There's No Evidence Online Dating Is Threatening Commitment or Marriage
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Second, I notice that the few stats in this article refer to "using Internet to find partners," and the question isn't about partners but length of partnership.
Third, this article reminds me of the 'industry rebuttal' to one of pg's essays - the one about how glossy magazines all cost the same - which cried out to a whole industry "please rebut this." Someone had to publish a rebuttal, so someone did - although their 'rebuttal' was basically just pointing out that Sarah Palin's new book sold a lot of copies.
In this case, the industry is the online dating industry. This article is the industry rebuttal. It happens to be correct, but there's just something weird about this kind of article to me, and the eHarmony shirts in the accompanying picture smell of PR.
I basically stopped reading at the ad hominem. An article that claims to be about "evidence" clearly is not if it needs to win reader approval by bashing the opposing subject. This was a theme in the Atlantic's comments section of the article in question, too.
We can't tell if Jacob is truly a "douche" or not. The last article was all about him but mainly focused on his dating life and not other circumstances of it. And he sounds like an average male professional...what seems offensive is that we're more privy to his desires and decisions and as they say, familiarity breeds contempt.
The OP also blasts the article for not including a single female voice. If we're trying to make an objective evaluation of the effect of online dating, then it does not matter if the article is single gender (either male or female). If it can be argued convincingly that one-half of a couple has much more incentive to leave, then that by definition is enough to have an effect on traditional relationships, no matter what the other gender thinks
He had a girlfriend for five years and didn't marry her, and then had a girlfriend for two years and didn't marry her. That doesn't mean he's a douche, but he's not much of a prize either.
I suppose this attitude is a generation or more out of date. But it sure looks to me like the younger generation is screwing it up bad. Guess I'd better get some signs to post on my lawn.
So if she can get a free ride at some school where I can get a professorship, or if one of our jobs transfers us overseas, or if we can get a significant break on our taxes by filing jointly, then we’ll do it. Gaming the system is awesome. Otherwise, marriage just doesn’t mean anything to us.
[edit: added closing parenthesis]
And I'm old enough to be starting to harangue the next generation for not things the way I remembered doing them...but I think you're a bit too judgmental. One of the underlying themes of this piece is that Internet dating makes the "market," so to speak, much more liquid. The people whom you know who got married after 2-5 years...can you, or they, say that who they matched up with and vowed "till death do we part" was conclusively the best person for them in existence? Isn't it slightly coincidental and solipsistic to think that the universe arranged things so that out of billions of human beings, these couples who met mostly in real life (before the spread of e-dating) happened to have the physical proximity needed for their paths to intersect?
Whether or not marriage is the ideal state is a whole different argument...but you have to take into account the different worldview that the Internet unavoidably propagates. I think this is why I'm defending the OP (even though I've never online dated)...it's almost not necessary to provide hard evidence for the OP's assertion (or the admittedly self-interested online dating professionals quoted) because the Internet has so fundamentally changed how we interact and what we believe in. Right now, it is strange to me when friends don't have the intent to eventually marry...but I grew up with that being the status quo. The generation entering adulthood now did not and so it seems impossible to think that e-dating had (or will have) no impact on how we perceive and carry out relationships.
This is true, but from what I've seen in these multiyear LTRs, the woman wants to get married, the man wants to keep his options open (or, "doesn't want to make a mistake"). I've never seen the reverse scenario in an extended relationship.
If Jacob's girlfriends didn't actually care about getting married and settling down, then I agree there's nothing to fault Jacob for particularly. My guess is that a woman who sticks with a guy five years typically wants to get married, but you're right that I don't know, and we may be back to me not understanding the younger generation.
> The people whom you know who got married after 2-5 years...can you, or they, say that who they matched up with and vowed "till death do we part" was conclusively the best person for them in existence?
Of course not, but what kind of wacky standard is that anyway? That's an idea for teenage girls who haven't gotten over their Disney Princess movies, not mature adults.
> Right now, it is strange to me when friends don't have the intent to eventually marry...but I grew up with that being the status quo. The generation entering adulthood now did not and so it seems impossible to think that e-dating had (or will have) no impact on how we perceive and carry out relationships.
Oh, the new generation will muddle through somehow, I'm sure of that. But from what I've seen, I am skeptical that these ever cooler, ever more casual notions of romance and partnership are actually improvements for the people practicing them.
* I was always fairly sure it was love but I was never sure I could put up with her in the long term (whether thats her fault or mine isn't really the point).
* I had a lot more to lose than her by entering into a marriage and even being in a relationship and separating was a fairly large financial burden on my part.
* I don't really feel I'm ready for either thing, though maybe I'd consider marriage if I felt the relationship was right.
You're attitude appears to be that because I worked at my relationship, but didn't commit the rest of my life to it, that I am not a catch. Maybe its true but its not how I feel about the situation. Its fair to say that it could have ended sooner, but just because you think your relationship isn't going to work, doesn't mean you stop loving that person and want to give up.
If you or your girlfriend had entered the relationship with the intention of either committing or moving on, and (let's suppose) ended the relationship after one or two years instead of four, do you think that would have been a better outcome for either of you?
