Increasingly, in recent years, I've met a lot of couples who met online. And I don't just mean through dating apps, I don't really believe in those, and also, I think they're becoming quite common place. 'Cause like ten years ago even, it would've been a wild thing to go out with a stranger from an app, but now it seems a lot of the couples that I know just, that's how they meet. So it sort of becomes impressive when they don't, when they met through other, more natural ways.
Anyway, that's not what's bugging me now. Rather, it's everywhere else online. Because these dating apps are meant to function locally at least, but with the Internet, you can meet anyone from anywhere, and I'm knowing more and more people who do that. Who meet someone in Europe or the US or wherever else across the Globe (or maybe not that far, but still pretty far) and just entertain the possibility of an actual relationship.
I find I'm quite old-fashioned, to my own shock, on that front. Because for me, for a long time, it was just "oh, they live in a different country, I guess that's that". And I've been struck before to realize that that wasn't a problem for the other person. I was quite close with someone last year, American, and for me that was just impossibly far so that was that. That was as far as it was going to go, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that that person thought it was a possibility, that him inviting me to come visit wasn't just talk, he meant it. I was shocked. And kinda frightened, to be honest.
And as I move, and as I meet more people, I'm starting to question that increasingly. Think, well, I don't really believe it's very likely that the few right people who are gonna be genuinely right for you in this life are all gathered together in the same country at the same time, right? So why the mental block, I wonder? Is it just how I was raised? I mean, for the formative years of my life, we didn't have a computer or a phone, let alone the possibility of meeting someone online and thinking they were a potential mate. That was just out of the park, and yet, I know a lot of people doing it. A lot of people older than myself, too. People in their 40s who obviously lived without all this stuff a lot longer than I did.
Th weird thing, they travel these great distances, and they end up happy, too. Like, I expect them to end up in small bits inside a suitcase, but I'm starting to feel like that's a minority view.
Maybe it's an Eastern European thing, but then again, I've known people here do it as well, so.
This is a bit of a rambly post, but my mind's not fully here I guess. I think what I'm getting at is, what's your view on this whole thing? Cause I like you people on here, you're all pretty sensible. And maybe that's just the point. You're all Internet crazies too and I kinda like you and trust you. So how does that work?
There's a part of me that thinks it's just technology moving so freaking fast, our brains can't keep up with it and it creates a sort of cognitive dissonance in some of us. Maybe.
What do you think about Internet relationships? Especially becoming real relationships? Do you have those sort of cases in your life? Are you as surprised as I am? Are you old-fashioned or would you fly out to meet someone you met online? Would you fall in love with someone who lives in a different country maybe somewhere really far away? Just shooting questions out here. I don't really know why myself.
