Couples

Aaron Schildkrout and his friend Brian Schechter founded HowAboutWe four years ago as an alternative to traditional online dating. In a recent article in The New York Observer, he said that the fundamental problem with online dating sites was that they needed to keep subscribers. The sites work best when people are looking for dates, not when they are in relationships and dropping out. Dating sites depend on a huge database of subscribers.

HowAboutWe’s focus is a bit different for an online dating site. For one, they have branched out from their online dating platform to creating a valuable resource for all people interested in dating and relationships.

The primary goal of their dating site is to help people meet offline (and get them there as quickly as possible), so they can move towards forming relationships. Instead of searching through profiles, members can create an idea for a first date, put it out to the network, and see who’s interested. Schildkrout says it’s a way for people to meet more organically.

Because of the site’s focus on date activities, it was a natural progression to create a site for couples who are looking to be inspired. Many couples are bored with the same old dates they do all the time, but don’t have the time to research or a lot of money to do something more unique. This is where HowAboutWe comes in – they curate dates particular to each city they service, and set the whole thing up for a discounted price.

It’s an appealing idea for couples. As Schildkrout says, “We make the booking process and the reservation process extremely easy — you never have to show a voucher, your name’s already on the list. We do all the work for you. We take care of all the details.”

The company is also getting into media content, acquiring sites like The Date Report and Nerve.com and creating two additional new blogs related to dating and relationships. “We built out a world-class editorial team,” says Shildkrout, “and for the last three months, we’ve been working really hard to create a media wing focused on becoming the authoritative voice on all things love, and have grown traffic dramatically in that process.”

Popular apps like Tinder and the bigger or more traditional dating sites like OkCupid don’t seem to bother Shildkrout. He sees Tinder as more of a lightweight hook-up experience and OkCupid as an algorithm-matching experience which might not match you with someone outside your type. He is focused on his product, on connecting people in a real-world way. And he’s looking to build content that gets a conversation started. 

A lot of people love online dating because of its convenience. It's hard to beat being able to scan through potential matches from the comfort of your own home, entirely at your leisure. Traditional dating can be found, but it can also be a huge time suck. Sometimes all you want is an efficient way to weed out the frogs from the princes (and princesses).

Online daters already know that dating websites are a great way to save time, but it turns out they're also a great way to save money. Couples who meet online tend to marry after a shorter period of time than couples who meet in real life, meaning that a courtship that begins via the Internet ends up being thousands of dollars cheaper than meeting and wooing someone offline.

According to market strategists at New York City-based ConvergEx Group, the average dating period prior to marriage for a couple who met in real life is approximately 42 months. Let's do some math: if that couple goes on one date per week, and that date costs around $130 (for food, drinks, entertainment tickets, etc.), then the total cost of that couple's courtship would be around $23,660.

The average time between meeting and marriage for couples who meet online, on the other hand, runs around 18.5 months. The average dating site customer spends $239 a year for online memberships, according to ConvergEx Group, and if we assume that the amount spent on dates is the same, an online dater saves $12,803 in comparison to an offline dater.

And what if the dates go Dutch? In that case, each online dater saves just over $6400. Not too shabby at all!

But, just because it's more acceptable, easier, and less expensive for people to meet online doesn't mean more US citizens are using dating sites to meet marriage partners. According to the Pew Research Center, only 51% of Americans were married in 2011 – a significant drop from the 72% who were married in 1960 – and the numbers are continuing to decline.

ConvergEx suggests that the trend could be in reaction to the high divorce rates seen throughout the 1970s and 80s. “Seeing their parents and/or friends’ parents go through a divorce has made today’s young people more cautious when it comes to finding a mate,” they say.

Many more of today's young people are putting their careers had of relationships, making them less reliant on a spouse for support and possibly also contributing to the decline in marriage. Marriage rates are reportedly also dropping faster among people with less education. "Declining marriage rates among those with lower levels of educational attainment is a warning sign that is worth watching," says ConvergEx, "especially if the trend continues."

