Online dating sites are becoming more and more popular in our hectic world. No one has the time anymore to go out and meet people the traditional way. And now there's a trend in online dating to include personality profiles and compatibility ratings in their services. These are a supposedly scientific means to help you find real love with someone who is ?just right for you?.

Can this really be done? More importantly, should this really be done? If we can, in fact, distill the requirements for finding real love into a single multiple choice tests that only requires a couple of hours of our time to complete, are we really just eliminating some of the things that made dating fun? Stressful, maybe, but also exciting.

Will these online dating tests really let us bypass all that stress? The advertisements seem to say so. Just take our test, they say, and let us match you up with your soul mate. Our Computer says that this person here is your soul mate, and surely you wouldn't question our Computer.

Traditional courtship behavior has previously involved meeting or being set up with someone you may or may not have known. You fight your way through all the normal barriers we throw up in an attempt to give off a certain first impression. And this is all just to decide if it's worth risking a second date. If things start going well at that point, you now enter the long phase of slowly getting to know each other. This phase can take longer for some people than others, but it has traditionally been a necessary part of building a relationship founded on real love.

Online dating sites are now basically claiming that they can help you skip this step. Take our test and find your soul mate and never struggle with the ?getting to know you? phase again. After all, what's to know? You're perfect for each other.

Can this be done? Can we scientifically skip a courtship step and hope to land with our feet firmly planted on ground of relationship bliss? Are we capable of saying: This person shares a large chunk of common ground with me. Therefore I would be crazy not to start a relationship with this person.

Where's the fun in that?

Is it possible to have a fun relationship that didn't require a little work on your own? The online dating sites seem to believe you can. The fun, they seem to say, will come once you're spending time with your perfect match. You're already ultra-compatible, why wouldn't you have fun?

But let's examine this for a moment. Do simple commonalities produce real love? Are similar personalities destined to be soul mates simply because they share the same interests and attitudes?

Put like that, it doesn't seem that likely that online dating sites will be able to help you much, unless you define real love as just ?getting along really well?. All you have to do is look around at the people you're already close with to know that it's not just similarities that attract you to someone. Just as often it's your differences that spark interest. And when you're creating a relationship built on real love, that spark can make all the difference. There comes a point when the supposed differences or even perceived flaws are no longer actual flaws. When you've built a relationship based on real love, you wouldn't have them any other way. Those differences and flaws are part of what makes them so perfect.

On the other hand, if these online dating sites can evolve to the point where they can take all of this into account ? similarities, differences, and just plain old attraction ? then we might start getting a little closer to scientifically romantic relationships. In other words, we can start making wise, informed decisions about who we want to pursue, and never give up the fun parts of the pursuit.