Is Online Better Than Offline for Meeting Partners? Depends: Are You Looking to Marry or to Date?

Abstract

Previous studies that compared differences in the outcomes of relationships that begin online compared to traditional offline venues have primarily looked at marital relationships. The present study extends this investigation by including non-marital relationships in the comparison. It further investigates if the breakup rate of relationships (both marital and non-marital) varies as a result of meeting online versus offline, and if other factors outside of the meeting venue predict relationship dissolution. Data are used from Waves I, II, and III of a nationally representative survey of 4,002 respondents. Results suggest that couples who met their partners online were more likely to be involved in dating and romantic relationships than marital relationships compared to couples who met offline. Furthermore, the breakup rates for both marital and non-marital romantic relationships was found to be higher for couples who met online than couples who met through offline venues. In addition to meeting venue, relationship quality and duration of relationship were found to be significant factors that predicted if couples would stay together or break up. Evidence drawn from theory and previous research are used to explain these observed trends.

Introduction

Evidence of online-initiated personal relationships formed between strangers can be traced back to the early days of MOOs and MUDs (multi-user domains).^1,2 As many as 93.6% of users of these Web sites engaged in online relationships with each other, and 26.3% of these relationships were romantic in nature. The last few years has seen an exponential growth of such online-initiated romantic relationships with the advent of online dating sites and social networking sites (SNS) that specifically focus on initiating relationships and promoting companionship among people. Online matchmaking and dating Web sites such as Match.com, eHarmony.com, and Zoosk.com have served as effective initiators of romantic relationships.^3,4 One in 10 Americans have reported using an online dating site or mobile application to find their partners, and as many as 66% of these online daters have gone on an actual date with the person they met online.⁵ Not just initiating relationships but meeting partners online has also resulted in committed relationships and marriages. In a recent study sponsored by eHarmony.com, it was found that one out of three marriages nowadays begins online.⁴ Among the many advantages of meeting partners online, some of the prominent ones are: (a) a wide range of potential dating partners to choose from, thus increasing odds of finding a better match; (b) finding like-minded people who share similar values and interests; and (c) achieving quick intimacy in relationships.^5–7 These unique advantages have made online dating more effective than traditional offline ways of dating.³

Comparison of meeting partners online versus offline has already been conducted in previous studies.^4,8 Findings from these studies suggested that married couples who had met their partners online reported greater relationship satisfaction and relationship quality and lower divorce rates compared to couples who had met their partners offline. There are three issues that have been overlooked in these studies. First, the studies have primarily focused on marital relationships. However, not all online-initiated relationships result in marriages. As a matter of fact, only 49% of online daters reported looking for marital relationships, while a majority looked for casual dating and companionship.⁹ Second, while comparing relationship dissolution rates, researchers have treated married, partnered, and committed relationships as one homogenous unit.⁸ This can bias results, as relationship dissolution rates can vary as per the relationship type, given the variation in legal and emotional ramifications associated with marital breakups compared to breakups in dating relationships. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the presence of different types of relationships while comparing offline versus online venues of meeting partners. Finally, these studies have focused on predicting the odds of relationship dissolution based on whether couples met online or offline. However, there are other factors outside of how couples met that might affect marital and relationship dissolution.⁴ Therefore, the aim of the present paper is address these three issues by checking (a) the different types of relationships being formed as a result of meeting partner online versus offline, (b) the differences in relationship dissolution as a function of relationship type and meeting venue, and (c) factors outside of meeting online or offline that can explain relationship dissolution.

Methods

Data from Waves I, II, and III of the nationally representative longitudinal survey “How Couples Meet and Stay Together” (HCMST) is used for the present analyses. Information on data collection, sampling, and questionnaires are available in Rosenfeld and Thomas.⁴ Out of 4,002 adults, 3,009 who reported being married or in a romantic partnership were included in Wave I of the survey. Wave II was administered 1 year after Wave I, while Wave III was administered after 2 years. Both the follow-up surveys assessed couple dissolution rate by asking couples from previous wave(s) if they were still together. The response rate for Wave II was 84%, while the response rate for Wave III was 71%. After including the variables of interest and excluding cases with missing variables, the final sample size for the present analyses from Wave I was 2,923, while Wave II and III had a sample size of 2,457 and 1,806 respondents after excluding unqualified cases and dropout rates. Table 1 shows the summary statistics for Wave I of the HCMST survey based on the venue in which couples met.