File this one under “Cool Or Creepy?”

It’s no surprise that Facebook gathers a lot of data about its users, but what is surprising is the conclusions the site can draw by interpreting that information. Of course Facebook knows when you’re “Single,” when you’re “In A Relationship,” or when “It’s Complicated,” but it turns out the social networking site actually knows a whole lot more than that about your love life.

Facebook data scientist Mike Develin works on the site’s search function, studying how people use it, what they’re searching for that isn't available, and how to make it more useful. Along the way, Develin and his team noticed some intriguing romance-related patterns.

It starts with a period of courtship. On Facebook, ‘courtship’ means messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, and posts are shared on each other's timelines. During the 100 days before the relationship starts, there is a slow but steady increase in the number of timeline posts shared between the future couple. The peak is reached 12 days before the relationship begin, at 1.67 posts per day

At “Day 0,” when the relationship officially begins, a couple’s Facebook interactions start to decline. Presumably because they are now spending more time together in person, the happy couple feels less need to communicate online. The lowest point is 1.53 posts per day, reached 85 days into the relationship. Along with that decrease in Facebook interactions comes good news about the content: the interactions may be fewer, but they also get sweeter and more positive. Warm fuzzy feelings are dramatically on the upswing after Day 0.

On the not-so-warm-and-fuzzy side is the breakup data. The research team also took a look at couples who split up and got back together, and documented the saga on their profiles. The maximum, Develin reports to USA Today, was a couple who went in and out of a relationship 27 times in one year. Yikes. It’s a good thing Facebook also found an increase in private messages, timeline posts, and comments from supportive friends during tough times.

What all this means is that horoscopes won’t accurately predict lasting love any time soon, but Facebook might. "We have such a wide-ranging set of data, including on places there may not be data on otherwise," Develin told USA Today. And because Facebook knows so much about its users’ authentic identity, there is very little territory its researchers couldn’t explore. The patterns they identify could be instrumental in mapping human interactions and proving or disproving theories about relationships. 

For more on how to use this social network to find dates you should read our Facebook review.

Confession: I’m one of those irritating people who, every February, talks about how Valentine’s Day is a crock of you-know-what because it shouldn’t take a special, sickeningly sweet, Hallmark-y holiday to remind you to love your partner. Every year it gets hipper to hate on Valentine’s Day, to the point that the scales almost seem poised to tip back in the other direction. In 2015, will the cooler-than-thou kids have to start celebrating V-Day instead of condemning it? What a strange world that would be…

Though the anti-Valentine’s Day forces are loud, it seems that most of us are secretly celebrating anyway. eHarmony asked 3000 people if they had plans for Valentine's Day 2014 and about 64% of them said that they would be spending the holiday with someone special. Here’s what they had planned (or not):

• 17% of people said they had not planned anything at the time of the survey (which was done only three days before Valentine's Day!).
• 6% said they had put a lot of planning into the event.
• Most people, unsurprisingly, fell somewhere in the middle – they’d put at least a little bit of thought into the holiday, but weren’t going all-out.
• Men were the romantics of the bunch. While women were more likely to say they had done very little to no planning at all, men were more likely to say they had done a fair amount of planning or a lot of planning for their valentine.

Good news for married folks: marriage may get a bad rap for dulling the spark, but the damage – at least where Valentine’s Day is concerned – is seriously overstated. Couples who were dating exclusively were most likely to have plans, at 89%, but at 82% married couples weren't far behind. Couples who were engaged were the least likely to have made any plans, perhaps because they’re too busy planning their weddings.

When the big day finally arrives, here’s what we’re up to:

• 37% of people head to dinner with their honeys.
• 26% prefer a romantic dinner in.
• 18% skip the dinner half entirely and go straight to a movie date.
• 71% of people plan to give their valentine a gift (79% of men, 65% of women).
• Women ranked their gift preferences like this: flowers (17%), jewelry (16%), intimacy (17%), a card (12%), and a spa day (11%).
• Men voted strongly in favor of intimacy as the ideal Valentine's Day gift (40%), but next in line was a card (11%).

