What Dating In America Is ACTUALLY Like

We all have questions about dating and relationships: Do people actually meet people at bars? Does online dating ever work? Is the best way to catch someone’s eye to smile, or should I try to look mysterious and aloof? (Well, these are some of my questions, at least.)

Potentially more frustrating than the infinite jumble of second, third, and fourth guesses—hard to imagine, I know—is the conflicting feedback they tend to provoke.

Some of your friends think online dating is “desperate” and that relationships resulting from a yoga-class/grocery-store meet cute are the only ones worth pursuing.

Your mom insists that the only thing standing between you and “happily ever after” is your long-standing refusal to be set up with that “nice boy who works in investment banking.”

Your co-worker is engaged to a guy she met on Match.com.

In case I haven’t already made this clear, I obviously don’t have all the answers. But now, thanks to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (and this nifty infographic from Candle Love), all of us playing life’s (potentially rigged) dating game can make better-informed decisions about how we date and what to expect when we do.

Bonus: You’ll have a snappy retort on tap next time someone asks, “Who really dates online these days?”

I’m thinking something along the lines of … “It’s only about 40 million Americans. No biggie.”

But, in this and in every endeavor you undertake (quip-related or otherwise), you do you. Now, go forth and do you—better.

Source: Mind Body Green