San Francisco - Disappointed daters wondering what went
wrong with the romance have a new way to discover why the relationship fizzled.
A website called WotWentWrong provides a guided way to
request and respond to feedback on why things didn’t work out.
“It’s for the people who are evolved enough to really want
to be mature about it and find out so that they can move on,” said Audrey Melnik,
the developer and CEO of the site.
By selecting from a number of pre-made templates, users can
request feedback from their former dates, in a way that Melnik said removes
emotion from the equation.
“It’s really just to tell them 'I understand there’s no
future with us, but just to get closure, let me know why you lost interest’,”
she said.
After the feedback has been submitted, the initial requestor
is able to view that information, along with advice, and products, recommended
by the website.
“If he says that you’re constantly late, or have a problem
with punctuality, there’s a book there for helping you,” she said.
According to Melnik, not hearing back from a date after an
apparent connection is something that can happen for a variety of reasons. And
the only way to truly know is to ask.
“A little bit of time goes by and you don’t hear from him
and you’re sitting there and wondering if there’s some kind of process going on
his life, or if he’s just not into you,” Melnik explained.
The website, she said, is a socially acceptable way to ask,
rather than an email or phone call which could put the other person on the
spot.
More often, Melnik said that it’s women who are left
wondering why relationships didn’t work which she said is attributed to the
social conventions of dating.
“Mostly the way the dating story goes is that the guy does
the pursuing. So the guy is in the position to make the phone call, and the
woman is in the position to wait for that phone call,” she said.
Coming from an technology background, Melnik came up with
the idea when she realized that there were no hard statistics on the most
common mistakes people make in relationships.
She realised that a website would be the best way to collect
the data, and plans to create a feature on the website that will allow users to
filter the information based on gender, duration of the relationship, location
and other features after enough feedback has been collected.
But is there really value in gaining this feedback when a
relationship is over? Melnik thinks there is.
“If you’re continually making the same mistakes, shouldn’t
you know about that so you can fix them?” she said.