Stanford University’s “How Couples Meet and Stay Together Survey” queried a nationally representative test of grownups to ascertain just exactly how so when they came across their present intimate partner (Rosenfeld & Reuben, 2011). Within my analysis with this information, I examined age of which study participants came across their present partner and contrasted this into the age of which they became romantically included, to get a rough feeling of the length of time it took partners to get from very very first conference to a relationship that is romantic.

I discovered that people whom came across their partners via on the web internet dating sites became romantically involved somewhat sooner (on average two-and-a-half months) compared to those who came across in other methods (on average one-and-a-half years). This shows that online dating sites don’t facilitate gradually finding love the means that we quite often do offline.

It might become a crutch. As stated early in the day, those people who are introverted or shy might find online dating sites more palatable than many other methods of trying to find love. But because it’s safer, we could miss out on other opportunities to meet people if we choose to focus only on online dating.

For lots more on misconceptions about online dating sites, read my post on 4 urban myths about online dating sites.

Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D. Can be a connect professor of therapy at Albright university, who studies relationships and cyberpsychology. Follow her on Twitter.

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