It may not be the most romantic way to meet the love of your life – but it could be the best way to ensure they really are for life.

 

Finding Mr or Mrs Right online is more likely to lead to a happier and longer marriage than getting together through more traditional means, a study has found.

 

A relationship started in cyberspace¹ is 25 percent less likely to end in divorce or separation than those that began through friends or chance.

 

The success could be down to a higher motivation to find love among internet daters and the efforts that websites put in to match partners, say researchers.

 

Chicago University psychologists studied almost 20,000 people who had married between 2005 and 2012 and asked them a series of questions about their happiness.

 

Just over a third had met their spouse² online, with around half of these using internet dating and the rest via chat rooms and social networking sites.

 

Those who were still married were happier if they had met online.

 

However, relationships that began through work, in a bar or club or on a blind date were 25 percent more likely to end – and those couples were among the least satisfied, the journal Proceedings³ of the National Academy of Sciences reports.

 

Professor John Cacioppo, who led the study, said the sheer number of available potential partners online could be among the reasons for the results.

 

Previous research has shown that online daters are more likely to see each other again after a first meeting because they share more information about themselves online.

 

And while the relative anonymity⁴ of online dating does allow for prospective⁵ partners to lie about their attributes, studies suggest this mostly takes the form of white lies about weight and height.

 

The findings of the US study, commissioned by matchmaking company eHarmony, could also apply elsewhere, said Prof Cacioppo.

 

Britons are Europe's most prolific⁶ internet daters.

 

More than 5.7million people in the UK logged on to internet dating sites in September 2012 – a 22 percent increase on the same month a year earlier, according to internet market research company comScore.

 

The websites were most popular among the 25 to 34 age group, but they are becoming increasingly attractive to the older generation.

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