2005
Cyber Romance
Internet relationships …. some people swear by them, others don’t understand even the simplest reasons behind them …. me? I swing somewhere in the middle. The internet has helped people find people for years, and there seem to be as many successes as there are failures. I guess the biggest issue is the trust factor involved; because anonymity is always a temptation for us to lie.
I found my first girlfriend through the internet. I was overseas at the time, and feeling quite lonely, sad and sorry for myself. I used some random, free meet-up site to find someone in my home city. I found Sarah’s profile and replied to it, and we instantly clicked. We were two shy teenagers, I think 18 at the time, and we sent emails back and forth for months while I was away. An advantage of the net is that you can ease yourself in to a relationship; get to know each other before you’re confronted by ‘getting to know each other’. The other plus of course, is that had it not been for the site, I probably never would have met Sarah in the first place. But unfortunately, as honest as we were with each other, we weren’t totally honest it would seem….. I returned home after my time away and we finally met up – the big day had arrived. Of course this being some years ago, the technology was not readily available so we hadn’t shared photos, and I guess after all the time talking I’d had quite a different pciture in my head of what she might be like, and I’m sure she felt the same. Needless to say that after a few dates we realized we weren’t quite as compatible as we seemed over the net and eventually we went our seperate ways. But I still enjoyed the time we had spent talking.
I’m not one to give up easily, and my second girlfriend I found through the internet too, from the same site. This time however the connection was a little closer to home – it turns out Teagan and I had gone to the same school (but a couple of grades apart) …. being an all-girl’s catholic school neither of us was ‘out’ at the time, but we managed to find each other after we’d graduated. Still, I wouldn’t have found her at all without the help fo the internet.
And then my third girlfriend, Simmone. We met because, once again while I was away I had been looking up what was going on back home and had found a social group I wanted to join. This time the moderator played matchmaker for us …. he suggested to me, while I was overseas still, that I might be interested in meeting his best friend when I returned and joined the group. Well by the time I got back, she had a girlfriend; but I joined the social group anyway, and as luck would have it we became friends and when she eventually broke up with her girlfriend we started dating …. and we spent a wonderful year together.
Since then I’ve gone back to the old fashioned way of dating … meeting people through social groups, or being introduced by friends …. it just seems more reliable, safer, and less ‘mysterious’.
But, I would have to say I support the internet as a way of meeting people and possibly forming friendships/relationships … I will always be wary however, of the false perceptions that people create about themselves. I’d really try to get to know someone before attempting any real-life contact with them. And as nice as words or pictures on a screen can be, eventually the connection would have to become real for me to truly be fulfilled.
by sweet_sage
