In an article for Sojourners, David Batstone comments about online dating services (with my own emphasis):

There's a lot to like about online dating, but it also brings to the surface what's awry with romance and relationship. We hold onto the perverse notion that finding the right companion - independent of the course that we are pursuing with our lives - will bring us happiness. That rarely happens. Companions can be wonderful journey partners, but are unfit destinations. The highway is littered with sacred unions that combust due to compatibility exhaustion.

It doesn't surprise me that the fire-bright enthusiasm that online daters experience early on - I have friends who arrange as many as four different dates in a weekend - so often flame out in a matter of months. The burden of choice and steady wave of expectations overwhelm them.

The Internet is a fabulous search tool and enables serendipitous connections. Yet we can comb a worldwide web and never discover our own heart.

Thank you! It always makes me feel better when my own ideas are validated by someone else, since most of our society seems to be forcing people my age to search for a "soul mate" or a "partner" and quick!

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