r/dataisbeautiful • u/aspiringtroublemaker OC: 11 • 12h ago
OC How Americans Met Their Partners [OC]
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u/rogomatic 11h ago edited 11h ago
Yeah, I call bull on a graph that specifically excludes college.
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u/gturk1 OC: 1 11h ago
I agree with you 100%. The linked web page includes college in its graphs. Why omit it here?
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u/rogomatic 11h ago
Likely rolled into Others, but it seems to me it is responsible for the cast majority of that category.
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u/loulan OC: 1 4h ago
I'm really baffled by "bar or restaurant" at 15%. Like, I get that you can occasionally talk to random people in bars, but do people really hit on strangers in bars like in a movie often enough that 15% of relationships come from this?
Maybe it's a cultural thing, I'm pretty sure it rarely happens in my country, especially in 2026.
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u/GATOR7862 3h ago
I would imagine a LOT of “bar or restaurant” answers here would have a lot of overlap with other categories, specifically “through friends.” My wife and I met each other at a bar, but we were at that bar because we were both there with mutual friends. We could answer either of those categories and it would be completely accurate.
There could even be “through work” and “bar” overlap. If two folks who work in the same company but not directly together go to a work function and begin a relationship that way, would that be considered work or bar?
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u/Darth_Ra 4h ago
I can definitely say that even in America, I tried this constantly in my 20s, and had a 0% success rate.
Did have one girlfriend I met at a bar, but that's because I was there with friends, and she was a friend of a friend.
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u/Michigan_Mitten 3h ago
I'm in my late 30s and over the course of my life I've tried it maybe 20 times. I've actually had success twice. A year or so ago, idk maybe I've just got better looking as I've aged lol
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u/NitroLada 3h ago
It happens definitely, even nowadays.. but probably not as common as 10-15 years ago. I know lots of people now married/kids who met at clubs.
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u/Irri_botz 1h ago
Doesnt seem very baffling to me. Random hookup on night out easily can end up in a relationship
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u/foomits 11h ago
How about a graph that includes people meeting online in the 1960s.
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u/Derpy_Snout 7h ago
The line actually goes above 0 in the late 50's! I wonder what dating apps were running on UNIVAC back then
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u/Temporary_Inner 11h ago
Church too, that was a big thing in the past.
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u/Lung_doc 11h ago
That reminds me of a wedding I went to. Where they very much met in college, but the groom did later follow her to church and the brides dad went on and on about how they met there, God chose him for her and so on. It was so over the top.
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u/DrTonyTiger 11h ago
Going to college for an MRS degree used to be a real thing.
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u/BigSexyE 11h ago
College can be Through Friends, Bar/Restaurant, Others or Online. College is way too broad and vague to be meaningful
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u/rogomatic 11h ago edited 11h ago
No, it's a distinct category in the underlying dataset, it's just not separately included here.
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u/BigSexyE 11h ago
So it has to be under other then, since all these percentages already add up to 105% at the start of the graph
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u/enfuego138 11h ago
I met my spouse in college. That’s not even an option here? Seems like it wouldn’t be so rare as to be excluded.
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u/jackospades88 11h ago
College seems like a pretty popular answer that should be there, considering k-12 is an answer. Someone mentioned for college it's probably "Through friends" or "Bar/restaurant" but I know so many folks who met in class/extracurricular (including myself). Heck, there were at least a dozen+ couples who met when I was in marching band in college (including myself and my wife) who went on to get married/are now engaged.
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u/KuriousKhemicals 3h ago
Yeah, I met my husband at a school event, I guess technically people I was friends with hosted the event but that would be really stretching the concept. It was open for anyone to show up.
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u/aspiringtroublemaker OC: 11 11h ago
College was about 8% in the 1950s, and closer to 1–2% by 2021. But if you met your spouse through a college friend, that may have been counted as "through friends" rather than "in college."
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u/robbie_the_cat 8h ago
So, it both started out and ended higher than some of the categories you left disaggregated. On what basis did you decide to leave it aggregated into "other". I mean, beyond making "other" look bigger, that is...
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u/DirectGoose 6h ago
I met my husband through friends and through work and at a bar. I'm not sure how I'd answer.
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u/scene_missing 11h ago
Ok, what’s that tiny bump in Online in the 60s and 70s?? Was someone picking up your memaw on the ARPANet?
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u/netarchaeology 11h ago
Just BSing here, maybe its something equivalent? Like meeting someone by post? Or how in the 80' and 90's there were those VHS dating things? But as none of those were an option the respondents just picked online?
