Does Online Dating Make It Harder to Find ‘the One’?

TIME:

Everyone knows someone who met their spouse online. A friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in years told me recently that she, too, met her husband on an Internet dating site. They’re happily married, just moved into a new house, and are now talking about starting a family.

When I asked her if she thought online matchmaking was a better way than offline dating to find guys who were more compatible with her — and, therefore, better husband material — she laughed. “No, because I couldn’t stand him when I first met him,” she says of her husband. She thought he was full of himself and rude during their first encounter. It definitely wasn’t love at first sight, she said — that took a while.

In other words, according to my friend, Internet dating is just as unpredictable as the non-digital version. You never know how things are going to evolve until they do. But the benefit, she says, is that dating online gives you access to a lot more people than you’d ordinarily ever get to meet — and that’s how she connected with her future husband.