Couples who meet online are likely to have lasting marriages

Couples who meet online are likely to have marriages that last, according to a survey of 20,000 married people.

John and Stephanie Cacioppo of the University of Chicago and their colleagues, examined this brave new world. They surveyed how marriages fare when the relationship was started online, compared with those started in the real world.

To many, the answer seems obvious: There is no way that online relationships can lead to long lasting marriages. How can you tell if this person is ‘The One’ when you can’t even smell his or her pheromones?

The authors queried nearly 20,000 people married between 2005 and 2012 about the quality of their married life. Remarkably, more than a third had met online (most often via dating sites).

After controlling for factors like age, education, income, ethnicity and religiosity, the authors didn’t find that online marriages are more likely to fail. In fact, by a small but significant margin, online marriages are more likely to last and to produce more satisfaction.

Why the rosier online outcome? Maybe it reflects something about the sorts of people who would meet their spouse online. Also, better matches may result from the larger pool of potential spouses available online, as opposed to those three eligible third cousins in your hamlet.

Naturally, more research is needed. How will the marriage types compare after longer time periods? Can online emotional contagion strengthen emotions in addition to dampening them? But here’s the main point: The most basic human interactions, writ both large and small, are surviving the newest thing since cuneiform.

Culled from WSJ