General News

Do you approve of sex on a first date, or would you avoid it at all costs? People typically fall into very distinctive camps in this heated debate – yes or never. Maybe you use Tinder every night, swiping right until you get lucky, or perhaps you completely reject the idea of first date sex because you want to maintain a certain level of interest from the object of your affection by playing coy.

If you’d rather wait to have sex, you’re in agreement with a majority of Americans. According to a recent study by website Dating Advice, 66% of Americans do not approve of having sex on the first date – two out of every three people.

This seems counter-intuitive to our culture. After all, dating apps like Tinder – an efficient and speedy app that connects people quickly, often for hooking up – are becoming the new norm. We are inundated with sexy images in the media, and our views as a culture have become increasingly liberal. There isn’t the stigma that used to be associated with premarital sex. So why does this attitude towards first date sex remain?

According to Gary Lewandowski Jr., the chair of psychology at Monmouth University and co-creator of ScienceofRelationships.com, most Americans say they don't approve of first date sex but, "it may not indicate how much first date sex [they] are having themselves." He adds that the views respondents express "reflect conformity to expectations that society has, rather than a reflection of how they actually feel." In other words, they think they are supposed to disapprove of it, so they do.

He may be right, but attitudes vary among the sexes. There was a huge distinction between men and women in their responses, with 82% of women agreeing that they wouldn’t have first date sex while only 48% of men said they wouldn’t.

"Women are the harshest judges of other women's behavior," said Robin Milhausen, an associate professor of human sexuality at the University of Guelph. "Many women wouldn't think it was OK for a woman to have sex on the first date, thinking this would be 'slutty behavior'. Women also are aware of the double-standard, recognizing they could be judged negatively if they had sex on the first date, making first date sex an unwise behavior for them." Men however, have more supportive attitudes about casual sex, so they are more likely to say they would have it.

1,080 people over the course of three weeks were surveyed for the study.

Wondering if you should try online dating? Before you craft your profile, a new study by Michigan State University and Stanford found that people who met online weren’t as likely to stay together for the long-haul as those couples who met offline.

As it turns out, online dating sites who have been touting their matching success rates may not be telling the whole story. Many couples have successfully gotten together thanks to online dating, but that doesn’t mean they have lasted. The separation and divorce rates for folks who paired up online was much higher than for those who met their partners offline in more traditional ways.

According to the report, 8% of married couples who met their spouses online reported to have ended their marriage in separation or divorce, compared to approximately 2% of married couples who met their spouses offline. And compared to 23% couples who had met offline, 32% of couples who had met online had broken up in the following year of the survey.

In further proof that the Internet is a fickle, fleeting place, it seems everyone has already forgotten about a piece of news no one could stop talking about just a few months ago.

Back in June, Facebook caused a major public outcry when it revealed it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million users as part of a psychological study to examine how emotions spread on social media. It was a messy situation, to put it lightly, and not long afterwards we found out Facebook wasn’t the only site to experiment on its users.

OkCupid came forward to say that it, too, had manipulated users’ experience - but that it wasn’t really sorry about it. The site’s blog post made the (valid) point that “if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.” Websites - especially dating websites - have to perform tests, otherwise they’d never be able to improve and make the user’s experience as good as it can possibly be.

So when it came down to the question of whether or not you should be upset by Facebook and OkCupid’s actions, opinion was divided.

A University of Maryland law professor is now claiming that Facebook and OkCupid violated a state law when they manipulated customer data as part of company research. Professor James Grimmelmann says the two websites are in violation of a 2002 Maryland law that requires all research on human subjects to have informed consent of the those involved, as well as approval by an ethical review panel.

In response, Facebook’s spokesman Israel Hernandez maintains that the company did not break federal or Maryland law, but says it is examining its internal processes. “We know some people were upset by this study and we are taking a hard look at our internal processes as a result,” Hernandez wrote in an email to the Washington Post. “The requirements specified by the federal Common Rule and Maryland law do not apply to research conducted under these circumstances.”

The allegations are now in the hands of Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler, who told the Washington Post, “They’ve already discontinued doing this, so what we’d want to do is talk to them and figure out whether or not what they did was appropriate, whether there was enough notice given to users and whether or not they intend to do something like this again in the future without violating privacy concerns and without giving the ability to opt in or opt out of the testing.”

Most daters gravitate towards what they know when they are meeting potential dates – like those with the same education, socio-economic or religious background. But others are looking to “date upwards,” at least according to websites like SeekingArrangements and SugarDaddie.com.

Money - when it comes to dating - has long been a touchy subject. Men sometimes resent the fact that they are expected to pay for dates, or that some women seem to be gold-diggers looking for someone to take care of them. On the other hand, many women get annoyed by this perception/ stereotype. Some women feel a lack of romance and courting in the current dating environment – wondering why don’t men put a little effort into planning and the pursuit.

Both of these arguments are valid by those who experience such frustration, but not true for everyone.

Brandon Wade, the founder of SeekingArrangments, makes his own argument via an article he penned on CNN.com - that a traditional relationship made by chance meeting and falling in love is not really a viable option. He claims that this doesn’t happen for most people. For men like him who are shy and uneasy around women, there aren’t many options, let alone serendipitous chance meetings. But that changes when you have money, he argues.

He’s not wrong. Plenty of women – and men – are more than willing to take a second look at a potential date if he or she is willing to pay for five-star restaurants or a weekend at a luxe hotel. There’s something very attractive about success and money, and Brandon Wade is quick to point this out: “love is a concept invented by poor people.”

