What's the success rate for sitting on a bar stool and looking for a long term relationship?
That's just it. You don't go looking for a long term relationship (that's bound to end in failure), you go looking for pleasant company. And once every 10 pleasant people, you encounter someone you build a deeper contact with. And once every 10 deeper contacts, you find someone you are really having a jolly good time with.
In my experience, people usually find a partner when they really need it, no matter where they look. Unless they walk around with the wrong expectations.
There are a few big plus points for real-life dating in contrast to online dating:
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Fake/doctored pictures, or part of a picture
- Non-honest descriptions, or the conveniently forgetting of information that's paramount in forming an image of someone
- No body language; easy to get misconceptions and/or an argument
- No real chemistry; even if it works out online, you still have to see if it works out in real life
There are more; but still, online dating isn't as good as people thought it would be. Usually, the people who use online dating sites regularly are either anti-social, unattractive, have other problems that prevent them from dating IRL, still have some trauma from real-life dating or all of the above. Of course, not nearly everybody is like that, but the cliché really has some truth in it.
However, that doesn't mean that you can't get a date online. Places about a certain topic (like a BBS about your hobbies) or even your myspace/facebook profile can be more productive then a dating site; people aren't expressly dating, and you get much less "fakers" that way. It helps that, instead of focusing on the dating aspect, people tend to contact each other about a common interest. That way, the groundwork has already been laid. I found my current partner on MySpace. She sent me a message, I sent her a message, we chatted a bit and within a date or two we had sex and a relationship. And it's still going strong after four years. So it's certainly possible.