Table 1.

Wave I Descriptive Statistics

	Meeting venue
	Offline	Online
N	2,643	280
Married	1,786	90
Partnered	857	190
Average relationship duration (years)	19.09 (15.63)	4.34 (4.02)
Average respondent age (years)	38.85 (11.61)	46.79 (15.75)
Average relationship quality	4.46 (0.77)	4.41 (0.75)
Partner race
Non-Hispanic white	2,131	223
Non-Hispanic black	210	21
Non-Hispanic American Indian	21	1
Non-Hispanic Pacific Islander	48	12
Non-Hispanic other	29	2
Hispanic	204	21
Respondent race
Non-Hispanic white	2068	214
Non-Hispanic black	206	18
Non-Hispanic American Indian	24	5
Non-Hispanic Pacific Islander	53	6
Non-Hispanic other	21	4
Hispanic	271	33

Note: The relationship quality was measured on a 5-point Likert type scale where the closer the score is to 5, the better the relationship quality. Numbers in parentheses indicated the standard deviations.

Results

In Wave I, out of 2,923 respondents, 1,876 (64.18%) reported being married, and 1,047 (35.8%) reported being involved in a romantic relationship. Consistent with previous findings, a large portion of Americans reported meeting through traditional offline ways.^4,8 Out of 2,923 respondents, 2,643 met their spouses or partners offline, while only 280 met them online. On average, the duration of relationship for couples who met offline (M=19.1, SD=15.69) was greater than couples who met online (M=4.34, SD=4.02). The average age of respondents who met their partners offline was higher (M=46.79, SD=15.74) than their online counterparts (M=38.85, SD=11.61). Since the duration of relationship and age of respondents varied across online and offline meeting venues, they were used as covariates in the analyses along with respondents' and their partners' age and race.

In Wave I, distribution of married and romantic couples across online and offline meeting venues was significantly different. Only 32% of respondents who met their partners online were married compared to 67% who met their partners offline. Thus, a majority of couples who met their partners online tended to be in romantic relationships than being married to them even after controlling for covariates, χ²(6)=939.53, p<0.005. Regression analyses revealed that couples who met each other offline were more likely to get married compared to couples who had met each other online, β = −0.33, p<0.005.

The next analysis focused on finding differences in the percentage of romantic partnerships and marriages ending in separation or divorce for couples whose relationships started online versus offline. For married couples, the difference in the marital breakup rates was marginally significant in Wave II—χ²(1)=2.92, p=0.09—but reached statistical significance in Wave III—χ²(1)=13.15, p<0.0005. Eight percent of married couples who met their spouses online compared to approximately 2% of married couples who met their spouses offline reported to have ended their marriage in separation or divorce. This difference was statistically significant after controlling for the covariates, χ²(6)=13.14, p<0.05. The breakup rate of romantic couples showed a different trend than married couples. The difference in the breakup rates was significant in Wave II, χ²(1)=5.37, p<0.05. Compared to 23% couples who had met offline, 32% of couples who had met online had broken up in the following year of the main survey. This effect was statistically significant after controlling for the covariates, χ²(6)=32.25, p<0.0005. However, unlike married couples, the relationship dissolution rates was not significantly different for offline and online couples in Wave III, χ²(1)=0.0746, p=0.79. Romantic couples who had met online were just as likely to break up as romantic couples who had met offline.

Further regression analyses revealed that there were factors that influenced marriage dissolutions or partnership breakups above and beyond meeting partners online or offline. For married couples, relationship quality emerged as a strong predictor for determining if couples would remain married or end up divorced or separated. Married couples with greater relationship quality were almost twice as likely to remain married compared to married couples with lower relationship quality, β=0.56, p<0.05. For partnered couples, length of relationship emerged as a significant factor that determined if couples would stay together or break up. The odds of breaking up decreased with the increasing duration of relationship, β=0.05, p<0.005. Initially, relationship quality did increase the odds of couples staying together—β=0.93, p<0.0005—but in the longer run, it did not determine whether couples would stay together—β=0.27, p=0.145. Refer to Table 2 for summary of results.

Table 2.

