Pen Pal Romance

We have all heard the wonderfully romantic stories of pen pals that wrote to each other for years without meeting because they lived hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. They exchanged a few pictures and spent countless hours drafting letters back and forth, baring their hearts and souls to each other. Without ever dating, they fell in love.

Today we have Internet Dating. Is it really any different than meeting in any other manner? You still have to weed through the riffraff. You still have people presenting themselves as something other than what they really are. You still have crooks and cheats, predators. And you still have honest real people looking for true love.  However, you can also take your time with the ones who do seem promising. Sure, a lot of people say that the eyes are the windows to the soul and that you need to meet in person to get a real feel for each other. And I believe there is a lot of truth to that. Ultimately you do have to meet in person to determine if there is any type of chemistry between you or not. It is not something that can be logically determined. You feel it or you do not and you won’t know until you meet them face-to-face.

But what about those old pen pal stories? They fell in love without it being about sexual attraction. When we meet face to face with someone that we are physically attracted to, it is human nature to want to speed up the process so that we can get to the really good stuff! I am thinking that if we took more time in the passing of emails back and forth portion before actually meeting face to face, then we would be more inclined to fall for the person inside rather than for the physical beauty that can be so blinding to the truth about people. Please, I am not saying that all good-looking people are bad relationships waiting to happen. I just do not want to confuse the sexual attraction issue with real intimacy.

I feel that if you are looking to find that once in a lifetime incredible love, then why not take the extra time to do it right? Why not agree to write emails back and forth for a while before meeting in person? You have already seen their picture on the web site.  When you do finally meet, you won’t suffer those uncomfortable silences either, you will have shared laughs and have plenty to talk about. You will already be real friends.

So many people put in their profiles that they only want to meet people that are close to home, 50 kilometres, 100 kilometres, etc. Why not reach out across the globe. Why not find new pen pals to write to? Even if you never fall in love, you have gained a new friend and the experience of feeling connected to others. Who knows maybe your soulmate is just across the ocean. Perhaps they are waiting for a note from you in their inbox. Perhaps you will become one of those wonderful love stories worth telling your grandchildren about.