Last week, Felicity posted a review of Neil Warren’s book Finding the Love of Your Life. She expressed her embarrassment about posting the review. I was not surprised by this feeling. For some reason we all shy away from reading books about relationships. Perhaps we think that reading a book shows our inability to pick up the same information through real-world experience. I don’t think this is true. I believe that a healthy balance between study and action is best.
As I mentioned in the comment to Felicity’s post, if we want to know more about finances, we study books on finances. We don’t just blindly dump our life savings into high risk investments. Thankfully, doctors spend a great deal of time in the classroom studying the knowledge of experts before they start jabbing scalpels into their patients. Why should relationships be any different? Who you marry is one of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime. Dating is an extension of that decision. Shouldn’t we therefore put more time into preparing ourselves? If we were better informed about relationships, is it possible that the divorce rates would be more lower than they are now?
The core of Falling in Love addresses this topic. After many years as working as a marriage counselor, Warren decided that the most successful relationships are those in which the partners have a broad foundation of common personality traits, interests, habits, etc. – exactly 29 to be precise. After a rather lengthy introduction, Warren describes all 29 dimensions in depth. He believes that a soul mate would be a man or woman of the opposite gender who matches your scores in all 29 dimensions.
Fine. That’s well and dandy. But how am I supposed to locate that person? That’s where eharmony.com comes in. Warren is the founder of this website. I will admit that my initial reaction was negative, but with some explaining from Dr. Warren, I’m intrigued by the idea. The method behind the website is that each person upon registering completes an extensive personality profile. The software breaks down the responses into the 29 categories. The site will then go out and look for someone that matches you. I’ll admit I’m not a firm proponent of internet dating, but I find the principle interesting. Why not utilize the power that technology has to offer? What are the odds of me actually locating someone that matches all 29 dimensions, especially if they live in another city or state? Why not let the computer do it?
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