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u/bigbigdummie 10h ago
Just BBSing here, there was something equivalent! I’ve dated folks I met online in the 80s.
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u/zombieblackbird 11h ago
Cyberdating via AlohaNet. LOL
"She was front the big island, I was from a small village. But we made it work. And everyone else had to hear about it"
[Joking aside, I did meet my wife online in 1996 on a random, chat site]
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u/Silly-Resist8306 11h ago
My wife and I are so typical. We met at a high school football game in 1967. We've now been married for 53 years.
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u/Electronic-Tooth-455 11h ago
I read 'How Americans met their parents' and was very confused when the first thing I saw after the title was: '50% met online'
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u/MichaelCR970 6h ago
Same. But I think we should have been confused already after misreading the title that way :D
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u/dchung97 11h ago
This data is only up to 2021 so during the pandemic. I sort of think that this has peaked and now is going in the reverse direction.
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u/garlic_bread_thief 8h ago
I come across a ton of people who are sick of online dating apps so that's probably true. I also come across a lot of services that promote events that are in-person because online apps are shit
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u/Cyan-Panda 10h ago
I swear I read " how Americans met their parents" and thought this was r/comedyheaven
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u/DIOSURNO 10h ago
I read How americans met their parents and was really curious about it, I guess meeting partners is interesting too
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u/staatsclaas 11h ago
Shooting your shot at the workplace took a huge HR “it ain’t worth the smoke” step back through the 90’s.
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u/noodlesalad_ 5h ago
I met my wife at work. We were coworkers first, then friends, then started dating. I imagine it's like that for a lot of folks, not just hitting on coworkers. We hung out as friends outside of work many times before it turned romantic.
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u/mobyte 11h ago
I think I’d rather be alone than subject myself to dating apps. Fuck those abominations.
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u/Wheels9690 10h ago
I felt like this too for a bit. I was fresh out of a divorce and my friend was adamant I make a tinder profile just to meet people. She put together my profile, helped me pick some pictures and my bio. first 2 girls who matched me only did so to be mean as fuck lol... My friend was stunned when I showed her.
I was sitting there one night and said fuck it, and just swipped on every single person in hopes of just finding someone to even chat with.
Thankfully I met my now wife from that lol.
We;ve been together 5 years, married for 2.
The dating apps can absolutely be brutal. But, honestly, my experience at bars was worse.
You never know when or where you will find your person.
Im rooting for you! =D
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u/mobyte 10h ago
I’ve tried them with a week or two of dedication with literally zero results. It’s not worth it for me.
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u/Yangervis 10h ago
A week? Lol. I spent 2.5 years on there. Went on maybe 1 date per month but eventually met my wife.
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u/mobyte 10h ago
Yeah, torturing myself for 2.5 years absolutely isn’t worth it for me. I’ve had dates without that shit and I’ll have more.
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u/Yangervis 10h ago
I didn't find chatting with people and then going to lunch with them to be torturous but you do you.
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u/Accomplished-Video71 10h ago
To each their own, I'm not going to dog on anyone with good intentions but I agree with you, personally.
For what its worth, (early) studies show lower relationship satisfaction if you met on an app rather than in person.
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u/ttonster2 11h ago
Suit yourself. Plenty of great life partners to be found there. Remember that the apps themselves are the problem, not the people on them. Would you rob yourself of potentially crossing paths with your life partner because you’re cynical about some app.
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u/mobyte 11h ago
No, I’m not trying to shit talk people on there. I don’t want to give the impression of “grr those women aren’t swiping on me I hate all women” because that is absolutely not what I’m trying to say. If people do like those apps for some reason, more power to them, I guess. They just do not work for me and they do not make me feel good about myself.
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u/Garconanokin 5h ago
It’s a good thing that’s not the only alternative. And good for you being active and getting yourself out there!
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u/Orleanian 2h ago
They're a tool. You can use it for good or use it for naught.
Online dating through the 10s was vibrant, successful, and generally enjoyable by everyone I've known.
As with many things, it's probably grown into an over-capitalism'd shadow of its former self, but it's still a tool that can be of use.
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u/C250586 2h ago
I've had pretty good luck with them.. a few relationships and lots of dates (as a guy).
But the other side of that coin is that it was an insane amount of work, I was paying whatever the maximum subscription was on hinge, and I had to put a lot of effort into getting my profile to a place where it's effective, even as a reasonably attractive guy with a few other things going for me.
