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Comment by Zhenya | Hacker News Reader

I am more interested to know whether successfully married couples are more likely to meet online than all couples. Maybe this simply demonstrates an uptick in number of relationships and less time someone is single until they find their long-term mate/partner.

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I don't have data to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone who gets married today is more likely to meet their husband / wife online. There are a few reasons for this.

- Lower risk of looking bad. Date didn't go bad? No worries.. none of your friends have to find out it was your fault.

- Less pressure from family and friends to pair up with someone. They'll only find out when you're ready.

- Fewer couples meet at work - there are many reasons for this, and some may even argue that this is for the better. But, this does mean that more people will meet online.

- Fewer couples meet at church. There just aren't as many church goers in Western countries as before. Again, there are a few reasons for this.. but the result is that more people end up online.

- People move more than ever. And it becomes more difficult to meet someone as we get older (no school to be a common connection), and one day you just want to meet your next relationship. So you get right down to business: get an online dating account.

- More choices to find that perfect someone online.

Completely anecdotal but all the young couples I know getting married have all met in real life, no exceptions. It makes me suspect HN’s claim that everybody meets online today. My anecdotal experience says it’s exactly the opposite.

That is pretty interesting! Maybe it is a generational backlash to social media accounts =).

I have two pretty young friends (early 20s) - one met his significant girlfriend through other friends on a night out. The other met his girlfriend online. They're both pretty happy.

I have at least 4 married couples amongst my friends that met online (2 of them through World of Warcraft, though). I'm about to get married to a woman I met through online dating.

I was actually trying really hard to date people in person too, I was going to tons of meetups, and getting some dates out of that, it just so happened that the woman I'm marrying ended up being someone that messaged me on an online dating app four years ago.

I do know married couples that met through Meetup and other in-person methods as well, so online is definitely not everyone's only option anymore, but online is a definitely viable option.

Adding games to online dating sounds great, but would be technically difficult. Maybe a Yahoo! Games of dating.

> Completely anecdotal but all the young couples I know getting married have all met in real life, no exceptions. It makes me suspect HN’s claim that everybody meets online today.

Yeah. I "dated" online but it was a total waste of time. The only sparks I've ever gotten were from people I met naturally.

It's important to notice that online dating is how most couples meet, but what constitutes a "couple" here? I don't believe it means a long term relationship that lasts more than months.

For my fiancee and I, we know lots of couples through our friends and including through each other's work. The number that have met online is miniscule. "meeting people" is easy online, but relationships are hardfought when that's the start.

I did online dating in my 20s, matchmaking in my 30s and finally met my fiancee in my neighborhood bar (we don't drink, it just happened we were both there not drinking).

Equivalently, you can look at divorce statistics of couples that meet online vs offline. A study from 2013 suggests that the divorce rate is lower and marriage satisfaction is higher for couples meeting online, but only slightly. This seems to suggest that online dating is only marginally better than offline dating.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-online-dating-could-d...

Given that a marriage probably can't be considered "successful" until it has lasted several decades, we may be waiting a while for that data!

I've been with my partner over 9 years and we aren't married. I'd consider ours a "successful" relationship.

When I was a kid, I just thought that all couples who lived together were "married". It didn't matter whether there was a ceremony, or a legal contract. They lived together, made out with each other (ew), and since they were family friends, they were also automatically uncle and auntie.

Then priests and politicians decided to mess it all up.

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