And for all the naysayers, eHarmony also found that the biggest reasons people say they celebrate Valentine's Day are romance, connection, and genuine enjoyment of the holiday.

eHarmony's very first marriage was John and Vicki Vystrcil, from Frisco, TX. The pioneering couple was married in 2001 and they've been going strong ever since. With more than a decade of experience and a track record like that, it's safe to say that eHarmony knows a thing or two about holy matrimony.

If tying the knot is on your resolutions list this year, sandwiched between spending less time staring at your phone and more time on the StairMaster at the gym, eHarmony has released a few key insights gathered during its decade+ history. eHarmony asked its married couples to detail their experience with the service in a recent study and compiled their responses into a report. The report, called eHarmony Married Couples by the Numbers Facts, asked important questions about the online dating experience:

How long does it take to meet your spouse on eHarmony?

• 71% of women meet their spouse within a year
• 69% of men meet their spouse within a year

How long does it take from when you are matched when you marry?

• The median time from when people are matched to when they marry is 1.8 years

How far apart do you live?

• The median distance at the time couples were matched was 20.2 miles

Who initiates communication first?

• 53% of the time, men initiated the first communication
• However, women become more likely to initiate communication as they get older
• Women in their 70s initiated the first communication 55.8% of the time

What's the age difference?

• On average, husbands are 2.39 years older than their wives

What's the education level?

• More than 70% of women and men are college educated or higher

This year, eHarmony has something special in mind to celebrate its successful matches. The dating service plans to bring seven of the more than 600,000 married couples who found love on the site to be part of its float entitled Everlasting Love in the 2014 Tournament of Roses Parade. The couples chosen to showcase their love and inspire others who are still searching for it will ride alongside the Grammy award-winning star Natalie Cole, as she sings her hit (and eHarmony commercial theme song) "This Will Be" down the parade route.

The Vystrcils will be joined on the float by other notable eHarmony couples, including a couple who married when they were 75 years old, a couple who appeared on an eHarmony commercial in 2012, and a couple who formed a real-life Brady Bunch.

Does having a healthy body image contribute to a better relationship?

According to a new study by Tallinn University, women who were satisfied with their body image were found to maintain happier relationships, too.

The study was based on survey data drawn from 256 women between the ages of 20 and 45. Nearly 72% of respondents were cohabitating with their partners and 28% were married.

After studying the responses, lead researcher Sabina Vatter noticed that women who were satisfied with their relationships were more likely to be satisfied with their body weight regardless of whether or not they had an ideal body type or weight. She also discovered that these findings corresponded to higher levels of self-esteem and low self-consciousness.

"This shows that body and body weight can create general satisfaction, which would be forwarded to feelings for a romantic partner," Vatter said.

Additionally, those participants who were dieting or who just came off a diet were more likely to be self-conscious about their bodies. They were less satisfied with their body weight, weighed themselves more often and had higher BMIs than those who had not been on a diet. They also reported lower satisfaction with their relationships.

Women who were most critical of their body image were found to have less satisfaction in their relationship, including their sexual relationship with a partner.

According to Vatter, "These findings suggest that our satisfaction with body size, shape and weight has more to do with how happy we are in important areas of our lives, like our romantic relationships, than it does with what the bathroom scales say."

The study didn't mention any other factors related to body image as part of the survey, but focused specifically on the connection between body image and relationship satisfaction. Many women compare themselves to an ideal body type they can't duplicate but perhaps see in magazines, causing more feelings of anxiety which can also impact relationships.

According to the study, those women who have greater levels of acceptance and more self-esteem about their bodies (and less inhibition) are able to have happier and more fulfilling relationships, including the sexual component. But it goes both ways - happier relationships can help create happier feelings about your body.

"When a woman was satisfied with her relationship, she was also satisfied with her body weight, which also applies vice versa," said Vatter. "Higher body-weight satisfaction results in higher satisfaction with a relationship."