How do people meet each other nowadays? Am I the only one thinking that the internet will become a major dating arena?
I know no fewer than six couples who met online and are blissfully happy. From match.com to jdate to eHarmony – take the stress of personal interaction out of the equation, and people seem to be more honest, clearing away the pretenses prior to having a face-to-face meeting. Even the amazing woman who boards my dog, who is as down to earth and genuine as they come (the woman, not my dog), met her new husband on eHarmony. And she is the first person who would tell you that meeting someone online sounded like a complete pipedream (no pun intended).
If you live in Romance Novel Land, your hero could come galloping up to your castle astride a mammoth horse named “Thor” or “Pixie-squeak,” or perhaps he raids your father’s company, buying it out in a hostile takeover. Or maybe you get sucked back in time and he almost runs you through with his manly lance. Or you run a bed and breakfast and he stays as a guest, writing his book. Or you both work as magicians and he saws you in half with his manly saw.
In real life: perhaps you work together? You shop at the same store and check each other out? Or you both work as role players in fake towns built for military training?
Me, I met Hubby in high school. Then we worked at a summer camp and ended up permanently together. Not really the stuff of romance — although, I will say, as far as a plotting method to keep the hero and heroine together all the time, working at a summer sleepaway camp guarantees the protagonists will be seeing each other ALL the TIME. And there will be plenty of opportunity to sneak off and do some scrumpin’—if you know what I mean.
Would I look for a spouse or partner online if I didn’t already have one? Absolutely. Many of my closest friends (*koff koff* Candy *koff koff*) are people I’ve met via writing online.
But does that make for good romance? Is one of the fantasies of romance novels becoming the face-to-face chance meeting that didn’t originate on a website profile?
And, how did you meet your spouse/partner?
I was introduced to my husband by a flatmate, who was friends with him. He thought we’d hit it off, and he was right.
Considering I was a year ahead of him and doing English, and he was studying Pharmacy, it’s unlikely we’d have met if Saul hadn’t thrown us together.
Since then, being a truly geeky couple, we’ve spent a lot of time online and made friends with other people in online contexts. Some of whom we’ve met face to face and continued the friendship with.
So, while we didn’t meet online, if one or other of us was to die (can’t see any other way we’d want to split up) I could see the widow or widower finding their next relationship online. If we ever got over it – and from what I’ve seen of other bereaved people, eventually most people do move on.
I also met my husband in a bar. On dollar pitcher night.
I had graduated a year earlier and was in town for a roommate’s wedding. He was still in school (younger men!) and we met through mutual friends.
And even after I found out he was a dreaded FRAT BOY, I stuck with him. 14 years later. Man, how time flies.
I met my husband online. Not through a dating site though. He posted on a local newsgroup that he was looking for an episode of a TV show that he’d missed. I had it on tape and offered to lend it to him. (He later told me that since all my emails were signed “Kerry” he was expecting a guy to show up on his doorstep, not a girl.)
We were acquaintances and casual friends long before anything else. Things just kind of evolved over a number of years.
We got engaged while he was living in another city from me. I was starting to talk about moving up to join him and my dad wasn’t very happy about this. Now-husband and I talked about it and I commented that Dad would be happier if we were getting married. “So why don’t we?” he said. We both went very quiet for a moment, then realised that was indeed right for us, so the decision was made.
We now have a 2 year old son and will have our 4th wedding anniversary this year.
So we joke that we met on the internet, we never had a real date and we got engaged over the phone. We were both physically present in the church when we got married though.
I met my husband through an online dating site. We didn’t write much, but mostly talked on the phone. We liked some of the same books, shared an interest in technology, and made each other laugh. When I finally met him, he was cuter than his very cute picture and I didn’t want to let go when we hugged goodbye. I never thought of myself as the goofy-in-love, marrying kind – but he’s smart and funny, and geeky in all the right ways. And, he smells good.
When I think about how we met, online dating seems more rational and reasonable than glomming onto some stranger in a bar. But reason has very little to do with romantic chemistry. The things we had in common were enough to make me want to meet him in person, but I wasn’t attracted to him until we met face-to-face…in a bar.
