Meeting Online
 

I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but some people act really weirdly when I say that Dazza and I met online. I liken it to telling someone you have herpes. They lgically know they can't catch it, but they still think you're a bit strange. I find it interesting that people still react this way, even though internet dating sites are advertised on TV and Radio all the time these days.

It wasn't really a dating site that Dazza and I met on, but I don't think that's really the point.

Why is it hard for people to find meeting on the internet an acceptable way of expanding ones social network?

I know a ton of couples who've met online - and yet when I suggested that path to someone who looks for men in bars (and is not happy with the quality of men she finds there - duh) she acted like I was nuts. I don't get it either.

I have mentioned elsewhere that my wife and I met on the internet. It too wasn't a dating site but one much like this.

What's so different to meeting a person as a pen pal. Wasn't that a common event before the internet? If that wasn't considered wierd, why should an internet marriage be all that different?

I am sure I knew far more about my internet friend (now my wife) from e-mail exchanges than I would have done in months of dating. Anyway, it worked for me.

This is true you know. I think a lot of people are far more honest via email and IM's because they feel protected and safe sitting behind their computer, so if a relationship begins there, it's like a lot of the 'scarey' stuff is already out in the open before you even meet. I know it was a bit like that with Dazza and me (we're married now too Bee).

I know quite a few people who have met on line too. More than a few are now happily married. Most of the others have met just for sex. :D

That's what Dazza and I were supposed to be doing.

Just goes to show, you never know when you're going to meet someone to love. :)

I think there's a different stigma to "meeting online" versus getting connected through an online dating service. With the latter, it is assumed you are really only using it as an initial matchmaker, and then you meet in person and begin actually dating. However, if you say you "met" online, that implies a relationship that developed significantly through text long before ever meeting. It absolutely can work out, of course--I know of several marriages, myself--but you have to admit that there are aspects of personality that one can sometimes miss when only text is involved. It all depends on how well each person translates themselves into written word.

I had a friend, for example, that I had to simply stop emailing and only ever contact on the phone, because for reasons hard to pinpoint, his emails always came off stilted, arrogant, and downright rude when no offense was ever meant. Other friends agreed with me; he just didn't know how to express himself the same way he did when he talked, and he was completely insufferable in text form. He is someone you definitely could not really know just by knowing him online.

I guess what I'm saying is, when someone says, "We met online," I don't think twice about it, because by the time I'm hearing about it they've already obviously made a success story out of it. But if someone says to me, "I have a relationship with someone online (whom I've never met or only met in extremely limited circumstances)" I admit I am more suspicious of the long-term viability of their relationship than I would be otherwise.

I think a lot of people just cling to the idea that you're "supposed" to meet partners in person before you ever begin dating them. They'll ask "How can you really know someone you've only ever communicated with online?" Well, how can you really know someone you've only ever chatted with next to the coffee machine at work? You can't, in either case. It takes a long time and various methods of communication to really get to know someone well enough to have a lasting relationship.

I agree with this, but I have to admit that I understand the impulse of having a relationship online. Like Aliantha mentioned, a lot of the "scary" deep stuff may be expressed earlier on since people feel that they're safe, and they may feel like they've developed a connection with that person online that they can't get with someone around them in their day to day life.

(And no, Ali, you're not the only one who gets weird looks. When people hear I met my fiance online, they'll usually say something like "Oh! How... interesting" and then change the topic.)

But isn't this true of nearly every new 'relationship'? Chances of success in any relationship these days seems fairly limited regardless of how they began.

surveys say that you had a 67% chance of getting porked on your first live date with dazza, ali....... what does reality say?

reality says we didn't pork for about 6 weeks which was very much out of the ordinary for me.

Six weeks! You're both Aussies so how did that happen!

I have this problem with people I know (almost exclusively) via the Cellar and passing on their evidence in real life. Any anti-American bias here is grossly exaggerated by the press, but power always attracts humour in the UK - it's how we managed not to have a revolution. "Attack the status quo? Well okay, but as long as we only use barbed words and not a guillotine..."

So when I say, "YES Americans can spell through. No they don't really think it's spelled thru, it's an abbreviation!" I have to try and back this up with something other than, "Well the people I know online..." because friends and family just roll their eyes. Even worse talking to a stranger. And tourist-strangers do talk to you in London if you don't look too manic. It's cool to admit you know someone in Ohio, Iowa, Victoria etc. But then when they say, "Oh my Aunt lives there, is it anywhere near xxxx" you have to mumble "ah no I "know" them online...." and feel like a geek with no friends.

I form real attachments here. I know you don't Ali, but your life is fuller than mine anyway. I haven't been hurt or let down by anyone here, but if I did it would hurt as much, if not more than the people I see face to face in real life (excepting family). Because I have shared more. The exception being HM because I do see him every day and we share our lives more.

I need to get out more, I know.

I would be happy to be called your friend SG, if you cared to call me that. I would love to tell people I have a friend in Greenwich.

Well, I'm not sure UT. It was sort of weird to me, but nice. I think it was the difference in how things started that has paved the path for how things will proceed. Maybe that's why to me, this relationship is so wonderful and different from any other I've ever had before and why I can just be me.

Whatever the reason, I'm glad we found each other. I can't imagine where my life would be right now if not for Daryl.