How Couples Meet in the 21st Century

A case study in exponential social change

Exponential social change is rare in my research on modern America. Most social trends move steadily, almost linearly. We’re stubborn apes, I guess. But this topic—how couples meet—has driven a historically unprecedented mass shift in how romantic couples meet in the last 15 years alone.

For the record, I met my wife in a bar/music venue during a fundraising event. My close friend was a loose acquaintance of hers. It was not an internet match.

Watch this fantastic animated visualization of recent research by Stanford sociologists and take notes. I’ll share my interpretations after you’re done watching. PS - The entire study, original charts, and methodology are HERE for those who simply must know.

Key Trends in Meeting Life Partners

Here are the major trends I culled from watching this animation (and before I read the academic paper)

1. “Friends” Takes Off After World WWII As Family Leverage Declines

   In the 1940s, couples now meet primarily through friends, and family is no longer the dominant source of coupling (semi-arranged marriage). The family would continue to plummet in importance as the family became a declining source of employment opportunities and as lifestyle fragmentation and delayed marriage accelerated.

2. “Bars” and “Coworkers” Grow as Sources in a Steady, Linear Fashion

   The rise in coed offices is a significant driver here, further eroding the family’s influence and increasing all sorts of non-traditional matches. And lots of shallow, horny ones that didn’t last. Co-ed offices also helped drive the growth in “bars” as a source due to post-work happy hours, the explosion of white-collar business trips, etc. By the 1980s, “Bars/Restaurants” was among the top three sources for meeting a life partner in America.

3. The Triumph of “Friends” in the 1990s

   I guess there was a valid reason the TV show “Friends” became so popular by the late 1990s. Urban strangers-made-good were now the dominant source of coupling. At least there was some foreknowledge before you asked someone out on a date. But did it compare to the intensely networked, local knowledge of a 1930s church coupling? I doubt it. Of course, knowing more about your life partner does not necessarily correlate with a stable, healthy marriage.

4. “Online” Overtakes “Friends” in the 2000s

   2003 was when I first dabbled in online dating. But, ultimately, it was not for me. I did not foresee the rapid collapse of “friends” as the primary source, having come of age in the 1980s and 1990s. This single shift in the dataset is genuinely exponential, almost hyperbolic in its slope. I can only say that the triumph of online dating must now lead to many misfires and instant rejections. I wrote about why in a recent essay. It’s far more performative and prone to B.S. than asking someone out at the office.

1930 vs. 2024

In 1930, people got married young and early, and family ties were stronger for everyone. The dominance of family, school (K-12), and friends represents a rapidly urbanizing world. If we took this data back to 1830, “church” and “neighbors” would have been much higher. “Friends” would have been “Church” anyways, no?

Today, couples mainly meet online (first). The power of traditional networks (family, school, church) is minimal. Yet, friends are still hanging on tight as the #2 vector. I suspect they still play a crucial role in filtering your online choices…somehow. My big takeaway from the 2024 chart is that people are meeting within a pool of weak ties where mutual knowledge of each other is shallower than ever in deep historical terms.

This permits romance to morph from a softening of patriarchy into a tool of sexual predation and bullshit artistry (if mis-used). The issue here is less about the internet than what online dating encourages - shallow match-making based on misleading individual performances designed to charm.

If you have close friends who knew you and your potential partner well before you married, you are among a minority who understand how powerful that total knowledge is.

The triumph of virtual encounters may become a shallow first stage in modern dating, allowing you to soak in enormous choices before committing to a real-life test date. If so, this just drags out the process. I don’t see how it improves it more than sourcing from your friend network. It could lead to years of disastrous time-wasting and fantasy-seeking.

As I wrote in my recent book, offering this much choice in a domain of life so crucial to our mental health seems like a power you would only give to an older, mature adult. Not to young adults with little romantic or sexual experience. Right? They need filtered choices, not endless choices.

Filtering was precisely what sourcing a mate from within established, local social networks accomplished prior to World War II. There was lots of filtering and accumulated wisdom, resulting in a narrower set of choices built on collective wisdom, not individuated preferences.

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A new podcast appearance!

Mike Oppenheim

invited me on his podcast “Coffin Talk,” where he candidly discusses America’s views on death and dying. As a former hospice nurse, he has seen up close how emotionally unprepared we are for this inevitable life experience.

Check it out on Apple Podcasts.

Don’t forget that my new book, Our Worst Strength: American Individualism and Its Hidden Discontents, is now available as a rolling podcast series, narrated by me, but only for paid subscribers. I’ve recorded up through Chapter 12 of 35. In a few months, the beast will be binge-able! It’s a big book.