While many people in America telecommute so they can spend more time with their families, Commuter Couples are doing the opposite. They are physically where their work is, but using technology to connect them to family. And so while much has been written and advertised about the new Mobile Worker, little has yet been said about the new Mobile Spouse—away, and yet constantly connected through technology. And soon spouses will be able to track each other through the GPS chips in their cell phones, so they will always be able to locate their loved one.

  Is commuting dangerous for the marriage? According to the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships (LDRs), commuters are not any more likely than geographically close couples to break up. Nor, says Dr. Gregory Guldner, director of the center, are commuting couples likely to be less satisfied in their relationships, or to cheat more. Says Dr. Guldner, so long as couples find a way to share in each other’s day-to-day events, find ways to talk about the big issues, and yes, “learn the art of long-distance sex,” commuting couples have as solid a shot as anyone.

  What do Commuter Couples mean for America? At a political level, you suddenly have a greater number of people “belonging” to two states, which could complicate the rules about voting, taxation, and school enrollment, all of which are based on place of residence. There are also significant marketing opportunities, including financial planning, communications, travel, and special event planning. When being apart is the norm, being together can take on special meaning. Perhaps one reason why these marriages seem to be working is that people really have to appreciate each other to tolerate a commuter marriage—and yet the special feeling of being together, something easily lost in one-house marriages, is constantly renewed. In addition, they afford a degree of space and privacy that conventional marriages don’t have—and that space may just be the pressure valve that gives these marriages an equal or better chance of success, in a world where divorce is the norm.

  Commuter Couples also affect the workforce. You might think commuters are the least loyal employees, the first to leave on a Friday afternoon to rejoin their distant lovers for the weekend. Or the grumpiest around the office, because they’re so lonely without their spouses and kids.

  But the truth is, while they’re in the city of their employer, commuter spouses probably have far fewer distractions than their counterparts with families or busy single lives. They may actually be more capable of giving their employers a full 24/5 workweek, and a full 24/7 one when it’s an “off” weekend. So in an era of high job turnover anyway, it may be that the most attractive employees are the ones who look like drifters—unattached and unrooted—except a couple weekends per month, and on holidays.

  Eventually, one partner or the other generally moves, so most Commuter Couples don’t stay that way forever. Since people now change jobs every two to four years, chances are that is how long most Commuter Couples will stay in that state before they reunite. But with so many job changes and two-career couples, the chances that people—at least for some part of their lives—will have a Commuter Relationship for at least a couple of years is skyrocketing. So get ready for the next new condition of modern life.

  THE INTERNATIONAL PICTURE

  The 3.5 million Americans who are in commuter marriages are hardly alone.

  Around the industrialized world, foreign job placements—and dual-career couples—are on the rise. But as a result, more and more couples of every nationality are spending at least some portion of their married lives in separate cities. In every language, it seems, the principle “whither thou goest, I will go” is now less compelling than it used to be.

  Whereas many Commuter Marriages are by choice, especially within the U.S., some are by necessity—especially if the first spouse’s relocation is to a foreign country. According to a 1999 Global Relocation Trends Survey, of the nearly 50 percent of spouses who had jobs before their significant others were relocated, only 11 percent were able to find employment in the host country. And employers weren’t very sympathetic: Just 19 percent aided the partner’s job search, while one-third offered no support at all. (The others offered token counseling or job-finding fees.) To make matters worse, only a handful of countries even provide working permits to spouses. So even couples who wanted to live together may end up being commuters.

  And indeed, it is probably fair to say that most Commuter Marriages in the world are not among upscale, dual-career couples—but rather among downscale people forced apart by economics. In the U.S. itself, there are millions of guest workers (and illegal immigrants), many of whose spouses are back home. In the Middle East, this phenomenon is often the majority situation:

  In Kuwait, 63 percent of the population is foreign-born—mainly service workers and laborers from Egypt, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. (An estimated 4 percent of Egyptians go abroad for work, 70 percent of them to Arab Gulf countries.)

  In Dubai, just 17 percent of the population is native-born.

  In Saudi Arabia, two-thirds of all jobs are held by foreigners. In 2006, these workers sent $14 billion back to their families.

  Fortunately for many such couples, international travel is faster and cheaper than ever before. So are international telephone calls and e-mail connections. So one can only hope that spousal reunions happen often enough to keep the marriage together—and that, in between, husbands and wives can make do with virtual, and remembered, good night kisses.

  Internet Marrieds

  It used to be embarrassing to need the Internet to date. It smacked of geeky antisocialness—people who couldn’t make it in the “real” dating world. People with something to hide. People so desperate for a date they would seek out strangers at odd hours, from their lonely, maybe even creepy dens. At a minimum, online dating brought to mind older, unsuccessful singles whose dating years were waning and whose biological clocks were ticking. Going online was your Hail Mary effort to find a mate before you got too old. (And the men all figured that the women online were easy—weren’t they practically advertising for men?)

