You’ve met someone and there’s an initial attraction. Your date is not a loser, not a bad person, not a psycho, or a user. Whew, all the run-don’t-walk-away signs are absent.
You’ve taken endless compatibility and psychology tests but the dejavu is ringing true again. You’ve practically worn down the path of great beginnings. It starts off well and then there are those private thoughts that start creeping in: Really? I don’t like that at all! That makes me uncomfortable. I’m not sure that would work for me. It’s not the fit I thought it was…
Heartbreak Rising: The Problem
Discouragement sets in, and takes you into an all-too-familiar place. No wonder, according to U.S. News & World Report, there are 87 million single people living in the United States and over 40 million users visit online dating sites each year. That’s a lot of people! How to find The One?
According to a recent Pew survey, 31 percent of all American adults (63 million people) know someone who has used a dating Web site, while 26 percent (53 million people) know someone who has gone out with a person he or she met through a dating Web site. But is checking out profiles, like perusing an à la carte Chinese take-out menu, the best way to find a soul mate?
You ask a friend, how do you know when this is it? Your friend says, “I’ve been trying to answer that question in my own life for some time now, and it’s difficult.”
Another friend professes to know. However, this friend has been in two failed marriages and now is in a fleeting lust-driven state. That’s not what you want. You want to be “in it” with a partner.
Identify with this simple psychology test and avoid these two errors:
The Type One Error—Wasting time on an unsuitable choice.
Type Two Error—Risking the rejection of a suitable match.
Cupid Gets Smart: The Solution
Times have changed and for once that’s good news. Finding that special someone is leaving the realm of poetry and moving into the realm of science.
As professional matchmakers compete for customers, the battle has intrigued psychologists who study the mating game. In fact, more and more matchmakers, to keep up with and compete with their matchmaking peers, are turning to the science of compatibility to bolster their intuitive abilities. Trending now, the human touch of professional matchmaking has combined with the insight of scientific research in an effort to bring accuracy to Cupid’s arrow.
Researchers have consistently shown that individual personality factors such as sociability and desire for closeness have a powerful effect on the quality of marriages. In addition, the link between marital quality and the similarity within married couples in terms of personality, attitudes and beliefs has also been demonstrated through research. Best of all, the instruments, such as the one offered by InstantChemistry.com are currently available.
The Cupid process is still in vogue, but those Cupids now have doctorates in psychology and are following very sound research to revolutionize the mate selection process, eliminating the two major errors plaguing daters.
That’s a good thing; in fact a very good thing considering that most of us have not done a terrific job of mate selection on our own. Indeed, The U.S. Center for Disease Control recently estimated that the average couple has a greater likelihood of their marriage ending in divorce (53%) than remaining intact. The most recent summary report regarding the duration of marriages published by the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that the rate of divorce in the first 10 years of marriage has skyrocketed since the 1950s.
The question at the heart of bringing scientific Cupids to online dating is simple: In the subjective realm of love, can cold, hard science help? Those of us who have worked with couples and know relationship dynamics from a front-line perspective are convinced that a legitimate, science-based compatibility-matching process is essential for long-term satisfaction.
Not only will you avoid the Type One and Type Two errors, bringing science to the selection solution has advantages:
- The connection is likely to be stronger and attraction is likely to last longer.
- The best matching tools are validated with couples who are happily married, giving newly matched couples a distinctly better chance of long-lasting relationship harmony.
- The discouragement with the selection process that most daters have experienced, causing many to simply drop out is eliminated.
Combine compatibility with a physical attraction model based on genetics on top of that, as Instant Chemistry has done, a model that’s also empirically driven, that’s the Holy Grail of matchmaking.
Photo source: tressugar.com