Most people don't realize it, but until fairly recently in history, finding a life partner was considered too important to be left to youngsters under the influence of raging hormones. In most cultures, parents, often assisted by matchmakers or even astrologers supervised courtship. In the west, things only changed over the past few hundred years, as young adults were left to themselves to make these decisions.
Now, however, as people become more mobile, and more woman work outside the home, the ways of meeting and dating are changing again. One of the biggest changes is, of course the invention of online dating. Unfortunately, people just don't seem to be very good at selecting mates on many online dating services. Researchers say that customers of online dating services typically end up going out with less than 1 percent of the people whose profiles they have studied, and these dates, more often than not, end up being huge letdowns.
Anyone who has tried online dating has probably experienced some of the shortcomings of the process: misleading profiles, unrepresentative pictures, and lots of people looking for short term, casual relationships.
So it's no surprise that people are once again discovering that having help with matchmaking may not be such a bad idea - and having a team of scientists behind the process makes it even better.
Today, the most advanced of the services providing this type of help is eHarmony - which combines the power and convenience of the web with highly sophisticated compatibility algorithms.
eHarmony's system was developed by USC research psychologist Galen Buckwalter. His revolutionary idea was to draw on previous evidence that personality similarities predict happiness in a relationship, and he intensively studied thousands of married couples and correlated various characteristics with the couples' marital happiness. He then developed a personality test that is used to match people to the most compatible matches.
"We're not looking for clones, but our models emphasize similarities in personality and in values," Dr. Buckwalter said. "It's fairly common that differences can initially be appealing, but they're not so cute after two years. If you have someone who's Type A and real hard charging, put them with someone else like that. It's just much easier for people to relate if they don't have to negotiate all these differences."
Whatever they're doing, it must be working, becuase eHarmony estimates, based on a 2007 Harris Interactive survey, that it's responsible for an average of 236 marriages a day in the US. Clearly, eHarmony delivers happiness.
eHarmony is also now offering new customers the ability to review their matches for free. So, if you happen to be serious about meeting the right person, it may just be time to get a little help from the relationship experts at eHarmony.
Click here to check out their free offer.
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