A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Posts Tagged ‘dating’
Continuing on the discussion about online matchmaking sites, let’s consider the famous 436-question personality test that a person is required to take upon joining eHarmony.com. The company believes so strongly in the test that it won’t let its users just simply browse through all the photos of people in a certain age range and living in a particular area. Instead, the site only allows you to see photos and profiles of potential partners whom it thinks are a good match for you, according to the personality test. In other words, their computer software really is trying to be a matchmaker.
But does this work? The folks at eHarmony.com would like us to believe that the relationships that result from matches made by their software will be happier and longer-lived than relationships that originate…well, randomly, without using matchmaking software. But according to The New York Times, there is no proof of this claim because it has not been scientifically tested. So we really don’t know if eHarmony’s matchmaking software is worthwhile or not. What do you think?
Are you aware of how big the online dating phenomenon has become? Here is one example: eHarmony.com claims that it is responsible for 90 marriages each day! And not only that, the company claims that 100,000 children have been born to couples who met on its website. I’m not sure I believe those numbers - they seem awfully high - but I have no doubt that online dating is huge. Match.com has 1.3 million members paying $35 per month to subscribe.
Both eHarmony.com and Match.com attempt to match people based on the results of personality tests. The eHarmony.com test has 436 questions! Match.com’s test has only 56 questions. (I think that right there is enough information for a lot of people to choose Match.com!)
From a business point of view, online dating is great because it’s recession-proof. Attachment Theory tells us that people don’t like to be alone. It follows that unattached people will tend to put a high priority on finding someone to be in a relationship with, and so a lot of them will consider the monthly subscription fee is worthwhile regardless of what else is going on in their lives.
And when you are attached, but things aren’t well, it affects all aspects of your life. That’s when marital therapy or couples counseling is called for.
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