Relationships

A news website from Ontario, Canada published an article about a couple of peoples experiences on a some of the more popular dating sites. The ChristianCafe received positive praise from an online dater named Peter. He met his wife Helga, through the Christian dating service back in February of 2008. They have been happily married now for 3 months.

In early 2008 Peter lived in Ontario and Helga lived in Alberta. Peter was keeping his searches for a partner limited to the province of Ontario, though Helga was searching in neighboring provinces. Helga first contacted Peter via instant message. After a few emails and phone conversations they both realized the other person was special. In the beginning, everyday Peter would log into ChristianCafe to read Helga's messages. After about a month, Peter flew to Edmonton to meet Helga in person for the first time, at a local cafe. Things went well with Peter and Helga for the couple of days that he visited and it became a regular occurrence for Peter to fly to Edmonton. In April of 2009, Peter married Helga and they decided to stay in Edmonton.

For more on the story, read Northern Life and to find out what makes this dating site a great place for singles, read our review of ChristianCafe.com.

Some new FunnyOrDie.com videos have surfaced recently which poke fun of the currently separated parents on the Jon & Kate Plus 8 TV show from The Learning Channel (TLC). The videos depicts Jon and Kate in two spoof Match.com TV commercials talking about themselves and what type of matches they are looking for.

The first video released is for Jon Gosselin. I had a laugh at his Match.com member name, JonMinus9:

Here is Kate Gosselin's video. Her Match.com user name is, KatePlus8Minus1Hawaiian:

FunnyOrDie also poked fun recently at eHarmony's commercials by having Lindsay Lohan do a spoof ad (see Story).

I heard about a Australian study and paper called "What’s love got to do with it?" today on our local talk radio station. I also see that Markus over at the Paradigm Shift makes reference to it as well.

The data used in the study is from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA) and the paper will be presented at the 2009 HILDA Survey Research Conference on July 16 and 17 at University of Melbourne.

The study analyses a range of factors including the relationship between personality, gender and occupation. The researchers investigated individual and couple characteristics associated with marital instability and found that characteristics of men and women can have quite different impacts on marital stability.

This Australian paper takes a look at 2,482 married couples for 6 years (from 2001 to 2007) and attempts to identify the factors associated with marital problems.

Here are some of the higher risk factors associated with marital instability:

• One partner smokes, and the other one doesn't (the same rule can be applied to drinking).
• Almost twice as many marriages which had a low household income separated (16%) when compared to families who are financially stable (9%).
• A woman who wants children more than her husband.
• If the age difference is greater than 9 years (the man being older), it doubles your risk of separation.
• Men who married under 25 years of age are twice as likely to divorce.
• 20% of couples who had children (either together or from other relationships) before the marriage, divorced. It is only a 9% separation rate for couples who did not have children before the marriage.

This research paper is an excellent resource for dating site owners in helping to create a more accurate matchmaking system. While the data is out of Australia, their culture is not that much different from ours here in North America. For the most part, all of the popular dating sites have released very little information on how their matchmaking systems work. In part, it is because they want to keep trade secrets but they also worry about negative reviews from peers. I also have a feeling, a fair number of dating sites do not have any independent scientific research to back up their matchmaking algorithms.

Here is a local copy of the full paper.

Match.com UK has launched an interactive channel on the BT Vision IPTV service (Digital Cable). This means almost half a million BT Vision subscribers can now tune into Channel 955 and use the Match.com service to search for singles, update profiles, send winks and for viewing messages. Most of Match.com primary features are available to use through the channel. You also use the same Match.com account as you login with through the website. Not everything can be done through BT Vision though, such as uploading a photo. This can only be done by using a computer or a cell phone.

The article at New Media Age makes it look like this is a free service to cable subscribers. It is unclear at the moment if you can log in as a Match.com paid member on the interactive channel to actually send email messages to other members.

Jason Stockwood of Match.com stated:

He hoped offering the service via TV would make browsing for a potential partner a more social experience compared with the online service, which tends to be done alone.

This is an interesting idea, to make online dating a more social activity. Would you want your friends and/or family to help you favorite and send winks to other singles on a dating site? I think searching for prospects would be fun but, personally I would still want to communicate without someone looking over my shoulder.

To find out more information about this United Kingdom dating site, read our review of Match.com.

Spark Networks Jewish dating site called JDate got a nice bit of publicity in The New York Times last week. The paper publish an article about a JDater's success story in their Fashion & Style section.

After a 13 year marriage, a 48 year old man named Ron James decided to get right back into dating. In the same month as his divorce he joined JDate.com. In the beginning months, every night for 2 or 3 hours he searched for woman between the ages of 30 and 50, and who lived within 50 miles of his apartment. He kept his profile full of energy but not head strong. In 18 months Ron emailed between 500 and 600 women, in which he dated almost 50 of them. This many dates was expense since, he had to pay for the date and usually commute an hour into New York City. This was all done on a modest salary. What Ron ended up doing to save money was stacking first meet dates. Every other Sunday he would have dates with as many as 3 women. He kept the date times spread apart and at different locations so he could "retain some sense of integrity".

Some surprising finds in the UK for men and women who start dating in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. As divorce rates rise, singles older than 60 is a growing trend. A lot of baby boomers have found that once their children have left home, they were the only thing holding their broken marriage together. When you combine this with our longer life spans when compared to previous generations, there are a lot more seniors who are single, than there use to be.

Match.com has said on numerous occasions that the older generation is their fastest growing market. Also, according to eHarmony's UK dating site, 30 percent of men over the age of 65 live alone and the figure doubles to 60 percent for woman. Why is there such a huge percentage difference between men and woman? I think it comes down to two factors. First women on average live 5 to 10 years longer than men and with the about equal gender split in the world you are going to have many more women single due to them being widowed. The second factor is, men tend to go out with younger women. Therefore a man who is 65 and living with someone (and included in eHarmony's statistic), is more likely than not, living with a woman under the age of 65 (and not included in the statistic).

For the rest of the story, read The Guardian. If you are a senior and interested in online dating, read our Match.com or eHarmony review. You could also check out our Dating Over 50 category for a list of dating sites specifically for older singles.