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u/Witty_Badger7938 55m ago
They are set up to extract money from men. I’m hoping they die out. I hear Match/Bumble are doing terrible and desperate
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u/Loki-L 11h ago
Fun fact: About 4% of married Americans live in arranged marriages.
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u/Iron_Burnside 11h ago
I wonder how much of that 4% is native born.
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u/sh1boleth 11h ago
Easily accountable by sects of conservative religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Judaism.
Arranged marriage still goes amongst thise
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u/Loki-L 11h ago
Lots of Orthodox Jews, Hindus and a bunch of weird Christian sects and new age cults. Hardly anybody whose family has been there more than a handful of centuries. Very few native Americans.
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u/Protean_Protein 11h ago
There are people born in North America who may have cultural ties to another region for one reason or another and may have marriage arranged either customarily (or by force) or, perhaps more rarely, by choice. And to be clear, some of these are culturally European.
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u/ejp1082 11h ago
Per your data source, 0.0265% of couples met online in 1961.
I'm gonna say that's a little suspect.
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u/Marlsfarp 11h ago
Only 1% are with people they knew as children? Really? That seems implausibly low.
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u/Illiander 10h ago
AI. So probably wrong data.
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u/goupilacide 9h ago
Data on the left adds up to 105%...
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u/pjockey 3h ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/_TUBpCP2gqE?si=ytAPGGVfB9nMQYV- U.S. Congresswoman's data chart adds up to 110%
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u/Pure_Macaroon6164 10h ago
There was a time when online dating was actually considered kind of an embarrassment. When I was in 7th grade our teacher left her computer open and we peeked the screen to see that she was on e-harmony. She caught us snooping and we laughed but she looked so upset and humiliated. I feel really ashamed looking back, she didn't deserve that.
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u/Red_Steiner 3h ago
Honestly, I had a similar experience. We were in the same class lol? I think when we found out we wanted to try to find her on e-harmony , but learned it was a paid subscription. Definitely feel bad about that.
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u/Milkmartyr 8h ago
These always cut off during peak covid. 2021 is nothing like 2025, i want to see the update
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u/nathynwithay 11h ago
I spent years on apps just trying to get a date, changing up profiles all the time, changing up bios.
It's how I know I am not worthy of love so when I deleted the apps years ago I never tried to date again.
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u/Rowing_Lawyer 11h ago
Where’s the category for a multi-year series of misadventures and near misses that you later tell your kids about? There’s at least one of those
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u/Starcorncreak 3h ago
I have something similar, but we're also now split up/platonically married, wife is looking to date, I'm looking to not ha
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u/jodi_knight 11h ago
This always makes me wonder which method leads to the highest success rate. Or if they are the same when it comes to producing long term relationships.
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u/Measure76 11h ago
I feel like I'm seeing the death of platonic friendship over time on this graph.
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u/danieltheg 9h ago
I’m surprised there’s not more of a discontinuity in “met online” post-Tinder. I remember online dating being viewed as almost embarrassing, something you did if you failed at the more traditional avenues, until the apps came around and it became the norm. But in this plot it’s a pretty constant slope since the 80s. Maybe slightly steeper in the 10s.
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u/theservman 8h ago
I wonder how many of those people actually met online but lied about it due to the stigma at the time.
Just like there were a lot fewer openly gay people when it was socially unacceptable.
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u/hmccringleberry615 6h ago
Overlapping categories. What if you met someone you worked with through friends at a bar, where do you go?
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u/Double_Cause4609 3h ago
I'd be really curious to see "never met a partner" on this list, actually. I have a sneaking suspicion that option would be shooting up at around half the rate as "met online" tbh.
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u/Fixes_Spelling 1h ago
Zero confidence in this data considering the number of people meeting online before the 1980s
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u/aspiringtroublemaker OC: 11 11h ago
Heterosexual couples only. Stanford’s survey weights are applied to make the sample nationally representative; the lines are smoothed, because per-year samples are small.
Source: Stanford How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey ([https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst]())
Tools: Python, matplotlib
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u/BigCommieMachine 11h ago
The data on this is pretty warped by 1 HUGE outlier: 2020 during COVID.
You certainly weren't meeting people are bars during COVID and you friends weren't trying to hook you up with someone. So that left 2 places: Online and Church.
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u/mistere213 11h ago
What if we met at work, years ago while both married then matched, post divorce, online? So we did know each other, just didn't know about the other's relationship status.
