Last night I finally took the plunge and joined Twitter.  I never really had any desire to tweet before but everyone in my circle has been constantly telling me that in order to be a successful writer, joining Twitter is an absolute necessity.  So I finally took everyone’s advice and opened up an account.  I even received some emails already from people who started following me!  I was beginning to get a little bit excited about my bold move until…

I went online this morning and read that Twitter could be bad for romantic relationships.  I mean, I haven’t even figured out how to officially tweet yet and already it’s been determined that tweeters have shorter lasting relationships than non-tweeters.  Go figure.

Apparently OkCupid polled over 830,000 of its users to see how long relationships last for people who use Twitter every day vs. “everyone else”.  It turns out that, “frequent tweeters have shorter real-life relationships than everyone else”.  And the problem appears to get worse as a person gets older.  (See chart.)  The average relationship for an 18-year-old that uses Twitter is about nine months, while “everybody else” usually has a relationship average of nine-and-a-half months.  At age 50, the frequent Tweeter has a 15 month-long relationship, while the non-frequent Twitter user stays in a relationship for an average of almost 17 months.

So what does this mean for Dean?

Let’s face it.  It’s been years since I’ve actually been in a long-term relationship.  YEARS.  And to date, I have never tweeted.  So the only sense that I could make from any of this is that I, Dean, am the exception to the rule when it comes to Twitter and relationships.

I mean it’s not like my dating life can get much worse than it already is, right?  After all, I’m in my mid-thirties and still single.  In the world of dating, I’ve hit rock bottom and have been hanging out there for quite some time now.  So in theory, tweeting should have absolutely no impact on my dating life because the only direction it can go in right now is up.

So to all my loyal readers out there, go ahead and start following DatingDean on Twitter.  And if you happen to be a well educated, hot, single, male with any interest whatsoever in dating me, you should especially start following me on Twitter…IMMEDIATELY.  I promise you that as soon as I figure out how this tweeting thing actually works, only good things will come of it.