I met my husband when we were in AIT (army training). Oooh, yeah, I looked sexy in BDUs & boots. *rolling my eyes* Seems to have worked anyway.
I do know several couples who met online. My daughter’s dating a guy she met via a messageboard for a band they both liked. Of course she also had a creepy experience with a guy she met via MySpace, so it’s a mixed bag….not unlike meeting people in person.
I don’t see why a romance that begins online wouldn’t work in a book—it’s all in how it’s written, isn’t it? You’d have to include email/IM texts instead of regular dialogue, but I can picture it pretty easily.
I tried the online thing once and the guy turned out to be verbally abusive so I didn’t try that again. I probably should though if my current relationship ever falls apart. This is the first one I’ve had in 7 years. There’s nothing like being 30 in a rural area where everyone marries right out of high school. My current boyfriend and I met though work. I have to take the deposits to the bank and he was the teller who always waited on me. Before I knew it he was coming to my workplace to say hi and eventually we started seeing each other away from work.
I met my DH of 26 years on a blind date. A co-worker and a male friend of hers set up a bunch of us with his friends, to go to a hospital gala. It was a hit, and two of the couples (me included) married our guys!
I’m currently single, but my best friend is married to a guy I introduced her to online. He IM’d me, thinking I was someone he’d met at a seminar – similar screen name. I immediately looked up his profile while we chatted. I saw that he was everything my newly single friend was looking for.
Friend and I were going out to mall walk and have dinner, so, when she arrived, I told them to chat while I showered and got ready. They spent most of the next day chatting online, the day after that it was the phone. In two weeks they met in Chicago for the weekend, a couple more months and my friend relocated so they could live together. That worked really well, so a little over a year after they “met” on my computer, they married. That’s been a few years ago now, and they’re still very happy together.
I also met my CP online, on an English goth band’s list. We’ve been friends and CPs for ten years now. She’s in England, but we’ve had two vacations together during that time, too, and the virtual friendship survived them.
It can definitely happen.
H.E. and I met on AOL. We were usually the two funniest people in a chat room, and we frequented the same chat rooms. Anyway, he fell in love with my sense of humor and really wanted to get to know me better, so he Instant Messaged me and tried to get me to call him. When I wouldn’t and gave him the excuse that it was too expensive a call (I lived in San Diego, and he lived in L.A.), he got himself an 800 number, even though he really couldn’t afford it, and he practically begged me to call him.
So I called him.
He decided after the first one or two calls, where he asked many, many questions, that I was the one for him and that he was in love with my heart and soul. From then on, it was more phone calls, at least a handful of times a day every day, then an exchange of photos, then an actual meeting. We dated, then moved in together, and all of that was in the span of a few months about 10 years ago.
After all these years, he still loves my sense of humor, still thinks I’m sweet, and still believes I’m the hottest woman he’s ever been with.
I don’t know how I could ever top that with anyone I’ve ever initially met offline. I’m totally sold on online romances.
Scrumping! Tea and Scrumpets! Or really dirty scrumping…SCRRRRROMPIN’! All sex in cars should be referred to as scrrrompin’.
I met my fiancee at a rockabilly show. He came up to me at random and asked me to have breakfast with him. We went, it was fun, but nothing happened after that, as I was in a dwindling relationship and didn’t want any complications.
And then a year later, we found each other at random online. Livejournal. My relationship issues were over, we went on a date, and it’s been tea and scrumpets ever since!
He said later that it was like I had a beam of light on me at the rockabilly show, and something just said “talk to that girl!”…like the hand of fate and all that cliche crap.
Hardly anyone on here has met a spouse at work. Is that old fashioned?
My husband was a medical student and I was a medical assistant. The first time we laid eyes on eachother was during a surgery. Far from romance but,(I thought) if he can look at me like that, while doing this, he’s for me!
Yes, medical people are an odd lot. It’s been 6 years of domestic bliss and I wouldn’t change a thing.
If I was single, I would definately try online dating. Have you all seen that show ‘Log in for Love’ on TLC?
