E-courtship & Online Romances

One of the things mentioned in a number of the BTW I Love You reviews is that readers knew of couples who met online or that they themselves had met their partners through the Internet. As many of you may know, the story centers around a long distance relationship that slowly develops when two college aged guys meet online. What's awesome is that there actually may be research out there supporting the strength of online romance.

I'm admittedly kind of a geek. Yup. That's right.  So when my alumni magazine came in the mail, instead of recycling it or beelining straight to the "what are my classmates doing?" sections, I actually read those sections on research and published academia articles. *points at self* See? Geek. :)

Imagine my surprise when I came across an article buried among the technical science papers that described research done by a psychologist on online romance. According to a recent article published by University of Chicago psychology professor John Cacioppo in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, more than one-third of marriages in America now begin online, and those online marriages were both slightly more likely to rank higher in marriage satisfaction and slightly less likely to break up.

Sure, it's "slightly," but it's still statistically significant. I just thought it was pretty nifty that academia came forward with actual findings of a scientific foundation for what many of us have already discovered: "online dating may offer a larger pool of prospective partners, greater selectivity, and more advance screening." ("Citations" by Jason Kelly and Lydiolyle Gibson in The University of Chicago Magazine)

Like I said. Welcome to Geekville, population me. :)

Live long and prosper,

NJ