by StinkyPantz 62 Replies latest jw friends
This has been a great thread. From thought-provoking to cute to technically educational.
Wait a minute, what am I doing reading an "online love" thread? Am I the only guy to post to this thing? Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh. Losing...manliness...must...leave...now!
Blast you all for bringing up these topics! Now I have to tell my story instead of packing up and cleaning! Oh well....In order to truly understand some of my personal info, you'd have to read the threads about my story on the "Dr. Nicolosi and Homosexuality" thread, and the one on "Couples Leaving Together". I don't want to write a book (yet;)), so I'll try to keep this short--but it may sound a little weird.
After my husband and I left the borg, and decided we weren't going to stay together (he's gay), I put an ad on Yahoo "Married Woman Seeks Passionate Friend." I basically wanted to meet some people to experience things (sex) I didn't have the chance to when I was younger. I mentioned I wasn't cheating, and that I was in a unique situation. Needless to say, I got some interesting results, some quite nasty.
After meeting in person 4 guys from the internet, I had pretty much decided I'd had fun and had accomplished what I'd wanted (sex with more than one person--I didn't want to meet someone right after my husband and CONTINUE feeling like I'd "missed out"). In February of 2001 my boyfriend Jonathan (bodhibear420--he's new here) wrote to me, and we corresponded long emails for 3 days, and the next 3 days we Instant Messaged for about 3 hours and sent emails. He decided to come visit (he was going to college about 7 hours away), and we met on a Friday night. He even got to meet my husband that first night!
Anyway, we met and were only apart a total of about 7 hours(he visited family) until he left Sunday night. The rest is history--I moved in with him about 4 months later, and we moved to Rhode Island together in January of this year. I think the internet can be a great forum to meet people, but you do have to take precautions just like you would meeting someone any where else. Verify, verify, verify! It worked for me, and I'm grateful HE found ME, because I have a history of picking gay men!
Becky (sorry, it still ended up being long!)
I met a man online in IRC chat and we hit it off right away. This was seven years ago now. He is unhappily married and I was at the time unhappily married , now separated and we just supported each other. We became the best of friends. He sends pics of his kids, tells me how things are going for him at home and I do the same.
About a year ago, we realized we were in love. We also realize that it's a no win situation. I will not break up a family, and I would be thrilled if he and his wife could work it out, but there isn't much chance of that. His children are young and I told him I knew he would never abandon them, and I would hate him if he did. He lives in the USA and I live in Canada. We talk over the phone, and pretty much everyday via MSN or Icq and email. He's my soulmate, and I'm his. Meeting him would not make any difference. We got to know each other - faults and all, over the years. We're there for each other through the good and bad.
Neither of us saw this coming. But we do... we love each other. It IS possible to love more than one person at a time. He and I would love to run off, but both of us are rational beings. Time will tell.
Mimilly
Anton -- But I am a GOOD person - I am online - and would never lie to a person I loved. So regardless of if the object of my affections is an ocean away or in my own back yard, I see no difference. There are pros and cons I suppose, but I find it so true and pure to get to know a person for who they are instead of what they look like...
I revert back to the fact that people online are REAL PEOPLE, just communicating to others in far away places! I get up in the morning, brush my teeth, drive my car to work, come home and eat dinner, you know real people stuff. And as Spice said you can be dishonest in person the same as online. And this day in age with webcams (dang it I still need to get another one stupid ex) it is kinda hard to fake who you are don't you think. So instead of jumping in the sack on the 3rd date, people are TALKING and COMMUNICATING and reaching eachothers hearts on a whole entire new level!
Love is bliss...
Kisses,
Moe
I&P....excellent!!!
Often times, in the one-on-one-touch-see-feel dating "game," people are swallowied in purely by looks rather than the human soul that lies beneath all of the superficial stuff.
give me one-on-one touch-feel- any day. people can make themselves out to be anything in cyberspace, but not in reali life. you can discern a lot more by looking into someone's eyes than you can ever discover in a chat room. besides, i would be lying if i said looks didn't factor into it somewhere. (if you want to call me shallow, that's ok. i know i'm a million miles away from shallow...)
luv,
~incense and peppermints
jack2 - i always liked that poppin fresh cartoon. he's so cute
The Net is now just another way to meet people. In the future there won't be any stigma at all attached to couples who first met online.
to answer your question I believe the answer is NO. That is you specifically said if the real deal is possible prior to meeting in person. The basic premise I assume is that a person must actually KNOW someone before they can LOVE them.
I believe that you cannot really LOVE someone whom you have never met in person. Without the non-Net communication and interaction, your perspective is tinted and skewed, thus while I do believe a person can FEEL like they are truly in love (which is true of any fantasy attachment) I submit that it is NOT the real thing.
I further submit that even after meeting the "true love" one may feel is not really true until some period of time of experience with that person and may not even be many years of decades--this depends on the complexity of the individuals involved--and for some people they never fully know the other person. Most people are continuously learning and evolving (not in the evolutionary sense) all of their lives so it may be true that we never ever fully know someone else (or even ourselves?!) but I think some point is reached where we can comfortably believe that True Love exists and is based on an indepth knowledge of the other person.
NOw of course as some have pointed out on this thread, it IS possible to meet online and to marry and in fact I have personal experience in this as my fiancee and I met first online. But that really was not your question and obviously MARRIAGE does not equal TRUE LOVE, i.e the "real deal".
--Eduardo
Quick addendum to my above comments:
My premise above that we must know a person to be able to love them is fine. But one corrollary based on the discussion was the necessity to meet in the flesh in order to really love them.
To that I realized I should add the thought that hopefully (for us Christians here) we can express fully and truly that we LOVE God and Christ Jesus, etc. dispite the obvious (not so obvious) fact that we have never met these personages IN THE FLESH.
Clearly not the same thing you were discussing but I thought I should add that clarification and further add that we build our knowledge about Christ and God from the Bible, from Creation, etc. and so we can feel confident that we know them or at least can know them well enough to say that based upon this knowledge we also love them.
--Eduardo
