![]() ![]() ![]() Do you believe you should express anger? Or do you believe in holding it in and waiting for it to fizzle out? Do you think happiness should be shared but anger should be suppressed? Sharing your meta-emotional style gives you a common emotional template, a common language. John Gottman at the University of Washington has amassed a persuasive body of evidence that meta-emotions are the real signal variable in terms of predicting whether or not a marriage will last. You want someone who handles emotions the same way you do. So the only type of similarity that matters for relationships that last is in an area that researchers call “meta-emotions.” But over the course of a lifetime, every couple has problems. Looking for similarity is founded on the belief that if you share things in common, you won’t have problems. Researcher Eli Finkel argues that the algorithms they use are really no better than random chance because the idea that the person we should be seeking out is our doppelganger ends up leading us astray. It’s less than 1% of the variation in overall marital satisfaction. But when you look at meta-analyses of thousands and thousands of couples you find that similarity is insignificant. Most online dating websites are focused on finding you a similar partner. Ruling someone out because they love Coldplay and don’t appreciate the subtle genius of Radiohead is a bad idea.Īnd all the online dating websites with their fancy algorithms fail because they’re based on the idea that similarity rules. In short, what we think we want in a spouse-someone who is just like us and likes all the same things-and what we want in real life are fundamentally mismatched. Meanwhile, a 2010 study of twenty-three thousand married couples found that the similarity of spouses accounted for less than 0.5 percent of spousal satisfaction. You ask, “Do they like the music I like? Do they enjoy the same movies I do?” Um, let’s stop right there…īecause the research shows similarity doesn’t matter.Īnother recent paper summarized the results of 313 separate studies, concluding that the similarity of personality and preferences-such as, the scientists say, “matching people who prefer Judd Apatow’s movies to Woody Allen’s with people who feel the same way”- had no effect on relationship well-being. Time to find out the answer to that often-ignored second question… Why Online Dating Doesn’t Work ![]()
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