Top 10 Interesting Facts About Dating

We are currently in the golden-age of dating! With the rise of technology, our love-lives have only been enhanced. Our communication has been facilitated, helping us find potential partners. After scouring countless relationship research papers, and trawling through the annals of history, I present you with 10 amazing facts about this unique mating ritual we call dating.

1.    The longer you spend dating somebody before marrying, the less likely the marriage is to end in divorce.

What’s the secret to a successful marriage? I don’t imagine there is a straight-forward answer, however Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon of Emory University conducted a 2014 study involving 3,151 people and found that couples that had dated for three or more years before proposing were almost 40% less likely to divorce compared to those that had dated for less than one year. If that’s not an excuse to take things slow, I don’t know what is.

2.    A woman’s happiness is a key indicator of a successful relationship.

A 2014 study at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences found that overall marital quality was generally greater if women were content with their relationship, whereas the happiness of the man did not seem to affect marital quality as much. What does this tell us? Well Rutgers School of Arts and Science’s Deborah Carr suggests that satisfied wives are more likely to do a lot more for their husband, whereas men, satisfied or not, are less as likely to provide support.

3.    No correlation has been found between astrological sign and compatibility.

This isn’t much of a surprise to anybody, yet OkCupid still decided to take it upon themselves to gather information from over 500,000 of their users’ profiles to determine once and for all whether there was a single correlation between compatibility and star sign.

So what you mean to tell me is that I can’t neatly fit over 7 billion people into 12 neat categories? Shocker.

4.    Iceland has a dating app that stops you hooking up with your cousin.

Unfortunately, Icelanders keep accidentally sleeping with their relatives. This is mainly due to 3 reasons:

1.    Iceland has a relatively small population (Roughly 320,000).

2.    Iceland has very few foreign nationals.

3.    Icelandic surnames do not give you much indication of lineage.

If this was a problem for most countries, a good rule of thumb would be to avoid anybody who shares your surname, however, even siblings in Iceland can have different surnames since your surname would be the first name of your father and whether you were his son or daughter e.g. Svensson (Son of Sven), Svensdottir (Daughter of Sven).

Thankfully, Icelandic citizens can download a dating app called Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders) which will tell you whether you’re related or not by bumping your phones together, saving you the embarrassment of finding out at the next family Christmas dinner.

5.    Before it was the video sharing giant it is today, YouTube began as a dating site.

When YouTube first launched, the founders of the website were unsure which direction they wanted to take it in. Since the domain was registered on Valentine’s Day, they gave the website the tagline of “Tune In Hook Up”. The aim was initially to provide a platform where lovelorn singles could upload videos of themselves and hook up with other users.

6.    Wearing red can make people more attracted to you.

A word of advice for those looking to improve their dating life: Wear red. Due to the themes we associate with the colour red, it can affect how we perceive people. A 2008 study by the American Psychological Association found that men rated women wearing red as more attractive, associating the colour with sex. A separate 2010 study by the same association, found women to associate the colour red with power and status.

7.    People are more likely to date somebody “out of their league” if they knew the person much longer beforehand.

According to a study conducted in 2014 by Northwestern University and the University of Texas, you have the best chance of landing somebody more attractive than you if you’d known that person a significant amount of time before dating. This also means you’re equally as likely to date somebody less attractive than you if you knew them for a long time.

Of the 167 Couples studied, people who started dating after a short period of knowing each other were more likely to be the same level of attractiveness. What we learn from this is that the more you know somebody, the more you’re attracted to their character; not their looks.

8.    The 19th century telegram was commonly used to find dates and has been nicknamed “the Victorian internet”.

The 19th century telegram was a way of contacting people over long distances by sending messages in Morse code. Not long after the telegram was popularised, people were using it in the same way we would use the internet today. People would look for romance over long distances, and take part in Morse code chat rooms with the hope they might meet somebody there.

9.    There is a common “dating rule” to determine whether your potential love interest is too young for you.

Have you ever questioned whether or not you should date somebody because you felt that they were just too young for you? Luckily, there’s general rule of thumb to put your mind at ease. By halving your age, then adding 7 you should be able to accurately determine whether or not that person you’ve had your eye on for months is too young for you. You’re 36 and they’re 24? Better luck next year…

10.  Men are usually the first ones to say “I love you”.

A 2011 study by the American Psychological Association involving 94 participants ageing from 18 to 69 found that the participating males were more than twice as likely as females to confess their love to their partner. Not only had the majority of the males in the study been the first to say “I love you” in their current relationship, but were also the first to say it in any relationship prior. The only sample group where women were marginally more likely to profess their love first were those more inclined towards no-strings-attached relationships.

Share this facts with your friends…