ABSTRACT
On-line dating services encourage their subscribers to maintain their member ships by supplying them with a steady stream of interesting potential partners. If a subscriber records the age, location, and sex of a desired partner, a large dating service (e.g., Yahoo Personals or Match.com) will reply with regular e-mails
containing the pictures and profiles of other subscribers who meet those criteria. The customer thus routinely encounters a flow of presumably available, occasion ally alluring, possible partners into his or her inbox. Now imagine that after find ing each other in such a manner, two subscribers begin a fledgling relationship that is enticing to both of them. It’s a promising partnership. Their intimacy and investments increase, they become more satisfied and more interdependent, and they reach a point that is an intriguing marker of their emerging commitment to one another: They decide to cancel their subscriptions to the dating service that brought them together.