  But in the last few years, online dating has switched, becoming something of a destination not of last but of first resort. No longer a refuge for people who can’t hack “normal” dating, Internet dating is increasingly viewed as a fun way to meet more potential dates, while also efficiently weeding out the Totally Undesirable. According to a 2006 study on online dating by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 61 percent of online Americans do not consider online dating “desperate.” Nearly half of online Americans think Internet dating is a good way to meet people.

  As a result, nearly 1 in 4 single Americans who are looking for a romantic partner—or about 16 million people—use the 1,000 or more dating Web sites out there. That includes almost 1 in 5 Americans in their 20s, and 1 in 10 Americans in their 30s or 40s. And as of 2004, those Web sites were netting roughly $470 million a year, up from a mere $40 million in 2001. Social networking wasn’t invented for politics—it was invented for socializing.

  The previous venues for finding mates—religious institutions, mixers, matchmakers—are being replaced by where the new generation is to be found—at the office, and on the Internet.

  Sure, Internet dating still has its risks. On www.onlinedatingmagazine.com—a site devoted to “in-depth coverage of the online dating services industry and dating tips for those who date online”—three of the six most popular articles are “Dangers of Online Dating,” “Online Dating Safety Tips,” and “Staying Clear of Married Men.” But amid the millions who are trying online dating nonetheless, there are a select few for whom e-meeting turns into engagement. According to the Pew study, 17 percent of online daters—or nearly 3 million American adults—have turned online dates into a long-term relationship or marriage. That’s exactly the same number of couples in America who say they met in church.

  And while there are no firm data on the growth in Internet Marrieds, the trend line is clearly rising. Online dating pioneer Match.com didn’t even exist until 1995. eHarmony, which boasts the greatest number of client marriages, wasn’t launched until 2000. The hundreds and hundreds of other dating sites—including subspecialty niches, like DateAGolfer, Animal Attraction (for pet lovers), or Positive Singles (for singles with sexually transmitted diseases)—have only just cropped up. And now that it’s getting easier to upload pictures and even videos for online prospects, the possibility of bull’s-eye matching is only getting more and more real.

  In 2007, something like 4.4 million Americans will get married. Almost 100,000 of them will have met online.

  In the spring of 2007, we did a short poll of people who met and married on the Internet. While there are Internet Marrieds of every type, it seems that the most typical ones are upscale, urban Democrats who put some serious work into online dating, and are now very, very happy about it.

  Upscale. Seventy-six percent of Internet Marrieds are employed outside the home, with another 12 percent at home full-time with kids. Seventy percent of the full-time employees are in professional or managerial positions. Sixty-nine percent of Internet Marrieds own their own homes. Sixty-one percent have finished college, including 20 percent who have finished graduate school. A whopping 51 percent have household annual incomes of $75,000 or more.

  Urban. Almost half of Internet Marrieds live in cities. Presumably people in rural areas already know the locals, but urban environments mean that there are hundreds of thousands of potential matches in your neighborhood that you don’t know.

  Democrats. Seventy-two percent of Internet Marrieds say they are liberal or moderate, with 43 percent identifying as Democrats. (In an average national sample, Democrats would be only about a third of the population.) Interestingly, though, this group is a little more religious than your typical Democrats. Fifty-one percent say they attend religious services at least a few times a month, compared to only 31 percent who attend “never or nearly never.” (In a typical Democrat sample, regular services-goers would more likely be under one-third.)

  Internet Marrieds had to put some work into the process. Nearly 6 in 10 said they used online dating sites for a year or more before they found their spouse, and about the same number had to date at least six different online matches before they found The One. (Almost a quarter had to date more than ten.) And while the Internet Marrieds did not go into this feeling desperate, they hardly felt joy or confidence, either.

  “When you first considered online dating, what were your attitudes toward it?”

  (multiple responses permitted)

  Percent

  Nervous 65

  Skeptical 55

  Embarrassed 27

  Neutral 22

  Delighted 20

  Confident 10

  It was a last resort 10

  Source: PSB, 2007

  But life has worked out for them. A remarkable 92 percent say their marriages are happy, including 80 percent who say “very happy.” Fifty-seven percent think their marriages are stronger because they met online, compared to only 6 percent who think they are weaker. Seventy-three percent think they and their spouse have particular advantages because of the way they met, compared to only 24 percent who think they have disadvantages.

  And Internet Marrieds are pleased to spread the word. Eighty-four percent have advised other single friends or family members to date online. Eighty-eight percent say they would support their children (one day) dating online. And fully 92 percent say they would support their children marrying someone they met online.

  Finally, age-wise, Internet Marriage can happen for anyone. Fifty-five percent of respondents are under 35 (about one-third are in their early 30s), but 46 percent are over 35, including almost a third who are over 45. It works for second-timers, too: Thirty-one percent of Internet Marrieds are on their second marriage.

