July 23, 2002
Busy Saturday Night? ... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
Just yesterday, a totally wonderful and accomplished woman turned to me at a party and said, "I'm so ready for a relationship, I'm thinking of trying Match.com."
I was shocked. Why would a terrific person like her resort to the Internet?
Of course, the society this woman grew up in didn't expect her to lead the life she has. Today in her 40's, she's never been married, has no children and owns her own home. By no means an ingénue, she's interested and interesting, and she even meets a good number of new people on the job. Still, as she points out, this is in a professional capacity.
So, why can't she find a guy, at the very least to go out with and have some fun?
Obviously, the answer called for research.
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The good news is there are some 85 million single adults in the United States. So, how does she find this needle in a haystack?
Mathematics shouts out that she's got to examine as many candidates as she can; and she's got to figure out what is and is not acceptable to her. "What's your major?" has long passed into oblivion as a savvy opener, especially when we've all lived as long we have. We've had triumphs and tragedies, enjoyed fortuitous coincidences and survived dreaded diseases, made bad choices and good ones.
It seems to me that a clear examination of self goes a very long way into making such an online excursion successful. And just like dating in our youth, the more you do it, the better you get at it -- better able to discern what works and what doesn't. What's important, and what's not. Who doesn't exactly tell you the truth about themselves, and who doesn't even know it.
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Attempting to find a personal connection online is fraught with no more than the same old problems we had dating in high school and college. I remember one guy who was great on the telephone. He'd call any girl, and by the time he hung up, he'd have a date. Of course, when he actually showed up, he was still Seth, and things would go downhill from there.
The same is true for email. Some guys give great email, but are they capable of sustaining a relationship? Good question.
According to Jupiter Research, some 15 million Americans have used online dating services in the past year, and Jupiter only sees growth in the years ahead.
To me, this is not about "lonely hearts," so much as it is about the human condition: People do not thrive in isolation. We need relationships to be happy and healthy. And online, everyone can have access. Whether you're elderly, recently divorced or deaf, you can use the Internet. Even the blind have text-to-speech technology so they can hear their own email.
What I didn't know as a youth was that it takes both love and trust to make a real relationship. Our quest was to fall in love, and we believed that trust just came along with the package.
So, maybe this new Internet way of life isn't so bad after all. You start with establishing trust, and stick around to see if love will follow.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
