The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What’s the best time to make a love match?
Love walked into my life in the summer of 1984, took a seat and decided to stick around.
I don’t remember the precise moment when cupid struck, but the experts say that when it comes to matters of the heart, timing is indeed everything.
If you haven’t yet found your perfect match, have I got a tip for you.
According to the experts at Match.com, Sunday will be your moment. At precisely 8:49 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, they tell me, your odds of meeting someone great will be better than ever.
Specifically, the online matchmaker expects to see a 42 percent spike in new singles coming to its site to meet someone. More than 50 million messages will be sent, 5 million new photos will be uploaded and 1 million dates will take place somewhere somehow.
Dating Sunday, as it is known, falls within Match’s peak season, which begins each year on Dec. 26 and runs until Feb. 14.
“As the holidays end and the new year begins, the ‘Perfect Storm’ in dating begins — the time of year when memberships spike, and the single fish come to sea,” said Bela Gandhi, founder of Smart Dating Academy and a dating expert for Match. Why? There are an estimated 107 million single adults in this country, and at the new year, many are inspired to make finding a relationship a resolution for the coming year, Gandhi said.
Plus, she said, singles are motivated, positive and ready to meet others.
Match analyzed decades of data, and not only identified Jan. 8 as the busiest online dating day of the year, but the actual minute (8:49 p.m. EST) when singles flood the site.
I met my love on a Sunday morning in August 1984, when meeting a romantic partner happened the old-fashioned way — through a family member, friend, school, neighbor or church.
By 2009, that had all changed. While half of all straight couples met through friends or at a bar or restaurant, 22 percent met online, and all other sources had shrunk.
I wondered, since the rise of online dating predates my 1985 nuptials, how fruitful are these
matches? Are they just casual hookups or do they last long enough to matter? What percentages of couples who meet online actually marry?
Well, I’ve got more good news.
More than a third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 began online, according to research at the University of Chicago.
The results were published in a 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded by eHarmony.com.
Meeting online has become an increasingly common way to find a partner, with opportunities arising through social networks, exchanges of email, instant messages, multiplayer games and virtual worlds, in which people “live” on the site through avatars. The research shows that couples who met online were more likely to have higher marital satisfaction and lower rates of marital breakups than relationships that began in faceto-face meetings.
Marriage breakups were reported in about 6 percent of the people who met online, compared with 7.6 percent of the people who met offline. Marriages for people who met online reported a mean score of 5.64 on a satisfaction survey, compared with a score of 5.48 for people who met offline. The survey was based on questions about their happiness with their marriage and degree of affection, communication and love for each other.
The study, led by University of Chicago professor John Cacioppo, examined the results of a representative sample of 19,131 people who responded to a survey by Harris Interactive about their marriages and satisfaction.
It found a wide variety of venues, both online and offline, where people met. About 45 percent met through an online dating site. People who met online were more likely to be older (30 to 39), employed and had a higher income.
People who met offline found marriage partners at various venues, including work, school, church, social gatherings, clubs and bars, and places of worship. Among the least successful marriages were those in which people met at bars, through blind dates and in online communities that function as virtual worlds, the researchers found.
Meeting online also may provide a larger pool of prospective marriage partners, along with advance screening in the case of dating services. And although deception often occurs online, studies suggest that people are relatively honest in online dating encounters; the lies tend to be minor misrepresentations of weight or height.
Although the study did not determine why relationships that started online were more successful, the reasons may include the strong motivations of online daters, the availability of advance screening and the sheer volume of opportunities online.
Here’s one more tip I discovered while watching “The Doctors” daytime talk show recently: As often as possible, say your significant other’s name. It’s a natural aphrodisiac.