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OkCupid

I just wanted to post this because I find it amusing--My husband and I are only a 51% match on OkCupid, and 13% enemy.

When he first created his account, just to see what our match percentage would be, we were only a 17% match. The more questions he and I each answer, the more amused I am by how incompatible it thinks we are. Four and a half years together say otherwise.

(My roommate and I, meanwhile, are an 89% match and only 6% enemy. According to OkCupid, I clearly should've married her. xD)

Re: OkCupid

  • GilliCGilliC member
    Ancient Membership 5000 Comments 500 Love Its First Answer
    Wait until it's been ten.
    image
  • Mind if I ask why? Are you expecting that we'll become less compatible, or realize we're less compatible, once we've been together longer? I'm not sure if I'm interpreting your comment correctly, but if so, that seems kinda cynical to me. Hopefully after ten years together we'll still be just as happy as we are now, and to hell with a some dating site profile's views of compatibility, eh?
  • GilliCGilliC member
    Ancient Membership 5000 Comments 500 Love Its First Answer
    Regardless of what some computer algorithm says, implying that you're especially compatible because you've been together four years seems a bit arbitrary. What's four years? (What's ten for that matter?) "Four and a half years together" does not say otherwise. "We are especially compatible in these specific ways" says otherwise. "Our long conversations about life choices and personality traits" say otherwise.

    And yes, there are plenty of people who believe they're compatible for years before something happens to reveal otherwise. So if the amount of time you've been together is your only benchmark, statistically speaking you should probably give it a few more years.
    image
  • GilliCGilliC member
    Ancient Membership 5000 Comments 500 Love Its First Answer
    edited July 2014
    PS - Assuming your post wasn't meant to be purely self-congratulatory, you would have been better off just saying, "Don't put too much weight on the okcupid match statistics!" Which I don't think any of us do.

    But now that you've brought it up, I'm surprised. Most people I get along at all with are up in the 70th percentile at least, since you can choose how important an answer is to you. Out of curiosity, what were the important questions that you and your H answered differently? And if they're important to you, why don't you care that the other's opinion differs? How many questions have you answered? (I assume you've answered more than the minimum number of questions, since no one has decent statistics with so few responses.)
    image
  • I certainly wasn't trying to be self-congratulatory. Four and a half years of living together and two months of marriage isn't exactly a lifetime. It's not like I think I've accomplished something no one else has. And when I say "four and a half years together says otherwise," I'm not saying the time frame alone says that; I mean that the experience we've had together over that time frame says otherwise. I'm basically just saying that four and a half years of a healthy, loving relationship and everything we've been through together and helped each other through in the meantime, in my eyes, represents far more than a 51% compatibility, and reflects our compatibility far better than yes-or-no questions asked by OkCupid. I just found the contrast entertaining.

    The number of questions my husband and I have both answered is somewhere around a hundred. (When he had only answered the minimum number, that's when it told us we were only a 17% match, which cracked us both up.) We match really well on lifestyle and ethics questions; the ones we don't match on are silly, petty things like whether spelling mistakes bother us or...well, basically how we feel about other people on things that I don't really feel affect compatibility all that much (Does it bother you when other people ____? Sure it does, and it doesn't bother my husband do we disagree on that, but neither of us do that so it doesn't really matter.).
  • Also, I do feel like if I was really incompatible with someone--if 50% of their traits really were ones that I would not want in a partner--I wouldn't likely be interested in them in the first place, let alone be able to maintain a happy relationship for this long, so in SOME ways, the time frame alone DOES "say otherwise." I definitely agree that four and a half years does not promise a lifetime, but I think it does promise some degree of compatibility in a relationship, unless both people involved are just ignoring a lot of warning signs about it.
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