The Perils of Online Dating

Back in the day, before you and I were sentient beings, marriages were arranged. The notion that marriage expresses true love dates, I estimate, to the sixteenth century, to the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

The logic is unimpeachable. When Martin Luther and his followers were excommunicated from the Church-- it has something to with the 95 Theses Luther had nailed to the church door in Wittenberg-- the merry band set out to marry.

And yet, they could not marry for property rights or for status or prestige or even political power. Being excommunicated they had none of the above. The only thing that was left, the default, as you might guess, was romantic love. Thus the excommunicated monks and priests and nuns married-- for love.

In most parts of the world today, one surmises that marriages are more arranged than loving. In India, the most populous country on the planet, marriages are now semi-arrangements. That means, when you are of marriageable age, your parents will negotiate with other parents and present you with a list of a half dozen or so prospects. You will then meet with them under controlled circumstances and decide how the one or both or you want to proceed.

As for the marriages contracted according to this custom, they are said to provide a high level of satisfaction. And, divorce is unheard of in Indian culture.

If we assume that these marriages were not constructed on the basis of romantic love, on what grounds were they contracted? If people did not follow the fire in their loins or the murmurs of their hearts, how did they choose mates?

Evidently, one significant basis had to have been good character. Surely, character is more important than hotness. When your parents are choosing your mate, they will certainly choose someone who belongs to an honorable family, and who has a good reputation. They will probably exclude someone who is simply too hot to handle.

Obviously, if the family’s elders choose the prospective mates, they will also choose prospects who are socially acceptable, people with whom they have more, not less, in common. Thus, social compatibility will be an important factor.

Even in Western literature, you will discover that couples whose marriages failed, like Romeo and Juliet, belonged to families where people did not get along. 

These customs might feel slightly bizarre. They are not. When a single man begins to date the neighbor’s daughter, both of them know a great deal about each other. They are not anonymous hookups. Your family knows her family and vice versa. The same applies when you forge a union with someone you have gone to school with. 

That does not just mean that you have a good deal in common, and thus, are less likely to misread social cues. It also means that you will both be on best behavior-- if you behave badly with a neighbor, your reputation in your community will suffer.

If this is true, a marriage’s success depends less on whether you feel your feelings or are madly in love. It depends more generally on whether or not you can trust each other, whether you are responsible and reliable.

If we follow this logic we will arrive at a conclusion: the worst way to choose a spouse is at random. Picking someone up at a bar is bad, but the worst must be online dating. Aside from the increasingly obvious fact that online daters often lie, when you know nothing more about the person than whether or not he or she is hot, you know nothing that might make the person a good spouse. And you have no idea whether the person will fit with your family or peer group.

When you meet someone online the chances are good that the two of you will have less in common. This implies that your chances for conjugal bliss decrease proportionally.

To be fair, we have nothing against falling in love, but don’t fall in love with just anyone.

If you find this all to be far too restrictive for your capacious tastes, you will be happy, or not, to discover that scientists have researched these matters. Their conclusions echo mine. Otherwise  I would not be reporting on it.

Eric Dolan reports on it all for PsyPost:

The researchers employed various measures to gauge different aspects of the participants’ relationships. They used scales to assess societal marginalization (how society views their relationship based on how they met), network approval (support from friends and family), geographic distance (physical distance between partners when they first met), and disclosure (the extent of sharing intimate information).

For our purposes, the fact that your prospective spouse fits into your social circle and is welcomed by your family counts high on the list of qualities that will guarantee conjugal bliss.

Strangely, or not so strangely, marriages that began online are more likely to be same-sex or interracial. That means, dare we say, that they were less likely to be welcomed by friends and family. It is reasonably well understood that defying social convention in this area is likely to cost you friends and family. In time it will make your marriage into a misery.

Interestingly, online-origin marriages were found to be more recent and more likely to be same-sex or interracial.

Dolan reports on the research:

However, these online-origin marriages reported lower levels of satisfaction and stability compared to offline-origin marriages. This difference was attributed to factors such as societal marginalization and less network approval, which were more prevalent in online-origin relationships.

So, it might be time to give up online dating and to ask family and friends to introduce you to prospects.

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