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Post by Ganbare! on Apr 27, 2010 18:25:36 GMT -5
I don't believe in virtual relationships, there I said it, I know alot of people won't agree with me given how much they bond over the Internet but the lack of physical presence really bothers me which is why I generally avoid long distance friendship as well.
Now about online dating, the pragmatic approach of classifying people by race, age, profession and so on associated with online dating does not fit my approach to love which is definitely more contingent and organic, you get the point I'm pretty skeptical.
What is your opinion of online dating? If you have already tried, do you favor it over old-fashioned or real life dating? Are you interested in online Eurasian matchmaking?
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Post by penguinopolipitese on Apr 28, 2010 2:14:51 GMT -5
my own parents are totally different ages, races, and professions and somehow they make it work. I think it'd be boring if your spouse did the same thing you do. I think it's more a question of similar character and values.
personally I don't like on line communications because you can't really read a person's face or actions. You can tell a lot from a pause or a wince or someone's tone of voice or how they treat others.
For me the weird thing is I find it much easier to say whatever I feel like when online. But IRL I'm much more reserved and shy.
As for online EA matchmaking. Sure what the f***. I'd try it. What's the harm.
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Post by betahat on Apr 28, 2010 13:50:19 GMT -5
I had a lavalife profile up for about 1 day many years ago and then took it down out of shame. It's too bad about the stigma though, as I'm sure on-line dating has led to a lot of people meeting and finding love who wouldn't have done so otherwise, either because of shyness or because they were too quirky or selective to find a match in real life. I know a guy who is in one of the e-harmony commercials - he went to school here and met his current wife there (and then became a spokesperson I guess). He was looking for a good-looking good Christian girl and found one through the site. Another friend of mine who is still painfully single has tried it out a few times with more limited success - met a few for real life dates by no real spark. Then there's a girl I know who is just looking for random hookups, and who dated a few guys for a short period but nothing serious.
I have no philosophical or moral objection to people doing on-line dating. Meeting the right person is a bit of luck and accident, but that's not really the fun part and has nothing to recommend it if you've been single for a long time and are looking for something serious. Maybe cruising bars and coffeeshops or joining lots of clubs and activities is the way to meet new people, but not everyone is a joiner like that. I know for me personally it was a stroke of luck that my wife and I happened to get into the same program and meet on the first day. If she had already been in a relationship, it's not like there is such a big pool of otherwise suitable candidates and it's not like I'm the kind of guy who felt great about talking to random girls at parties or bars though I became a bit more like that over time.
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Post by Ganbare! on Apr 28, 2010 17:32:10 GMT -5
^The bad stigma has mostly gone, I too used to think online dating was for unconfident people only until I discovered my own brother dated girls through internet, the guy is good-looking, financially successful and has zero problem hooking up with girls in real life, he simply added it to his arsenal. You met your wife at University? Now, that's quite original if that's so, changes from strip mall or via friends stories. When I was ten years old, I had a crush on a certain girl in elementary school. We reconnected at a student party two years ago, I was unknowlingly hitting on her since I hadn't seen her for 10 years, she then told me her name and at first I was taken aback unsure if I should mention we were kind of acquainted. I did, it ended up as a pleasant surprise for her as well because she had not forgotten our flirtatious games either. We've been happily paired ever since that day, that's why I believe in luck in relationships .
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Post by admin on Apr 28, 2010 19:05:34 GMT -5
Long ago I got a free (long story) lifetime (same long story) match.com account. I used it off and on for a while. Now I loan it out to friends who want to try it out. I'll never use it again, but it was...interesting...you meet people who are more or less normal if you do a proper vetting, but of course, in-person chemistry trumps any kind of 'resume'.
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Post by betahat on Apr 29, 2010 1:01:23 GMT -5
^You met your wife at University? Now, that's quite original if that's so,
Far from it. That has to be one of the most common places to meet a spouse. In economics it's also really unoriginal, almost every female economist is married to a male economist. Both my and my spouses parents met at university too in England and Israel respectively. I think meeting your future spouse at a strip mall or bar is far less likely, though if someone conjured up the statistics it would be interesting to have an idea about the percentages for our generation - I would guess on-line dating is a small but growing share, probably not more than a few percent of marriages...
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Post by Ganbare! on Apr 29, 2010 8:31:37 GMT -5
^I'm probably wrong about academics being a tiny demographic I am not too familiar with. Nevertheless at a global scale, malls, bars and other public environments are the most usual places couples meet, essentially the working and lower middle classes, it's not really a surprise as they make up more than half the population in most countries. While upper classes generally meet through friends and other private social gatherings, the topic was raised in a lecture from a series of sociology electives I took..
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Post by betahat on Apr 29, 2010 12:51:34 GMT -5
You're probably right. I found this study but it's based on an on-line survey. I think that means that its pretty representative for our generation, as even working class people use the internet, but the numbers are probably distorted a bit towards the upper end. cp.match.com/cppp/media/CMB_Study.pdfIt's still pretty striking though - 17% of couples married in the last 3 years met through an internet dating site? Even among people who regularly use the internet that percentage seems awful high. Not sure I can believe a study commissioned by an internet dating site even if it was carried out by a market research firm. Work/school and through friend/family member makes sense as the main place to meet marriagiable material. In fact, I'm shocked that that meeting strangers in public places is really such a dominant form of match-making globally for any social group. I'm not sure I can believe that without statistics, even if you learned it in a class. It just goes so far against my own anecdotal experiences and my general perception of how people meet to form lasting relationships. But maybe it's a class thing.
