25 Mar 30 percent of couples still meet through friends, and 15 percent of people may never get married
O. through friends
Because How I Met Your Mother is ending tomorrow night, The Wall Street Journal decided to do a story about how people actually met your mother (i.e. their significant other), and it turns out that 30 percent of people still meet their S. (I'm in this boat.) That's based on this paper from Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University, and has been the leading way that people meet romantic connections since the end of World War II. The explanation is probably pretty simple in your head, but here it is as well:
Why do social circles exert such influence over the life partners we meet? Friends are the people we are closest to, the people we spend the most time with as adults, and therefore the people most likely to introduce us to others that we might be interested in, says Dr. Rosenfeld. And since Americans now marry later than ever before, they are more likely to be living with friends (rather than parents) when searching for a spouse.