Wade has a rather cynical view of dating, approaching people like he would a business deal where everything is about economic leverage and perceived value. He claims guys like him don’t really have a shot at love unless they can offer something of value that's tangible (like money or lifestyle) to their dates.

He dismisses the more progressive viewpoints of dating and relationships that value gender equality, saying: “Feminists argue that sugaring [men paying for women to date them] reverts women to a submissive, "codependent" lifestyle. But the reality is, we are leveling the playing field. There is no room for feminism in traditional relationships as defined by society. A new generation of independent, strong-willed women has cropped up while society is simultaneously raising boys who fail to ever reach their full potential.”

But how is it that these boys are actually "growing into men" when the only way they feel they can “level the playing field” is by paying for their right to play in the first place?

Some argue that sites like SeekingArrangements are really just an online form of prostitution. But sugar daddy sites obviously have a market and a demand, and people willing to pay and be paid, otherwise they wouldn’t exist.

But giving into Wade's pessimism about dating and relationships only sets us back further. Instead of paying for what you think you deserve, why not try a different approach?

Flirting and kindness never hurt anyone, and have gotten most people a date from time to time. Most people aren't looking for a paycheck - they are looking for love.

To find our complete list of comparable dating services you can check out our Sugar Daddy category.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Tinder even if you haven’t already tried it. The app has taken the dating world by storm, mostly because of its easy access through your phone, simple set-up, and the sheer number of people using it. Tinder makes it seem like dating options are endless.

But accessing Tinder through your phone and looking through each individual match takes way too much time, at least according to some daters. Botinder intends to resolve this problem by offering a desktop version of Tinder, where you can see several potential dates at once.

Developers are launching new unofficial Tinder apps and complementary extensions regularly, just to capture this fast-growing market and capitalize on it with the latest and greatest in dating technology, or at least establishing their own marketing spin. Botinder is an unofficial Google Chrome Extension that allows you to like and dislike Tinder users even faster than you can using the official app. And if there’s one thing Tinder users need, it’s speed. Swiping left and right through each individual candidate is way too time-consuming.

There is a strategy to Tinder which makes technology like Botinder appealing, at least for the guys. By saying “yes” to as many women as possible as quickly as possible, you greatly improve your chances of getting matched (or laid). For the women, it’s a bit different. They tend to be much more discerning, turning down potential matches a lot more often than accepting. With Botinder, they too can dislike matches more quickly, making the process more efficient for everyone.

According to website Business Insider, creating a desktop version of Tinder has been a popular request for a long time. Typically, users had been downloading an Android emulator to run a version of the app, but now this is a much easier way to run it on your laptop, for those who aren’t quite so tech-saavy.

Botinder sorts users by row, allowing you to organize your matches so you can compare or view photos several at a time. There is also a “Booster” function where you can choose “like automatically” and Botinder will start liking every Tinder user near you – multiple people a second – so you can’t really even see who you are liking. But that’s not really the point – it’s actually playing a numbers game with dating. It would take weeks of being a dedicated Tinder app user before you got the kind of instant matching success that is likely with Botinder.

The real question is: will Botinder improve the overall dating experience, or just add to the noise and confusion?

For more information on service this Chrome Extension works with you can read our Tinder page.

eHarmony was on the brink of disaster in 2012, ready to be sold to the highest bidder on the auction block, at least according to a recent article on Online Dating Insider. But the company was determined to turn things around.

According to eHarmony executives, “We took our hard won stash of capital and used $153.2M to buy out all the “Class B” shares, and we began the pursuit of our own company.  We asked five of our former and highly-esteemed board members to step aside and give us a chance to do more of what we needed to do to bring this company back.  We made tough decisions…let some people go, terminated vendor contracts. Moreover, we have cleaned up “our house” by appointing an all-new executive management team that is a more aligned team than we have ever had before.”

For those of us who did not know eHarmony was on the brink of financial ruin, this letter came as a surprise. In the time they were desperately struggling to tread water, Neil Clarke Warren, the company’s founder, came back on board as CEO and reminded the company of the reason they were successful in the first place – their focus on matching for long-term relationships.

While most dating sites and apps have gone in the opposite direction – focusing on quantity instead of quality of matches, and casual meetings instead of long-term relationship potential, eHamorny’s serious focus has paid off.

“Instead of losing 100,000 end of period subscribers each year, suffering...losses of 50% every single year, our EBITDA for 2014 will literally be dramatic and the cash in the bank increasing substantially each month. EBITDA is currently running $9.4M ahead of plan as we work with our forecasts. Our end of period paying subscriber count has hit its all-time high...”

eHarmony was not afraid to get rid of what wasn’t working. Trimming staff by over 30%, they went from about 300 employees to only 190 in all of the U.S., U.K. and Australia. They have also dropped vendors who weren’t contributing to the primary focus of the site – relationships. (That is, focusing on the long-term potential.)

eHarmony’s success rate speaks for itself. It claims to have made more than 600,000 marriages, and has only a 3.86% divorce rate (compared to the over 50% divorce rate of Americans in general).

The company plans to take its technology in other directions besides love. They are planning the launch of Elevated Careers by eHarmony, where they hope to make successful coupling between potential employees and employers by using the same psychologically-based matching system to help people find their dream jobs.

While the company didn’t offer exact figures, they did claim to have hundreds of thousands of users as well as 1.2 million matches. It looks like they have turned things around, though most of us didn’t even realize how much they were struggling.

To find out more about this dating service, you can read our eHarmony review.