Many people today are turning to the internet as a tool for finding a partner. Cyberland has strong advantages but there are some serious pitfalls.
Advantages of Dating Online
A "surfer" can immediately focus on people with similar interests, beliefs, age and other important criteria without having to spend time and money "going for coffee." Non-matching people can be sidestepped without ever needing to make contact. It's "partner shopping" in a global supermarket of humanity.
Meaningful dating can be done at distance, even in other countries.
Relating thru writing (emailing) is a quick and efficient way to learn a lot about a person and how they tick, with minimum initial commitment or investment face-to-face and is the heart of Effective Online Dating.
Disadvantages of Dating Online
If a "surfer" is not witty or doesn't write well, online dating can be difficult.
Prospects often circulate constantly thru a host of sites. The Net offers unlimited options. This can make for cynical or dismissive prospects with little care for how their rejections or non-contact affects the feelings of others. It can be a conveyor belt.
Most humans are addicted to initial flirtations and the "drug" of being liked, appreciated and wanted. Cyberland is an illusion of meeting. The connection is based on internalised and selfish feelings, often projections of what we are looking for, rather than what the other person is actually like.
This approach can morph people into the commodities of others' consumption.
Superficiality of the Internet
Physical attraction is fickle. Individuals can be intensely "in love" one minute, and not at all later, simply based on appearance. (They could be called "Flickers"). Often, people are in love with "being in love" not with you at all.
Photos can mislead. It's good advice to ask for many photographs, so if physical attractiveness is important to you, a balanced look at someone over time and in many contexts is achieved. People look very different in different photos. Don't project an illusion of a person from one image.
Painful Online Romance verse True Love
True love (what Christians call "agape" and Maori "aroha") is solid, reliable and unconditional. People can learn to receive and give true love. A person who finds "love" for their partner is "gone" can will themselves to obey God and love their partner by being un-dominated by "feelings" and ask God to release "agape" or "aroha" thru them to their partner.
This approach goes against almost everything our body, mind and the Net convinces us is real. The most pain, hurt, brokenness and distress caused online by people attempting to find the divine within each other, is a misunderstanding about the voracity of emotional online connection, and an abandonment of what true love really is.
Robin Williams says to Matt Damon in the movie "Good Will Hunting" (Miramax, 1997), "it's not about whether you are perfect for her, or she is perfect for you...are you perfect for each other?...none of us are perfect."
Missing True Love While Waiting For Mr/s Perfect
Online daters often bypass wonderful prospects of blessing and enduring love in exchange for the endless anticipation of finding a "right" person who will be perfect. The Net feeds this hope. It is a forlorn and hopeless vacuum. A better way is to find perfect love within, and give that unconditionally to another imperfect human being (to whom you are, or are not, at times, "attracted").
"A flatterer spreads a(n) (inter)net" (Proverbs 29:5). Use the Net as a doorway to real life and real engagement with actual human beings, sovereign and independent of your wants and needs.
