Modern living & the Internet relationship

Just when you've about given up all hope of ever again finding the simple happiness of having a true friend, that interesting message arrives in your mail box.

Interesting, because amongst all the daily junk mail there is something different about this message, something that tugs and eventually wrestles you into sending back a reply. If it hasn't happened to you, you won't comprehend. I know, its happened to me several times.

Those whose lives are structured, regular and crisis free will often poke a snoot at everything outside of their small worlds and dismiss it as a load of old crock. People can be stupid like that.

Yet the Internet relationship can be a frustrating experience. To begin, you don't really know exactly who you are dealing with, despite any amount of exchanged information and pictures. Instead you tend to form a mental jigsaw puzzle picture and each piece of information that comes in becomes another part of the puzzle. You build up this mental idea and should you ever meet, that can prove as equally disadvantageous as having no picture at all.

I've had several dozen blind dates ovet the years, reached through newspaper columns, telephone dating services, even arranged by pals. Some worked for a time, others didn't even get off the starting blocks. So what else is new?

Most people who connect in this way are for some reason or other lonely, even though they might have company of sorts in their lives. Loneliness can be a hugely forceful motivator. After all, you're at the point where you either cut off from the whole world or you just keep on taking chances. You can live this life as a total island, but it will eventually turn you into a colder person who finds it increasingly harder to make meaningful contact with others. And it gets worse when you see almost all of the people you know living lives of relative contentment.

I cold go on and on about this, but you know, I'd rather hear from you. If you have an unusual Internet relationship experience, good, bad or indifferent and would like to share it with others, e-mail it to me at stories

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