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Post by Ganbare! on Apr 29, 2010 14:06:32 GMT -5
^Awfully high, the sample is probably bogus.
I don't really have the time to dig statistics for you but the literature dealing with the topic is plentiful. Your experience is definitely limited by your background, I regularly navigated between the two opposite ends of the social spectrum and I heard this type of anecdotes quite often: two good friends of mine working-class parents met at a................ bakery, while most of my upper-class acquaintances met at confidential receptions or workplaces.
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Post by betahat on Apr 29, 2010 18:21:43 GMT -5
Here are some stats: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Relationships/Where_Couples_MetI assume this is for the US, so about 32-47% of couples meet through 'self-introduction' though I guess not everything you are talking about falls into that category (since self-introduction in a public space is a subset of self-introduction). I mean I'm technically a "self-introduction" too since we didn't have any common friends or family setting us up, but it wasn't public in the way a bakery or a bar is. 35-40% met through friends 15% through family In terms of location, I got 15-20% school and work, 8-10% parties and bars (the parties are obviously not public), 11% Churches, and about 33% in places where no other couple met (maybe a Bakery?), 1% personal ad or vacation (which does not ad up to 100%). I really thought school and work would be higher, but I guess a lot of jobs are pretty gender imbalanced which doesn't help, only 2/3rds of the population goes to post-secondary education, and very few high school relationships culminate in marriage even though that's where most people experience their first relationship. Now that I think about it I have been to one wedding where the program said "brought to you by J-date" and the couple even referenced it in their vows. Those types of sites are probably especially helpful if you're a minority looking for a similar minority match - the chances of randomly running into someone compatible on many dimensions AND jewish outside of New York or LA is probably fairly small (and really small if you're in Portland or somewhere) so its a big boost. Likewise if you're into the whole "wanting to date another eurasian" thing - you just don't meet too many in your normal life, wherever you live. Anyway, where did your parents/grandparents meet? Parents met at uni, one set of grand-parents was pseudo-arranged as their parents were co-workers, the other met randomly on the Queen Mary between New York and England.
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Post by Ganbare! on Apr 29, 2010 20:28:25 GMT -5
^It's difficult to conclude anything from these figures as they don't exactly assess the same thing. About your question, my parents met at a mutual friends get together. As for my grandparents, I have no idea, I don't know much about them.
You're right about people looking for particular religious minorities, it perfectly makes sense for a lot of people. Dating-wise what I look for are not objective criteria instead sharing a similar outlook on life and a personality I click with are far more fundamental, hobbies are secondary but it's always nice to go beyond mundane conversations and be able to talk about international politics with her.
Therefore if I were single, I would still not resort to online dating sites given that I'm not looking for Eurasians nor another particularly rare profile either. I was fortunate enough to date a few of them thus why I don't idealize them anymore.
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Post by FreckleFoot on May 6, 2010 15:55:38 GMT -5
I met my husband online, but not intentionally through an internet dating site. It was entirely by chance on a forum. He sent me a message trying to cheer me up one time I posted I was feeling a bit down. It led to instant messaging and we began falling for each other. We had so much in common with each other, even down to life experiences and future goals. After several months he said he was coming to the UK for his work (I lived there at the time). He wanted to meet me. He asked where I lived and it happened to be the same city he was going to for the work conference. This is remarkable because the conference only happens once every five years and is rarely held outside of the US. I believe that time was in fact the last time it was held outside of the US (it's now solely in the US).
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Post by ahliang on May 9, 2010 19:22:51 GMT -5
^I'm probably wrong about academics being a tiny demographic I am not too familiar with. [...] in a lecture from a series of sociology electives I took.. wait, you went/go to uni but you still think of people meeting their spouse at uni as an unusual case? it seems as though all my friends met their significant other at uni and i ve seen at least 7 relationships go from encounter on campus to engagement and in 2 cases marriage... It's still pretty striking though - 17% of couples married in the last 3 years met through internet. actually, it doesn t surprise me too much...i have 3 friends whom are in a relationship with their significant other going to the same uni...turns out, they met on the net and decided to go to uni together...one of them is from another state and moved here to be with her current husband...they ve been married 2 or 3 years already...and of all the people i know that are in relationships, either they met on campus/at uni, or in a bar..., or on the net. it seems like the net is the new "meeting through a friend" alternative...although i know people who ve met this way...they did meet on a campus-gathering/party occasion and not specifically through a friend as no one really knows anyone there...unless you d claim to "know" an acquaintance as a friend...
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Post by ahliang on Oct 18, 2010 5:41:05 GMT -5
i must be getting old...i had to go through my facebook friends to know who i was talking about back then...and this post is barely 6 months old...
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Post by penguinopolipitese on Oct 25, 2010 3:32:01 GMT -5
i must be getting old...i had to go through my facebook friends to know who i was talking about back then...and this post is barely 6 months old...
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