  Internet Marriage could be the wave of the future. With marriage rates at an all-time low to begin with, people who want to find a spouse need an effective, efficient way to cut through the hooking-up scene and get right to the real deal. In our poll, when respondents were asked what was the best thing about online dating, their top two answers were “I could narrow my search to people of a certain type” and “I could look over a lot of people in a short amount of time.” Marriage isn’t something to be taken for granted anymore. If you want to meet The One, you’ve got to put yourself virtually out there.

  In fact, in a world that increasingly emphasizes self-determination, leaving your soul mate search up to singles bars, office romances, and friends of friends seems not only rather passive, but downright negligent. There are 6 billion people in the world, and only a relative handful in your daily orbit. If you really want love, step it up. Do some targeted research, and make that Cupid’s Arrow a surgical strike.

  As Internet Marrieds grow in number, there are a couple of things we can expect. First, more Commuter Couples. The number of Americans choosing that lifestyle has already climbed to about 3.5 million, but since Internet Marrieds are already more likely to start out in different cities—and are already more comfortable with communication, and intimacy, online—the Commuter Married trend is only likely to grow.

  Second, expect more diverse pairings, across race, ethnicity, and nationality. Marital diversity, too, is on the rise—but once the dating marketplace is blown wide open, unconstrained by traditional community or local ties, soul mates of whatever background will have far greater freedom to find each other. (Of course, ethnic or religious minorities who want to find like people will have an easier time of that, too. Just go to www.EligibleGreeks.com, www.EthiopianPersonals.com, www.Muslima.com, or any of the dozens of other ethnically niched dating sites you can find in about two clicks of a mouse.)

  Third, look for e-therapists. While Internet Marrieds had the advantage of narrowcasting their love searches, they also likely sacrificed what used to be a cornerstone of the dating world: a personal voucher by the cousin, the roommate, or the colleague who actually knew your intended before you did. Now, with more and more relationships being high-speed but not homespun, there can be some surprises that call for newfangled counseling. In our poll, the Internet Marrieds (most of whom had spent at least a year on these sites, remember) said that, by far, the worst part about Internet dating was that the people you met could misrepresent themselves. And among the Internet Marrieds who said meeting online had been a disadvantage, the number one disadvantage they gave was that they hadn’t sufficiently gotten to know their spouse’s backgrounds and/or families.

  Fourth, look for a lowered online guard when it comes to Internet Marrieds’ families. Children of these couples will grow up hearing all about how Mommy and Daddy fell in love over e-mails and chat rooms. How effectively will those parents be able to tell their kids to turn off the computer? And more ominously, will those children have their guard unduly down when it comes to chatting up strangers online?

  Like Office Romancers, Internet Marrieds need a community of their own, to work through shared experiences, lessons, challenges, and in-jokes. Throughout this book, I speculate about the need for such communities among many of the microtrend groups. But in this case, I have real proof: While only 37 percent of Internet Marrieds say they know at least several couples who met online, 82 percent say they would like to.

  Skeptics may wonder how deep and true Internet-based relationships are, suspecting that people found online will go back online. But what we learned in polling them was the opposite—they choose their mates after going through a wide array of choices, and they are starting out on a very strong footing.

  We are a ways off from the offspring of Internet Marrieds hitting the dating scene in major numbers, and it will be interesting to see if it really grows into the mainstream way to date and settle down. But start looking—next to the bronzed baby shoes, have Internet Marrieds framed or bronzed the ads that brought them together? If they have, then the 1990s stigma regarding online dating will be dead, replaced by a pride in searching the earth and the Internet for The One.

  PART II

  Work Life

  Working Retired

  There are only a few magic numbers in American civic life. You can vote (and get drafted) at age 18. You can drink at 21. You can become president at 35. You can retire at 65.

  But on that last one—do Americans really want to? Now that so many Americans are living healthfully until 85, fewer and fewer actually retire at 65. Today there are 5 million people 65 or older in the U.S. labor force, almost twice what there were in the early 1980s. And that number is about to explode.

  Source: Current Population Survey (CPS), Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006

  Some people are working past 65 because they have to: Health care costs are rising, and Social Security payments—at an average of about $1,000 a month—don’t cover what they used to. But the bigger trend in Senior Work is the fact that Americans love work—and now that we’re living longer, we want to work longer, too. We just can’t get enough. My friend and mentor Harold Burson, the co-founder of the global PR firm Burson Marsteller, where I am CEO, just turned 86, and comes to work every day, bursting with ideas.

  On average, Americans work over 1,800 hours per year, substantially more than most workers around the world. Although we get fewer vacation days per year than other Western countries (thirteen days, compared to twenty-eight in Great Britain, and thirty-seven in France), we let more than twice as many go unused. And really, what’s a vacation to us these days without our BlackBerry? In 2006, almost a quarter of us (23 percent) checked our work e-mail and voice mail while away—up from just 16 percent in 2005. A lot of us love to work.