I met my husband at a comic book store, when my crazy housemate, the ex-green beret, insisted I come on a shopping trip with him to ‘meet his new friends’ – the guys who ran the store. I took one look at him, he smiled, and the rest was history: we were married 8 months later. 13 years and going strong. Must be something to that wacky love at first sight thing.
I met my husband at the circus.
Yep.
I ran away to join the circus and ending up meeting another middle-class kid who had done the same.
(Our kids are going to have a tough time rebelling against us, I fear.)
just about every major internet community I’ve participated in has spawned at least one marriage says susanw.
Which begs the question… When’s the first smartbitch wedding? Have a perfectly good bridesmaid frock or three to lend out in the event. (One purple&black, one black&white and one blue with matching shoes and all pretty tasteful, if a bit formal for everyday use – luckily, my friends/family are better-looking than me, so there’s never been a need to make me look vile in a puce-ruffled meringue to boost the ego of bride, groom or family pet). Can also send along raspberry-fudge torte and cheese and pickle sandwiches for the buffet. I’ll even cut off the crusts.
Maybe DeSalvo secretly lurks and is developing a crush on one of us ‘cos of our exquisite feminine delicacy? That could explain the coded emails I’ve been getting from Gregariously L. Bowls, Ottokar Goguen and Borislav Twelveinch.
>>Borislav Twelveinch<<
Is he single?
Hey, Suisan! You have to tell us more of your circus story!!! Please?
I met my man of 4 years at work. And concerning online dating- I’ve seen too many relationships started online go bad to trust it. It’s too easy for men to use the computer to hide their weaknesses and brag themselves up. Face to face is still the way to go in my eyes.
“And concerning online dating- I’ve seen too many relationships started online go bad to trust it. It’s too easy for men to use the computer to hide their weaknesses and brag themselves up. Face to face is still the way to go in my eyes.”
I can understand why you might feel squicky about something you had seen go wrong multiple times, but I have to wonder how many of these women you know were playing it smart. I am not trying to insult your friends, but I have seen some of my own friends do pretty dumb things for people they met online. I can’t imagine carrying on a courtship 100% online. I would find the man whose profile I liked and if he was also interested, try to arrange a meeting as soon as possible, in a public place, of course. That way no one gets attached before that initial meeting. This obviously does not work in the case of a long distance connection, but I don’t see why anyone would look for a long distance relationship. Those connections seem to be more random and unintentional. I live in a very small town and match.com still has about 150 men of a reasonable age for me, within 25 miles of me, and some of them look interesting. I have almost talked myself into doing it.
If one uses the internet as a means of locating a person with similar goals and interests I don’t see why a relationship that began on the internet would be anymore doomed than one that began in a bar or a classroom.
Well, it obviously works for some people, so I don’t see the harm in it.
And no, my friends weren’t dumb- just too hopeful and too unlucky.
But you got my point. At some point there has to be a face to face thing, and, imo, it should be done asap in an online relationship.
Hey, Suisan! You have to tell us more of your circus story!!! Please?
What more is there to tell? Seriously, I left home and family to join a one ring circus. I answered an ad in the local “horse for sale” paper, advertising for a groom with some experience around horses. Ended up working for a ninth-generation circus trainer, with nine horses, three ponies and a buffalo.
Future husband was an art college dropout who answered an ad in the Village Voice. He was drunk the first night I got there, and as I was unpacking my bags and sweeping various bits of drug paraphenalia from the floor of my “sleeper” he laid down on the floor to a) look up my skirt, and b) introduce himself. Somehow he was the most normal person I met there.
My parents were so proud when I returned from the circus—I brought home a boyfriend. A Jewish boy from Brooklyn, whose parents were both public school teachers. Really, if I had just hung around the student union of the local art college I could have brought a similar guy home.
But he’s funny, takes no “guff” from anyone, and is very dedicated to his family. We’re married twelve years and have three kids. I even kind of sort of almost keep in touch with some of the circus folk we once knew.
If you watch Woody Allen’s “Alice” you can see the back of his head.
Very cool story. Thanks for indulging me!