Also whilst I understand that my first point plays into what you said, it's only that way if you look at it from an extreme bias. It could be that I am at fault but equally my concerns about my partner could actually be legitimate. Something in the middle perhaps? You just don't know. Its hard enough for friends and family to get the full picture never mind a random person on the Internet.
What I will say is relationships from my experience are heavily bias towards woman. Apparently men are supposed to shower them with gifts, ensure their quality of life (so that the woman can do anything she desires) and essentially jump whenever told. In exchange they will give you sex... sometimes... when they feel like it, which amounts to less than once a month usually. Don't forget though, I woman can do anything that a man can do, so they're not your servants, make your own bloody sandwich and make her one too.
Now I'm not trying to say the typical gender roles are what a relationship is all above, far from it. But its a lot easier to illustrate how it can often be all take and little give from one side on the basis of her not performaing her typical gender role while expecting you to do so.. I'm not going to sit here and say all woman are like that either. I'm sure theres some fantastic woman our there and I hope to one day meet one, but blaming either men or woman exclusively isn't something I buy into.
Finally despite my break up being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I still think the likely situation would have been being a divorcee with a bunch of kids I can't see, again, unless I learns to jump on command. Maybe if I was a good little soldier it wouldn't have got that far, but then I'm sure sure I'd have enjoyed life anymore.
Either way at this point I don't care whos fault it was. We all have blank spots we'll unlikely ever be able to see anyway.
If this is how you feel after your last relationship, then your last relationship sucked. Be glad you got out of it, and yes, I would think it would have ended in divorce had you tied the knot.
You should up your standards on what a relationship ought to look like. Someone who treats you nicely, who gives as well as takes, who enjoys spending time with you and actively wants to spend time with you, who still wants an active sex life even after several months together--this should not be some fantastic ideal that you might one day win the lottery with. This is what an ordinary healthy LTR looks like. If you're not getting something like this, you need to move on.
(Obviously, you need to hold up your end of the deal in all those ways too.)
Dating is hard. I speculate, merely from you being a male who posts to HN, that it is especially hard for you. But it's better to cut your losses and try again than to stay in an LTR that doesn't actually make you happy. Good luck.
Also that last point is largely a myth in my opinion. Finding the (a) right person is hard for everyone. Some of us are significantly more awkward about it than others, but I don't really believe posting in niche tech sites alone is in any way representative of that.
Are these long term relationships? I've seen cases where the guy seems to want to rush into marriage quickly and the woman backs away, but never an LTR with the roles tilted that way.
This may, of course, be a UK/US thang... but...
My partner and I have been together 17 years. Neither of us want to get married (discussed previously at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4832058).
Couple of great friends of mine (who I introduced) have been together 24 years. Two kids. Not married.
We both have bog standard monogamous relationships and are very happy thank you very much. Neither of us are into any of that new-fangled poly/open stuff ;-)
I know a stack of other couples - mostly a bit younger that me I admit - that are in long term monogamous relationships where neither want to get married. Several folk I know who have got married have only done to make some legal stuff easier for the kids, or to deal with immigration hassles (they still want to be together - but the marriage bit was just legal hoop jumping).
I don't know about the younger generation (at 49 & 43 I'm not sure my partner and I count ;-) but for me, anyway, "committed monogamous relationship" does not necessarily imply any eagerness to get married.
That's not really what I perceive the trend to be, though (here on the US side). It looks to me more like an unwillingness to permanently commit to another person at all, and an aversion to taking on the responsibilities of raising a family. The Atlantic article called Jacob a manchild, which is a term I don't think we had such a need for when I was growing up.
(By the way I'm only early 40s myself--but boy do I feel out of step with the world these last few years.)
That 'drifter' would be strongly inconvenienced by forming and dissolving marriages every few years. So one way to indicate by the 5-year stage you are not that way inclined and that you are committed to your current relationship is to tie the knot. The signal only works one way - the two of you having chosen not to marry doesn't imply anything (in the strict logical sense).
The other places I've lived long-term are the U.S. and Japan, and in those places, such relationships seem much more rare. If a couple isn't married, there's a sense the relationship isn't quite real yet, and there's almost certain to be some negative societal reaction to an unmarried couple with kids... not as overt a reaction as it might have been in the past, but still clearly an issue.
From my contacts with other east-asian countries (Korea, China, Taiwan), I get the feeling the same is true in those places...they're often still relatively conservative in many ways compared to europe.
That's the primary argument of the original article. People feel they have a more effective way to search for "the best person for them in existence" and leave perfectly good relationships because the grass might be greener somewhere else.
You know... sometimes after five years, relationships just don't work out. Sometimes they weren't working out after two years, but inertia kept them going for another three.
Putting aside this specific character "Jacob", people change over two or five years. Sometimes, a lot. A man isn't letting down an obligation if the relationship ends. Indeed, whoever has the courage to end a two- or five-year relationship that isn't working, should probably be praised for allowing both people to move on with their lives and find better people. The only thing worse than a five-year relationship ending, is being trapped in a resulting unhappy 20-year marriage with the same person.
Huh. It's the opposite for me -- the more possibilities I can check out, the better I feel about my choice in the end. (Maybe that's one reason I didn't marry until age 42 :-) HN readers -- do you agree with this study, or not?
I don't get it.