Love Online.  Not just for the Desperate Anymore

Finding the one you're supposed to find is quite a daunting task. Playwrights, authors and lovers' lost have been trying to crack the code for eons. The 21st century version of courtship,dating and falling in love has been exponentionally seperated from it's distant relative, romance. It takes quite an imagination to facilitate that which we call true love, especially in an era of 8 minute dating, TV shows hinging on multiple dates and voting off contestants like some sick primary election process. The internet has created a global microcosm of lonely people, desperately searching for someone to share their life with, desperate for human contact so they can disassemble their cyber-systems and spend time soul mating with that special someone. Once a dark little nook for the introverted, the embarassed and the socially dysfunctional, internet dating, and internet-induced love has become as common as a bar-fly's silliest attempt at breaking the ice.

Love online is one thing, but marriage? While some people may accept the internet as a viable means of meeting someone, who in their right mind would take the step into matrimonial oblivion, meeting, falling in love with, and ultimately marrying their online interest? It happens more than you might think. In fact, it's happened to me. At least it almost has.

There I was online, a victim of relationship after failed relationship, having already cajoled myself into accepting the fact that I may be alone forever, and having accepted it with some humility. Nevertheless, I found myself online late one night, doing a search for people online in my area. I was an online fiend, IM'ing and e-mailing girls who I thought might be worth talking to, weeding out prospects by the way they spelled their screennames I saw a screenname that caught my eye, I "instant messaged" her and waited. No response. I did not "x" out of the box, but minimized it on the off chance that she would respond, whoever "She" was. A few minutes went by and I heard that familiar tone which signifies that there is life on the other end of the phone line after all. She responded and we launched into a conversation I now don't remember much of. I do know, however, that every time I logged on, I looked for her and when I would find her online, it brightened my day. This went on for about a week and we finally exchanged numbers. I called her, she answered and my life would never be the same. She had the voice of a dream come true and the personality of the one girl every guy wants to bring home to meet his parents. She had a butter soft way of speaking and a relaxing quality that immediately drew me in and made my face go flush. I was involving myself in someone and something that I had never even seen.

When it was finally time to meet her, I was sick with nervous energy. "What would she look like", "Had I made a mistake", "Will she like me". These were all questions racing through my mind like a stock market ticker. Then her car pulled up and she got out. Reality slowed down at that point. It was a slow motion version of real life and I felt a tiny piece of the puzzle slide into place and things were about to get much better for me.

It was an instant whirlwind of emotion, and from then on I knew there was magic behind her. We accellerated through the first kiss, the first date, the first time meeting parents and the first time we whispered "I love you" to each other. We were on an express path to forever, having only been together for about a month. Things, however, seemed a lifetime in the making. We began talking about the future using the word "when" intead of "if" and riding down the road one afternoon I remember turning to her and saying "Let's get married in November". November turned into October and now the race is on. Wedding plans are being made, colors are being chosen, invitations are being looked at, groomsmen and bride's maids are being asked to be in the ceremony and through it all nothing in the world has ever meant more.

It all started with a random "instant message" to a faceless, nameless person interfacing with a computer terminal. We must have driven past each other a thousand times, shopped at the same mall and probably passed one another walking through the grocery store. But it took something as impersonal and immense as the internet to bring us together. Somewhere, I am convinced, there is a place with the names of every single person and their soulmate and those names have to make their match. Love, true love, is stronger than any distance, any force of nature and it will find you .