Couples who meet online have a higher divorce rate?

The takeaways from today’s new video will provide the tools you need to boost your odds of staying together, no matter how you got together. 

Matthew:

All right. So the article that we’re wanting to talk about today, Steve, was couples who meet online are more likely to get divorced. I was quite interested when I saw this headline. Jameson brought it to the table as something interesting to talk about. This study found that 12% of couples who found their significant other online got divorced within the first three years of marriage, which, by the way, it doesn’t actually sound as bad as I thought, that percentage. 12% divorced in the first three years. That’s not too bad as a percentage. However, only 2% of lovers who met through friends got divorced in the first three years of marriage.

Matthew:

So 12% compared to 2% get divorced in the first three years after meeting online. What are your thoughts? And just I’ll add a little color to that. The study suggests that in the early years of marriage, couples who meet this way, i.e. online, might lack sufficient social capital or close support networks around them to deal with all the challenges they face. So I’m curious to know what you think of this, Steve.

Steve:

Yeah, that rings true to me intuitively that there might be a little less stability in online couples only because maybe they are coming from… Theoretically, you can meet someone anywhere in the world from any different social group from you. And there might be benefits to that, but it also might just be harder because it’s that sort of like from different worlds things, or very different families, and there’s a lot you discover. And yeah, there’s probably something, isn’t there, where just people who are from their friends share communities, probably just share pressure. There’s social capital, but there’s also just social pressure. Like we met through friends, we have all the same friends. What’s that line in American Psycho? He says to her, “I want to break up.” And she’s like, “No, I don’t think that’ll work.” And he’s like, “What do you mean?” And she’s like, “Well, your friends are my friends. We know the same people.”

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Evelyn Williams:

Ah, I don’t think we should see each other anymore.

Patrick Bateman:

But your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends. I really don’t think it would work.

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Steve:

And there’s something to that, right? It’s just more, in a way, the exit costs are higher if you are more socially intertwined.

Matthew:

Yeah. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Because that’s kind of what it seems to be alluding to, is that the entwining of your worlds, as opposed to each having a world. Because when it talks about social capital, you can have your own social capital coming to a relationship with someone you meet online and they can have their own social capital. But I suppose what seems to be alluded to here is that independent social capital doesn’t keep a relationship as strong as social capital that’s combined. I mean, I understand the pressure of this for people, even through our own mother, Steve. I remember mum at a certain point going, “I can’t do it. I can’t get to know anymore of your girlfriends. I can’t do it. I can’t do it, Matt. I can’t get close to them anymore. I can’t keep having it. I keep having me heart broken.”

Steve:

She got too attached.

Matthew:

She got too attached. But in fairness, people have always got very attached to mum. It’s always been a loss, hasn’t it, to anyone, really, in our lives, friends or otherwise, to lose mum from their lives. But she ended up with PTSD. It took her a long time to believe that it was worth getting close to someone again because she struggled with it. But I, conversely, I remember being with someone who was literally halfway across the world in my early twenties and that breakup being easy as pie at the time. Not because there was no heartbreak, but because there was none of the normal mess. I shouldn’t say it was easy as pie. It was easy as pie compared to-

Steve:

You are a heartless monster.

Matthew:

No, no, no. It wasn’t easy in terms of heartbreak, but it was easy in terms of it didn’t come with all of the mess that breakups come with when you have all the same friends, when you like each other’s friends, when you come to share each other’s worlds. I suppose the moral of this story, Steve, is once you’ve been on a date with someone, make them meet all of your friends and family on week one so that if they break up with you, they’ve got to break up with all of them too. They have to go up to your dad and go, “I’m very sorry.” And then your sister and go, “I’m very sorry.” And then your best friend and go, “I’m very sorry for your loss of me.”

Steve:

That’s a strategy some people use, is really get yourself in the old friend group. Wedge yourself in there so you are irreplaceable. The thing I will say, there could be a wider point about social glue, of that whole thing of like the Sebastian Junger Tribes book that I know Jameson’s a big fan of. But when closely knit together communities, or even just some community, does help to keep things in place. It helps when you’ve got these support systems.

I mean, that’s one of my sort of critiques of modern relationships is this idea that couples get together, silo themselves away, maybe in their urban apartment or wherever. And then it’s just expected. We will just do this all together. And then they wonder why they’re going mental with a kid screaming in a flat somewhere in New York or London. And it’s like, because it probably was meant to be that you have all these people around you who help pick up slack, make the relationship easier, support it. All those things do help. And probably if you meet through friends, there’s a little bit of that effect where you have these other parts to the relationship.

Matthew:

I suppose what this teaches us, if anything, is that there is a power in combining your two worlds. Which presupposes that you each bring a world to the table in the first place. But combining in some way, where appropriate, your friends, your family, creating more bonds between your respective worlds as opposed to just between the two of you, gives you a support network when things go wrong. It gives you a healthy amount of social pressure, as you alluded to. And it also just gives you the sense that you are losing something when you lose that person, that it transcends merely that person, that you’re not just part of a relationship but part of a world that you’re really enjoying being a part of, that you don’t want to walk away from. And all of those things, in reality, do contribute to our decision of whether to leave a relationship.

Steve:

I agree. And those of you who think you’ll solve this by running off to the countryside, you think I’m critiquing the city? No. Isolating yourself in the countryside is also a big mistake. So don’t think, “Oh, he’s saying get out of London and everything will be fixed.” No. I’m not leaving London. That’s what I’m saying.

Matthew:

That’s seems clear, Steve. I can’t imagine you on a farmyard property somewhere with a few pigs and chickens roaming around.

Steve:

I’ll be honest, it’s not my vibe, mate. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want the mud. I don’t want all of it.

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Matthew:

What’s going on, guys. This is Matthew. I just wanted to tell you before you clicked off this video, I have something I’m really excited about this month. On November the 16th, I am doing my first free live training that I’ve done in a long time. I’m calling it Dating With Results. Because inside this free training, I’m going to show you the five secrets to end the casual dating traps that so many people fall into over and over again, and how to put yourself on the authentic, no-games path to a real committed relationship.

If you feel like you’ve constantly been either struggling to get dates or going on dates that aren’t going anywhere, or in some kind of long-term situation-ship that isn’t actually graduating to a real, relationship, I promise you, you are going to get so much from this free live training. It’s happening on November the 16th. To sign up, go to DatingWithResults.com and make sure you’re putting your email address there even if you can’t make it on the 16th, because if you’re on the list, then we’ll send you the replay afterwards. But the only way to get that replay is to sign up on that page. All right. I will see you there on November the 16th. Thank you for watching.