if we are looking for a romantic partner it is important to get the complete & whole picture of who they are rather than breaking all their attributes down into pieces & analyzing them with our mind too much.  Unfortunately this is just what online dating sites rely on in profiles, where all interests & personality traits are listed.  Dan Ariely, Director of The Center for Advanced Hindsight, thinks that this encourages superficial assessments of others & causes a lot of dissatisfaction with online dating sites.

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it seems that we are such social animals now that even breaking up & divorce is catching too in social networks, not just loneliness!  I read about some recent research that suggest that when your friends or family split that it gives others confidence to do it too.  I gather & would hope that would only be if the expiration date on the relationship/marriage had come due or was overdue.  Nothing stays the same & people & relationships change over time and it is unrealistic to think that two people will stay together FOREVER.  Some do that’s true & it is brilliant that they are able to integrate their love with their personal development & evolvement.  But for the rest of us it seems we have to be ready to roll with the fast pace of life & intense pressures that we face in modern life.  Every individual ultimately will move & grow in the direction that they choose and we cannot limit or manipulate a partner’s path by demanding that they do what we want or go our way!  Ultimately that will come back & hit you in the face, control & manipulation of another never really work to anyone’s benefit in my experience.

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I have always thought that communication and the mind play an important role in attraction between a couple.  Obviously online dating & social networks would not be able to deliver potential mates, if this wasn’t  true on some level.  However I recently discovered some research that vindicated my ideas about this.

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I read an article this week in BitchMedia which exposed a new move on OKCupid that is a bit disconcerting to say the least.  Apparently OKCupid now know who is ‘most attractive’ and are segregating users by most & least attractive categories.  Gee I want to know how OKCupid have access to knowing what I consider attractive or anyone for that matter????

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we have too many choices these days, as technology has increased our options in many ways & many things including dates & partners. This may also have contributed to the fact that many women have difficulty finding a suitable partner & many man do not want to settle with one woman thinking they may be missing out on something better. I watched a TED talk by Barry Schwartz on ‘The Paradox of Choice’ which I found very interesting.  It is a complex issue and the PsyBlog has a neat summary of the talk:

Too many choices cause:
Paralysis rather than liberation – people prefer to make no decision rather than make a complicated choice.
Less satisfaction with decisions as people have greater reason to regret the decisions they have made.
Unrealistic expectations.
Self-blame – when experiences are not perfect, people blame themselves.
Schwartz also argues that in modern affluent societies, too much choice may be a significant contributor to depression. He is the author of ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less’.

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