My Lifeline (Have you found love on the internet?)

Member Name: Aspen

Product:	Have you found love on the internet?
Date:	25/08/01 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The internet opens up a whole new world of potential friendships.

Disadvantages: Take care; take time; don't rush in.

Let’s start by defining “love”.

Okay, we can’t do that, because it would take a better person than me (or you, for that matter), to apply a precise definition to one of the mysteries which has dogged us since the dawn of time.

So let’s go down a different route.


This opinion is not about finding a soul-mate via the internet.

If you want a good, Kleenex-soaking, happy-ending tale, read some of the other beautiful ops on this topic. Or go and buy a copy of Bella.

My theme here is the love which is born from friendship.

I have been on the net a mere two years, and in the early days popped into chatrooms, paid extortionate sums of money to subscribe to Compuserve, with the hope of meeting people. Not in the dating/soulmate sense, but just in the friendship sense. The internet seemed a great way of making contact with people whom in the real world you could never meet. It is, after all, a global medium.

Then I discovered Dooyoo and Ciao – within a few days of one another, and I’m not confessing which came first!!

Neither am I denying that I contribute to both – that is no secret.

I also contribute regularly to one or two other sites, notably britishexpat.com – and I make no apologies for the plug, ‘cos I contribute there for free. So there’s nothing in it for me, but there may be for you, ‘cos it has a sh*tload of wonderful and diverse content.


However, I realise I have digressed slightly.

Being an active member of both DY and Ciao since November/December last year, I have established a great rapport with many members of both sites.

I have never been comfortable with the transition from cyberspace to real life, and even though, as these months have passed, I have been in regular email contact with many people from both sites, I have only crossed the line on three occasions.

T
here are now three people I regularly phone, and of those three, I have met one.


No, not love on the internet. Friendship on the internet.

But it takes time. It’s like people-watching without the body-language. You read opinions, exchange comments, swap emails, and eventually you become confident enough to cross the line.

The friendships I have made on the net are invaluable to me, and for me, love on the internet is about friendship. Love develops from friendship.


Look at it this way.

If I were desperate for a new partner, there are many, many sites where I could expose myself (!)

“Divorced forty-something male, currently bankrupt and potentially homeless, with geriatric and rather smelly Jack Russell, seeks similar . . . . .”

I can see the babes flocking to respond.


But I have found love on the internet.

When I revealed, to some of you here, and to some of my friends on Ciao, that my business had gone belly-up; that I was personally insolvent; that I had lost the home I have shared with my wee smelly geriatric JR pal for many years . . .

My inbox was flooded with messages of support.

People I knew but had not personally corresponded with, voluntarily emailed their phone numbers, saying, “Call me anytime, Mike, if you need someone to talk to.”


The internet makes a big world small.

It opens doors for friendships to develop which in geographic terms would otherwise never happen.

And it creates communities of like-minded people, who get to know one another even though they have never met.

And these internet friendships sometimes create the opportunity – because of the relative anonymity – which allows you to open your heart and share your problems. Even though this is something which some of us find hard to do with family, and close friends in the “real world”
.


I am still on my own, with the geriatric JR.

Maybe that’s how I want it to be – after 20-odd years of “fraught” marriage.

But I know, now, that I am not alone.

I have found love on the internet.

I have found the deep and meaningful love of caring friends, most of whom I have never met.


Cultivate your internet friendships, my friends.

One day, they may be your lifeline.

Summary: