It starts off as friendly chatting and a gradual exchange of pictures. What then develops into daily conversations has a further exchange of phone numbers and snail mailing. Before you know it, there’s cybercommitment. It’s the equivalent to a real world relationship, sans the physical intimacy. Five or six months down the line you make plans with each other to meet. And so the pressure builds up. Even though you get along just fine in written form, meeting each other face to face is entirely different. So you worry if things would be awkward, if you wouldn’t feel the connection you did behind your computer screen. One of two things can happen; you will like each other as the face-to-face meeting was the last jigsaw piece to lay the foundation for your ‘puzzling’ relationship or you have an allergic reaction to him because of his bad breath and leave immediately.
The plus side to an online love is that most often than not, things can end well. Proven unsuccessful, a ‘break up’ can be hassle-free. None of the awkwardness of running into each other, or the exchange of old love letters.Still, one wonders, is it better than your stereotypical start to a relationship, the usual see-pursue-conquer relationships? One thing is clear enough, what’s important in a relationship is that two people are able to have conversation after conversation and understand each other regardless of certain mannerisms or physical attractiveness. Therefore, online communication can be a healthy start, if you will. Should you find enough to talk about, that covers 65-70 per cent of the relationship. The remaining 30 per cent is entirely dependent on physical attraction towards each other. And it is this 30 per cent that most online love is tested on. You may find the person good looking in a picture but meeting personally can change things for the better or for the worse.
moreThe downside to this type of relationship concerns the sexual predators. There are one too many phonies with fake identities and pictures to lure innocent girls. After conversations and online familiarity, scheduling a meet-up can be deadly. Of course, this is not America; people are not as carefree with cyberspace. Online love may begin with an introduction by a mutual friend on say, ‘MSN messenger’. Therefore, the guy is guaranteed to be sane, for the most part.
I recall my experience of an online love. I vaguely knew him from before as a friend’s friend. However we bonded via chatting and we clicked instantly. The pictures were displayed next to our names so appearance-wise, check. It moved on to ‘sms-ing’ (he got my number from a mutual friend).
The conversations flowed day in and day out and were never at a loss. However, no two people can remain ‘sms’ friends for long. So came the time of the meet up. We had planned to meet at a friend’s party. I remember feeling nervous, wondering if he was going to be shorter than me (he was always the shortest in his pictures beside his friends). It turned out, he was a good 2 inches taller. The party went well and within months he became my boyfriend. We fell in love and madly, at that. However six months down the line we broke up, for entirely different reasons. But it made me think, online ‘start ups’ may not be the best way to lay the foundation to a relationship. Being able to connect via written form, cyberspace or otherwise, is not as impressive as connecting face to face, which is the real thing.
Daily Mirror
