitly promising – marriage like this
can recklessly encourage online daters to seek it out
blindly. To be fair, I don’t know of any statistical
evidence that the break-up rate among online daters
is any different from the national average, but many
people from psychologists to lawyers have seen quite
a bit of anecdotal evidence.
In
a sobering Wall Street Journal Online article (April,
2006) called “Mismatched,” Ellen Gamerman highlighted the pitfalls
of ad campaigns that focus around marriage rates as a sign of a company’s “success.” In
my view, publishing success stories that showcase happy couples at all stages
of relationships is a better and more socially-responsible approach. Instead,
too many sites foster fantasies of easily-found marriage through their online
dating services. The transgression here is promoting incredibly unrealistic
expectations in people who trust these very same services to help them find
a satisfying and stable partner. With at least a national divorce rate of 74%,
skeptical people like me see these campaigns as actually contributing the divorce
epidemic.
Online
dating sites are businesses, so they likely won’t change
their money-making strategies on moral grounds alone. However, I encourage
all online daters to IGNORE all claims and advertisements about success rates
and marriage rates. They’re misleading at best, and they’re detrimental
at worst. Only approach online dating with realistic expectations! Online dating
works at different paces for everyone, and people use online dating with different
agendas. Finding a lasting and satisfying partner with online dating is possible – and
has happened for many people – but no relationship is simply given to
you. Finding potential dates takes work, getting to know people takes time
and effort and developing and nurturing a serious relationship takes more work
than what came before. Managing expectations is the key to relationship success.
It’s entirely your responsibility to set and
maintain realistic expectations, because online dating
sites are seriously failing in this area.
> Try Perfectmatch.com - The Best Approach to Finding the Right Person for You.
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