When I was growing up I believed that falling in love was a given. That it was easy to find the love of your life. That he was waiting somewhere and something magical would bring the two of us together.
I blame this on two things:
- Watching too many Disney movies.
- My parents.
Disney movies have a lot to answer for, but that’s an entire post in itself. My parents, on the other hand, I’m happy to blame. Because, although witnessing their relationship gave me the unrealistic idea that finding the love of your life was easy, I also got to grow up in a household where I can’t remember hearing my parents argue, got to see them holding hands whilst watching Coronation Street and had to tell them how gross they were when they kissed in public. How could I ever be anything but thankful for that?
They met when they were teenagers, got married in their mid twenties, and by the age of 30 had good careers, a house, and two children: a boy and girl; exactly what they wanted.
I, on the other hand, have a catalogue of mostly awful choices when it comes to men, haven’t worked out a career yet, have no hope of getting a house anytime soon and am wondering if I’m going to run out of time to have children with a man I love (Repeat: ‘I will not settle, I will not settle, I will not settle’).
An active approach
So with that bloomin’ biological clock ticking and no potential husband in sight do I actively go seeking him out? Or do I just sit and wait in the hope he’ll find me?
When things don’t work out in a relationship your friends are quick to come out with the clichés. That he’s out there somewhere, that one day you’ll magically meet… but how can we take that for granted?
Everything that is worth anything in life we have to work for. To get a dream career we don’t just sit and wait for it to come to us, so perhaps it makes perfect sense to view love in the same way.
Therefore, if actively seeking love is perhaps the only way to find it, is internet dating what I should be doing?
Love by Jose Luis Cunha
Online love
I find internet dating to be an odd concept. I’ve fallen for many a man, that I wasn’t initially attracted to, after being friends with them for a while and getting to know their personality. With internet dating we are disregarding a potential partner on trivialities that, if we really knew them as a person, we’d most probably overlook.
I have an online dating profile (although it currently only has a profile picture on it as I’m still hesitant to really put myself out there) and I’ve decided to disregard men on a number of things such as….
- A dodgy username: Captain Pocket Rocket? No thanks!
- Dodgy photos: Men photographing themselves in the mirror with their shirt off and men posing with other attractive women as if to say ‘this is my ex, you need to be this hot to contact me’ do not interest me!
- Our interests not matching: even one thing that doesn’t fit with my outlook on life is enough for me to imagine we’re not meant to be when, in reality, how often do you find someone that is a perfect match?
Logical love
And I think that’s the problem for me. If we’re presented with all this information of a man at first glance it seems logical to pick the ones that are as close a fit to your dream man as possible. And, in doing so, you may be disregarding some amazing men over something as silly as a username! And this is just looking at it from my perspective. There’s also the other side of how I present myself to them. Can I realistically get across how I actually am as a person with a few paragraphs, especially when I hate talking about myself? Could a match for me be choosing not to email because I listed my love of a TV show he can’t stand? Also, the very fact that I’m even led to be looking at love ‘logically’ feels just too far removed from all those happy endings of the rom coms I pretend I don’t watch!
Because there’s that story you want to tell your grandkids… and I always dreamt that the story would be of how I found the love of my life by some magical coincidence. Not by me actively seeking him out.
What do you think? Is internet dating too forced, too structured, too unromantic? Or is it merely a sign of our technological times. I’d love to hear your opinions and your stories, especially if you met the love of your life online.
Perhaps meeting a man on the internet doesn’t quite fit with my idealistic, Disney-fuelled, notion of a love story. But then, when you’re walking down that aisle to marry the man of your dreams, I imagine it won’t really matter how you met him. It’ll just be incredible that you did.
Hearts Ablaze by Brian Powers
Debs
