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Turns Out Almost Everyone Will Now Meet Their Spouse Online

Turns Out Almost Everyone Will Now Meet Their Spouse Online

A new visual report shows just how much the dating game has changed over the years.

Nearly a decade ago, the most common way to meet your significant other was through your family, friends or school. But today, by far the No. 1 way to find your spouse is online. In 2024, 60% of couples met online.

Content expert James Eagle shared an animated chart on LinkedIn that captures almost a century of dating and how people met their partners from 1930-2024, offering an insight into how the advent of the internet changed the way people found their partners.

That’s bittersweet news for all the single people on apps. A report from June found that many Gen Z and millennial users aren’t thrilled with dating apps these days. However, most real relationships are cultivated online these days, meaning they’re stuck in a difficult trap.

“The current dating focus is almost like shopping,” relationship counselor Deb Fileta told us. “We go on Amazon, we’re scrolling through what I want and what I need, and we almost have a tendency to view relationships in that same way because it’s the same gesture. I’m swiping, I’m reading up, I’m clicking. It’s like a consumer approach to relationships.”

But online dating doesn’t have to be this way. As Fileta explains, there is a way to cultivate a genuine and healthy relationship online.

“The problem with a consumer mentality is it doesn’t do justice to the equation of a healthy relationship,” she explained. “The equation of a healthy relationship is that when you’re healthy, you attract healthy relationships, because you’re 50 percent of the equation. But the focus these days is so much on what I can get, rather than who am I when I’m standing alone? How healthy am I standing alone? The word relationship means how we relate to people, right? How we engage with people. But a huge portion of how we relate has to do with how healthy we are, right?

She continued, “Emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, spiritually healthy — how do I relate to the world? What patterns do I bring to the world of relationships? Am I stuck in cycles of unhealthy relationships? It’s important to take inventory of the fact that we tend to have that consumeristic approach.”

© 2023 RELEVANT Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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