Ordinary Logistic Regressions for Finding Predictors of Marital and Relationship Longevity

	For married couples				For unmarried couples
	Wave II		Wave III		Wave II		Wave III
	N=1,539		N=1,308		N=846		N=498
	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE
Meeting venue (online=1)	0	(Omitted)	−1.64^*	0.54	−0.39	0.21	0.29	0.36
Relationship quality	0.87^*	0.12	0.56^*	0.20	0.93^**	0.11	0.27	0.19
Duration of relationship	0.01	0.013	0.02	0.02	0.05^*	0.01	0.11^**	0.02
Partner age	0.003	0.02	0.00	0.03	−0.01	0.01	0.01	0.02
Respondent age	−0.06^*	0.02	−0.04	0.02	0.01	0.01	−0.01	0.02
Partner race	0.07	0.13	−0.01	0.15	−0.05	0.05	−0.02	0.09
Respondent race	0.06	0.12	−0.11	0.12	0.07	0.05	−0.09	0.08
Constant	1.96	0.79	3.03	1.16	−3.12	0.57	0.09	0.97
Pseudo R²	0.133		0.0701		0.112		0.0732

Note: For married couples in Wave II, none of the couples who had met online broke up. This resulted in a potential multi-collinearity issue for which the online versus offline parameter was excluded from the regression analysis.

p<0.05; ^**p<0.0005.

Discussion

Results from the present study found more than 60% couples who met online were in non-marital romantic relationships, and a minority reported being married. Contrary to previous findings, it was found that online couples had lower odds of getting married than offline couples.⁴ There are three possible reasons that can explain the tendency of online couples staying in non-marital relationships than getting married.

First, online dating has been shown to provide individuals with too many options to choose from that leads to a lack of exclusivity where individuals find it difficult to be locked into one particular dating partner when they know that hundreds of other potential dating partners are available. This also leads to delayed commitment to the person with whom they ultimately choose to date and start a relationship. This is because online daters know that they can easily look for other potential partners from the dating sites or SNS if the current relationship does not work out.^10,11

Second, relationships initiated online take more time to develop compared to relationships initiated offline. The trajectory of online-initiated relationship development is different from relationships that develop in traditional offline settings.⁴ In online-initiated relationships, individuals first put up their profiles, and then peruse profiles of other potential dating partners. This is followed by sending and receiving e-mails and personal messages to initiate the relationship with prospective partners.¹² Before the online partners decide to meet face-to-face, they engage in longer time frames of online courtship where they text, private message, and call each other.¹³ Thus, within a given frame of time, online relationships are less matured and developed compared to their offline counterparts.

Third, online daters have also shown to take more time to develop relationships purposefully in order to increase the level of trust with their partners, given some of the negative stigma associated with online dating.^14,15,16 Eighty-six percent of online daters have reported being concerned about falsification of personal information and deceptive self-presentation of their dating partners.¹⁵ Hence, online daters invest more time in getting to know their partners to increase the odds of revealing any discrepant information before getting too emotionally involved. Since exclusivity, commitment, and trust are some of the important determining factors of starting a marital relationship, the lack of these can explain the lower percentage of marriages compared to romantic relationships among online daters.

Contrary to previous findings, this study showed that online couples tended to break up more than their offline counterparts, and this effect was more pronounced among unmarried couples in Wave II and married couples in Wave III.⁴ Since relationship breakup and marital dissolution can be explained by a number of other factors, it is important to consider them in addition to how couples met in order to obtain a more accurate and holistic picture. For married couples, relationship quality was found to be a significant factor for determining whether couples would stay together, irrespective of the duration of the relationship. A previous study illustrated that married couples indeed chose to continue their marriage only if they found their relationship with their spouse fulfilling and gratifying, and not because of that fact that they had been together for a long time.¹⁷ In contrast, duration of relationships played a significant role in determining whether unmarried romantic couples would stay together. Time is important in the development of romantic relationships. The more couples spend time with each other, the more they get to know the other person and develop interpersonal trust and intimacy with them. This leads to greater stability of the relationship, which in turn increases the odds of them staying together in the long run.¹⁴

This study provides further insight into online- and offline-initiated relationships by considering issues that were not addressed by previous studies. Even though a large percentage of marriages in recent years have resulted from couples meeting online, looking for partners online may potentially suppress the desire for getting married. Furthermore, there are other factors outside of how couples meet that determine whether couples will stay together. For married couples, it is important to have higher relationship quality to ensure marital longevity, while for romantic unmarried couples, it is important to spend time in developing the relationship to avoid breaking up.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

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