Marriage

If you've been on the Internet in the last week - and seeing as this is 2013, there's no way you haven't - you've probably come across an article proclaiming that online dating has scientifically been proven to be better than traditional dating.

Every feed I follow has been blowing up with the news that 1 in 3 Americans now meet their spouses online, and that a new study has found that marriages born out of online dating are more satisfying and less likely to end in divorce. The study's results were published in a paper called "Marital Satisfaction and Breakups Differ Across Online and Offline Meeting Venues" in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself," said the study's lead author John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Before you vow never to meet people in person again, it's important to note that the study was funded by eHarmony.com and Cacioppo is paid as a scientific advisor for eHarmony. Of course, everyone involved promises that eHarmony's backing did not affect the outcomes of the study in any way, but...

I know I'm not the only one looking at this new data with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I am, however, not so skeptical about a few of Cacioppo's claims. Online dating clearly has changed the face of relationships forever, and there's no going back. Cacioppo's research found that nearly 8% of marriages initiated offline end in breakups, while couples who meet online report divorce and separation rates of only 6%.

I'll be holding firmly onto my grains of salt until further studies - ones that aren't in any way connected to online dating sites - confirm his data, but I'm willing to admit that Cacioppo may have a point. Online dating may indeed lead to greater marriage satisfaction for a few key reasons:

1. The pool of prospective partners is significantly larger online, increasing the chance that you'll meet someone you're highly compatible with.
2. Singles who take the step of joining an online dating site may be more serious about finding a long-term partner than singles encountered offline.
3. Online daters may be more honest and up-front about who they are and what they're looking for (barring those infamous little white lies told in profiles), meaning that the connections they form are more genuine.

"It is possible that individuals who met their spouse online may be different in personality, motivation to form a long-term marital relationship, or some other factor," Cacioppo said in a press release.

That sounds like the perfect opportunity for another study - one that isn't funded by an online dating giant.

Related Article: The Secret To A Happy Marriage Is…Online Dating?

If I asked what you think the secret to a happy marriage is, what would you say?

Communication?

Date nights?

Spontaneity?

Thoughtfulness?

Respect?

Acceptance?

They're all good answers, but a new study suggests that the real answer might be something you weren't expecting: online dating.

Didn't see that one coming, did you? (Ok, sure, if you read the title you did...but humor me.)

The Internet has forever changed the way people communicate, work, play, create, and date. 1/3 of American couples now meet their partners online, through email, dating sites, and social networks.

In a survey study of more than 19,000 Americans who married between 2005 and 2012, 5% divorced, 2% separated, and 92% remained married. The couples observed were generally representative of the population, but a few demographics showed a particular inclination towards online dating:

• Men
• People in their 30s and 40s
• Hispanics
• People who are employed
• People with higher socioeconomic statuses

Even after accounting for the differences between subjects, the study drew two primary conclusions. The first will surprise no one: the popularity of online dating has increased across every segment of American society. The second comes as more of a shock: marriages that began online were found to be longer lasting and more satisfying for couples.

Lead author of the study John Cacioppo, a psychologist and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, explains the findings by saying dating sites may "attract people who are serious about getting married."

A sociologist, Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University, backs up Cacioppo's findings. In his own research, he found that "couples who meet online are more likely to progress to marriage than couples who meet in other ways."

But the study is not without its critics. "It's a very impressive study," says social psychologist Eli Finkel of Northwestern University. "But it was paid for by somebody with a horse in the race and conducted by an organization that might have an incentive to tell this story."

That's right - the study was commissioned by eHarmony, which shelled out $130,000 to pay for the research. Cacioppo has also been a member of eHarmony's Scientific Advisory Board since it was created in 2007.

Is it intriguing research? Yes. But does that sound like a major conflict of interest? Absolutely.

Sure, online dating is a great way to meet a partner with high levels of compatibility and real marriage potential. But is online dating better than offline dating? Survey says: inconclusive.

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live...

We're all familiar with the famous wedding vows.

And we're all equally familiar with how hard it is to stick to them. Just look at the divorce rate - clearly honoring your vows is a heck of a lot harder than saying them. A recent poll from 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair found out exactly how challenging it is for spouses to stay true to their "I do's."

For women, these vows proved to be the most trying:

• For better or for worse (32%)
• To be faithful (25%)
• In sickness and in health (16%)
• For richer, for poorer (12%)

For men, the most difficult vows are:

• To be faithful (27%)
• For better or for worse (23%)
• For richer, for poorer (18%)
• In sickness and in health (17%)

And that's not all that 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair discovered about love.

They also found that, although most men and women would never betray their partners' trust, women are slightly more likely than men to sneak a peek at their spouse's e-mail.

The act of asking a father for his daughter's had in marriage is slowly on its way out. 45% think it's a necessary courtesy, but the rest consider it "gallant but unnecessary," "old-fashioned and embarrassing," or "sexist and offensive."

When it comes to the idea of love at first sight, unmarried couples are the most romantic. 66% of respondents in a relationship said they believe in the phenomenon, compared to 58% of married respondents and 48% of single respondents.

Where sex is concerned, the majority of people think it's "very important" (62%). Only a few think it's the "most important" aspect of a relationship (5%) or "not very important" (6%), with most falling somewhere in between at "somewhat important" (25%).

Thankfully, the in-law horror stories that are so popular in pop culture seem to largely be myths. The vast majority of couples think they get along well their spouses' families (71%). Only a few say "There's no love lost between us" (12%) and even fewer think the feelings differ depending on which side you ask.

