Online dating not just a trend(u gotta read this)

Tweet

Surely you heard about the Kassem Saleh, the "Army Romeo" who while married and making Afghanistan safe for democracy found time to propose to 50 or so women electronically, all of whom he had "met" via email. The internet leaves plenty of room for deception on both ends. On the sending end, anybody can describe himself falsely, although I'm not sure why he would-if a flesh-and-blood meeting is the ultimate goal. Sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. This aspect of the internet has received a lot of attention, maybe more than it deserves. More intriguing is the deception that occurs at the receiving end of email. It's there that the power of emotions and belief and need can commingle to deceive one into believing that a real and durable relationship exists purely in unverified words. Part of the problem is that you read email in private. It's just you alone with your own psyche, its dreams and its hungers. Many of the usual brakes on human behavior are absent. There are no friends around to reality-test against. Your mind is free to run away with itself. And there is in fact something about the my turn/your turn rhythm of exchange of email, and the slow revelation of self it allows, that is exciting. I think of it as slow dancing at the cyber cafes - It's truly seductive. All the more reason why critical faculties should go online as well as hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams are not enough to build a relationship on anytime, anywhere, on or off the internet. Colonel Saleh isn't the first to dupe women; it started long before the internet was ever conceived. I am concerned less with Saleh than I am with the women he toyed with, although there has to be some psychic flaw that would encourage someone to a) spend that much time online and b) get his kicks by deceiving, and thus harming, others. It's called sociopathy in the psych biz. I'm not sure that it's punishable by court martial, as his contacts are now demanding. The sad part may be that the wooed women were drawn from tallpersonals.com, targeted because they were guaranteed to be needy, placed by the accident of height in a Darwinian social universe that made them less sought after as potential mates. And of course, that would have given them a whole lot less practice at love and a lot less knowledge about it. I consider myself a romantic, but romance for me isn't glass slippers and overwrought declarations, as it seemed to be for Saleh's conquests. "He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas. We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining armor," said one disappointed bride-to-be. Maybe it's because I have had long-term experience with the real thing, enough to know that love isn't about finding Superman. Superman doesn't exist. We love in spite of someone's flaws. It's much sexier and allows moments of unalloyed transcendance. I would throw up if any guy said to me, whether to my face or in an email, as Saleh reportedly did to his correspondents, "You and the thought of you have created a desire so deep within my soul that I cannot fathom a time I will ever be without you." I would be embarrassed to tell another human being that I might actually have fallen for such a line. I would wonder about the sanity of any guy who proposed to me online without ever having met me. Most of all, I don't want someone who can't live without me; I want someone who can live without me but chooses not to. Someone with a stronger sense of self than Saleh's messages suggest. That's what real love demands. If Saleh's declarations didn't seem overblown on their own merits, there was a dead giveaway to deception. He told at least one woman that as a result of parachute jumping he had actually shrunk from over six feet to about five foot nine. I'm sorry, that's just a howler. Still no suspicion? I suppose that I am truly annoyed at Kassem Saleh-but mostly for giving internet dating a bad name. Online daters are not all losers longing for Superman. I demand a personal apology. I not only think posting an online personals ad is a great idea, I'm actually doing it. I'm a 60-year-old widow who is busy working, volunteering, living a life. I had a great long-term relationship; I know how good love can be. I want to go through life with a partner. By the time one reaches adulthood, one is hopefully spinning down some reasonably interesting, possibily individualistic, path in life. You have some special facets you'd like to more or less align with someone else's interests. So the pool of possibilities shrinks considerably. I just don't encounter that many eligible males now in the course of a day. The intelligent use of the internet opens up possibilities of people who might live a block away but whom I might not ordinarily encounter. Before I leapt online, I researched personals sites, read ads posted by males and those posted by females. Most were boring (is there a guy who doesn't want to cuddle by the fire, walk barefoot on the beach or believe in "chemistry," whatever that is?) I wanted my profile to work hard for me, to entice the kind of guy I might actually like-while screening out unsuitables. A good profile, I decided, provides an accurate picture of a person, in words. I have met a few extraordinary guys. There are definitely some world-class guys out there. So successful was the first profile I posted online that I urged a newly divorced friend to follow suit. I drafted her profile, an appealing-and accurate-verbal snapshot of her. Four months ago I was matron of honor at her wedding. I am now back in the market, and I've posted a new personals ad. I like to think it captures my essence, conveys my wit and spunk-demonstrates it rather than my having to declare it-and so keeps away the humorless and the insecure.