Online Dating Not Just a Trend

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 e-mail. 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 e-mail 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 e-mail, and the slow revelation of self it allows, that is
exciting. I think of it as slow dancing at the cyber café. 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
e-mail, 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.

ROAD-TESTED. HANDLES WELL!! I've been around the
block but I'm in excellent condition. Maybe even better than new.
Powerful, smart and very lively engine. Fully automatic, ....
You get the picture.

Warped Romeos need not reply.