Finding out what went wrong with failed romance

SAN FRANCISCO — With Valentine's Day just a week away disappointed daters wondering what went wrong with the romance have a new way to discover why the relationship fizzled.

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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 realized 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.