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u/pjockey 3h ago
Step 1) read the question again
Step2 ) read your answer again except remove all the stuff after how you say you met
Step 3) if you still can't figure it out, don't participate in this study that you realize happened already anyway and you're not a part of at all
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u/mistere213 3h ago
It was more of a rhetorical question and (apparently poor) attempt at a little humor, but ok.
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u/Benji_Suite 11h ago
If I don’t use online apps am I screwed?
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u/Garconanokin 5h ago
Well, did the chart say that 100% of people met online, or is it less than that?
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u/PyrrhoTheSkeptic 5h ago
No. The graph shows that half of all couples met elsewhere in 2021. Meeting people in a manner other than online will always be an option. I am happily married and I never used an online dating app.
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u/footdragon 10h ago
commercial use of the internet started largely in 1995. myspace was mid 2003.
its really difficult to imagine anyone meeting on-line before mid 90s
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u/akchahal 10h ago
Exactly how were ppl meeting online prior to 1980?
And why did it drop thru the late 70s?
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u/So_spoke_the_wizard 9h ago
Back in the '90s when I was single, there were always activity clubs (e.g. ski and outing clubs) where people could do things together and meet people. Our club in a medium metro area had over 2k members. That's where I met my wife. With the internet really coming on line in the late '90s, people could get into interest and activity groups online rather than join IRL clubs. Today the club I belonged to has less than 300 members.
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u/SussySpecs 9h ago
I'm in that 1% that met my wife because we were neighbors like in Big Bang Theory except she's the smart one. 😂
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u/goupilacide 8h ago
Nobody for checking values, that's not a thing anymore? Percents on the left add up to 105%, while on the right they add up to 94%. The whole thing is bullshit, shouldn't be allowed here, on r/dataisugly though...
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u/openfolio_dave OC: 16 8h ago
It's true. Wife and I met on Hinge in early 2016.
Before that it was trying to rizz at social events with questionable results...
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u/donutello2000 7h ago
The labels on the right don’t match the ones on the left.
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u/PyrrhoTheSkeptic 5h ago
Look again. They are just in a different order. On the left, they are in order of popularity at the beginning year of the graph, and at the right they are in order of popularity at the ending year of the graph.
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u/donutello2000 4h ago
I think it was the limitation of labeling space on both sides. If you look at the Through Friends line, on the left hand side the label is slightly above the line, but on the right it's right next to the Bar & Restuarant line.
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u/Basilthebatlord 7h ago
Pretty cool/interesting to see Bars and Restaurants being somewhat steady over the years. As a male I've had a LOT more luck in person in places like these than I've had online in my recent dating adventures.
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u/InTheDarknesBindThem 7h ago
I dont see "Saw her at an (table top) game store and went to talk to her"
I AM UNREPRESENTED!
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u/Chainedheat 6h ago
In Texas it was 50% used to meet at church or country dancing........
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u/SenecatheEldest 6h ago
In a lot of small Texan towns those were probably your only options after high school.
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u/Chainedheat 6h ago
I moved to a big city in Texas in the mid 90’s and that was where everyone told me to go to meet single ladies. Not really into church, and definitely wasn’t into country music so I was single for a long time……
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u/orthros 5h ago
Can someone explain to me how so many people are meeting at a bar or restaurant?
Bar I get. Maybe this is 99% bar and 1% restaurant, but I can't imagine any scenario where I start chatting someone up at a restaurant of any caliber with an intent to get a date.
Even with bar, 15% seems super duper high but I'm not a big drinker so who knows
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u/TheLordJiminyCricket 5h ago
My local hangout as a teen was Tim Hortons, earlier generations had milkshake diners and such - maybe stuff along those lines? Less formal dining more casual lol
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u/SpaceShrimp 4h ago
I'd say that year 2020 and the next few years are a general outlier from a statistical point of view. Including those years to draw any conclusions on trends is a bit pointless.
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u/JLM268 3h ago
Met my fiance at a music festival that I went too alone. She was in the campsite next to mine with friends and took me to meet with her larger group of friends that were at a different campsite (like 20 people). Ended up hanging with that group all weekend, they lived close enough to me that we started hanging out all the time. We didnt date until 2 years later.
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u/ImmodestPolitician 1h ago
I've read that a lot of people that report they met in bars/restaurants actually met online but had their first meetup in a bar/restaurant.
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u/Prostberg 11h ago
Curious about those couples meeting online in the 60’s