No matter how much you love your partner, something about them is bound to drive you crazy. The most common coupled up complaints are:

• Sharing a bed (7%)
• Sharing a bathroom (13%)
• Doing household chores (16%)
• TV choices (36%)

But let's get real: if the toughest part of your marriage is deciding whether to watch basketball or American Idol, you've really got nothing to complain about.

Speaking from experience, managing a relationship as an entrepreneur is difficult to do. It's not the same as your average relationship because entrepreneurs are starting and running businesses from the ground up. Often times by themselves. So they work crazy hours and are hardly ever home. That means you don't get to see or talk to your significant other as much, let alone spend quality time together.

That said, my wife and I have managed our relationship well over the last couple of years while I've built my business. Here are the 5 things we did to make it work.

1. Establish a Work Schedule: I work long days, so I expect to be interrupted sometimes. However, I do need to get things done, and being interrupted constantly will keep me from being productive (it can be annoying, too).

So my first tip is to establish a work schedule. This schedule should more or less be your "off limits" time, where you can work as interrupted-free as possible. If you both are on the same page here, this will allow you to get some work done and avoid petty arguing because your significant other knows when it's ok, and not ok, to bother you.

2. Pencil in Dates: It's important to spend time together. However, this can be easier said than done though when an entrepreneur is busy working 24/7.

What you need to do is schedule a time for your date. No work, no interruptions. This time is just for the two of you to enjoy each other's company.

It's even easier to accomplish if you make your date night the same day each week. For us, Saturdays are usually the day where my work schedule is more relaxed, allowing us to go catch a movie or dinner any time that we want.

3. Communication is Huge: I can tell you from experience that it's very easy to go without communicating with your significant other if all you're doing is working day in and day out.

We all know that's unhealthy for a relationship, right?

So what I recommend doing is making it a point to talk to your partner. Take a break from your work every so often just to say hi. Send text messages frequently, or leave notes on the counter. Do something to keep the communication going between the two of you.

Otherwise, you might as well be trying to manage a long distance relationship.

4. Let the Little Things Go: You hardly see each other as is. Do you really want to spend your "quality" time arguing about stuff? Some things are unavoidable, like the finances or kids (if you have them). However, things like forgetting to take out the trash or hanging up the clothes is petty. Why let that ruin your time together?

It shouldn't.

5. Remember Why You're Doing It: As hard as managing a relationship and entrepreneurial projects are, I (you/we) do it so we can improve our lives and the lives of those we care about. It's a small sacrifice now that will pay off big down the road. So, keep the reasons you have in mind at all times, and think of them often. It'll make the times when you're frustrated or you miss your spouse much easier to handle.

About the author: Hi, my name is Matt. I'm the co-owner of www.PlugThingsIn.com, which is one business (of several) that I've built while maintaining a strong relationship with my wife. If you have any questions or feedback, I'd like to hear them. Let me know in the comments below.

The Jewish New Year just happened and I noticed that JDate has more to celebrate than Rosh Hashanah. They just released the results from a survey by ResearchNow (an independent research company) which shows that JDate is responsible for 52 percent of all Jewish marriages that started online. From the survey of 948 married Jewish internet users they also concluded that 63 percent of the online dates originated at JDate, this is many times more than the leading competing dating services. The survey also showed that 76 percent of Jewish internet users who used an online dating site to find love, became a member of JDate.

For more information and statistics you can read this post from the JDate blog. To find out if this dating service is something you would be interested in you can also check out our review of JDate.

When Dr. Gian Gonzaga and the research team at eHarmony decided to conduct a study on the relationship between divorce and the way couples meet, they found themselves confronted with a couple of hurdles to clear:

• Online dating is a relatively new phenomenon - it's been around for a little over a decade, and only been popular for the last 7 or 8 years. That's not a significant amount of time for a large number of couples to meet, marry, and then separate, and the sample size would likely have been too small to create an accurate study.
• One method of running the study would be to simply sample the American population at random, hoping that a significant number of people who had gotten divorced met their former spouses on an online dating site. The research team would have to hope that, through sheer luck, they would find a large enough number of people who had A) Married in the last decade, B) Met their partner on a particular online dating site, and C) Gotten divorced from that person. But surveying the entire population of the United States is far from practical, and leaves too much to chance.

Instead, the eHarmony team, aided by Opinion Research Corp., "identified an online panel of 4,000 people who had been married to AND divorced from that person in the last 15 years," with a focus on marriages that began between 2005 and 2009. Though their final sample size was small - only 506 people - their findings are still interesting. In most cases, "the expected number of divorces was very close to the actual number of divorces...observed in the sample," which means that "it didn't really matter how you met your spouse, you were just as likely to get divorced." The most notable results from the study showed that:

• People who met on eHarmony were 66.6% less likely to get divorced.
• People who met through school were 41.1% less likely to get divorced.
• People who met at a bar were 24% more likely to get divorced.
• People who met through unspecified other means were 16% more likely to get divorced.

Their findings are food for thought, but the eHarmony team acknowledges that they are far from definitive: "We realize the numbers of eHarmony divorces is pretty small and this is only one sample of divorces. We don't know if these results will replicate in another sample or generalize to all marriages. Those are important limitations to this study that need to be acknowledged. We're already working on replicating these findings to address these limitations."

It is also important to remember, as Dr. Gonzaga notes, that studies like these show only WHAT happened, not WHY it happened. "How you met your spouse is only one of many reasons for why a couple eventually ends up unhappy or divorced," he writes. "Many relationships that start off shaky end up lasting a lifetime. Others that have a great foundation still end up in trouble. How you meet is only the starting point. You, and your spouse, control where you end up."

Read the original post here and for more details on the matchmaking service which conducted this survey please read our review of eHarmony.