Post-Valentine's Day Post
At the beginning of this week, we ran a two-part series about people looking for love in non-traditional ways, i.e. the internet.
It seems that the days of traditional boy-meets-girl, boy-takes-girl-on-date, boy-and-girl-fall-in-love relationships are quickly becoming obsolete. And why not? With technology not-so-slowly taking over every other aspect of our lives, why not our relationships as well?
Match.com claims every one-in-five relationships starts on the internet. eHarmony, meanwhile, boasts 20 million users and credits its site with 5% of all new marriages. And there's definitely some truth to that. According Jupiter Research, online dating sites are projected to have made just under $2 billion in profits by 2012.
That's a lot of people shelling out cash or entering their credit card information to find love.
And here's the thing. I get it. I totally do.
As cool as it would be for all of us to be able to tell our kids we met our significant others in a chance encounter somewhere romantic, a lot of us just aren't putting ourselves out there for those kinds of opportunities. It may be because we're super involved in our careers or just because we choose not to.
I, for one, didn't want to meet the love of my life in a bar. Yes, I know it happens, but I wanted to connect with someone over more than just a beer and cocktail. Crazy, I know.
So I became one of those millions of people who turned to the internet to meet people, and I got lucky. I found my soulmate with just a few clicks.
And let's be perfectly honest. Technology is slowly robbing us as a society of our face-to-face communication skills.
More often than not, we choose to hide behind the anonymity of our computer monitors rather than actually talk to a person. That holds true for dating.
The sting of rejection doesn't feel as bad when it's coming from a person you haven't met in person but only talked to via a dating site. Telling someone you don't want to be with them is less likely to cause a scene in an email than it would in the real world.
But for those of us who legitimately don't get out there and need some help, the internet is doing wonders.
It provides a venue for you to unabashedly get to know each other, so that by the time you get to the point where you want to brave a face-to-face encounter like a date you already know each other and there's less awkwardness. You've already established that you click and share interests without running into any of those awkward pauses that so often come up when you're first starting out.
But if it doesn't work out, promise me one thing. Don't be one of those pathetic people who turns to an internet dumping site like idump4u.com to do your dirty work.
2 comments
Hahaha. That idump4u.com site is funny. I mean weird...?
ReplyDeleteYour love story is amazing. And inspiring!! I tried signing up for Zoosk once and deactivated my account after 10 mins. I got "winks" (they have this wink button) from creepy people. LOL!
I didn't know sites like that existed! I mean, really. If you pay this site $50 they'll tell your wife/husband that you want a divorce. Crazy!
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you :) I'd like to think that if I could find my love, anyone can!