Logan5 wrote:
Grisha, my vague recollection of the research on long term, romantic relationships/ marriage, is that the more similar two people are to each other, the greater the chance of "success" / the lower the likelihood of relationship will end. I believe this is quite well established for basic characteristics such as age, religion, education level, etc. (Although, keep in mind that these are general trends. I'm sure there are individual cases of quite different people in long, happy marriages.) There is probably some research on shorter term relationships, such as getting a second date. You could try searching the literature:
http://scholar.google.comhttp://oedb.org/library/features/best-o ... arch-sitesSome dating web sites try to utilise this principle by focusing on specific niches (e.g.
http://www.sciconnect.com/ ). Other dating web sites claim to have developed special algorithms/ models for successfully matching people. The following article discusses three such companies:
"How Do I Love Thee?"
''A growing number of Internet dating sites are relying on academic researchers to develop a new science of attraction. A first hand report from the front lines of an unprecedented social experiment.''
By Lori Gottlieb
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... thee/4602/ (I recommend you take the "science", discussed in that article, with a grain of salt.)
The catch, of course, is that these web sites charge $£¥€s. Are they worth the cost? I don't know, I've never used them. (For a critique, see, "Why You Should Never Pay For Online
Dating" <
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/why-y ... ne-dating/ >.)
Thanks for this.
As fa as general compatibility goes, I think that politics and religion are very important. I need a liberal atheist or similar. Formal educational credentials are irrelevant, but I'll admit if there are too many "obvious" misspelled words in a profile, it's kind of a red flag to me.
Beyond that, I'm baffled. I try to avoid really extroverted people, but I haven't actually done all that well with relatively introverted ones either.
And then for some reason I have this vague notion of "aesthetic compatibility", I kind of
have the notion that the person I am with should look a certain way that's very difficult to define - like we "belong" together - I really need to lose this one, I think...