Wired and waiting for love on the Net

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): As if to testify to how far the Internet has penetrated into our personal lives, more and more people are discovering that their significant others are waiting for them on the other side of the world, separated by a phone line.

Speak with a couple that has been married for only a few years, and you might learn that their romance started online. It is also increasingly common to find that a friend has a friend who married someone he or she met through one of the matchmaking services on the Web.

Take Rose, for example. An outgoing Indonesian woman, she used to work for a leading local economic weekly. She placed an ad on Yahoo! Personals and met a man she fell in love with and eventually married.

"He responded to my ad, and I answered back because he met one of my most important criteria. Like myself, he was a devoted Christian," Rose replied in an informal e-mail interview.

And Lilly, an Indonesian woman who used to work for a major local PR company, found her perfect man through oneandonly.com.

"I included a picture of myself in the ad," she said in an e- mail interview. "Tom was one of the men who responded to the ad. Then we communicated by e-mail, by SMS, by phone, and then we decided to meet in the real world."

"He would call my cell phone from New York, from Canada, from Europe," Rose said. "He was a diplomat. But what really brought me to my knees was when he suggested that we pray together with thousands of miles between us."

And how was it when they met these men in person for the first time? Both Rose and Lilly found that the men they met in person were not much different from the mental images they had formed through their online communications.

"We had been so honest with each other right from the beginning, so we felt we knew each other so well even before we met at the airport," said Lilly. "It felt as if we had been away from each other for a long time and we missed each other so much."

"He looked exactly as I had imagined him to be," Rose said. "And I was again so touched when he thanked God right there and then at the airport for finally bringing us together."

Is online dating only for the timid and socially inept?

Absolutely not. Both Rose and Lilly are very sociable people with a lot of friends. However, with the pace of life getting faster and faster, and the demands of work increasing, more and more people have too little time to meet people outside of their everyday circles of friends and acquaintances.

For people like Rose, who spent much of her time covering events at the House of Representatives, placing a personal ad online is a sensible thing to do. It does not cost much, it does not take too much time and it can be very effective.

Even more, placing a personal ad online allows you and your potential partner to explore each other's interests and see if your chemistries really match before you start dating. Compare this to trying to meet someone at cafes and other popular hangouts for single professionals.

Have other people had as much success as Lilly and Rose?

Well, the success stories' sections of kiss.com, match.com, saferdating.com and yahoo.com are impressively full of happy reports from those who meet their other halves on these sites. Some are already married, others are just getting there.

What should you do to impress others on the Net? An excellent article in the Feb. 12 issue of TIME Digital underscored the fact that you should be original. Do not try to window-dress yourself online, as nothing will turn off a potential date more than discovering you have been dishonest about yourself, like, for instance, posting someone else's picture.

Rose and Lilly said they were honest from the beginning. "To me, the truth is the truth, I did not want to hide anything," Rose said.

However, care should be taken. Never reveal too much about yourself too soon. As in any place where people gather, whether online or offline, there are pranks in the dating rooms. Both Rose and Lilly started with honest descriptions of themselves, and it was only after communicating more and more with the men of their dreams that they gradually shared more personal information. Unless you are looking for a one-night stand, online dating should be approached as a natural process.

Do not think that just because you do not immediately meet in person someone you met on the Internet that you are safe. This is just not so. If you intend to find your soul mate online, it pays to read the horror stories on saferdating.com, just to arm yourself.

The bottom line is you have to be on your guard. Some people believe that marriage is a gamble, and it seems that online dating is even more of one. People can easily write rosy notes to seduce you. The TIME article emphasizes the need to use common sense, and it is probably no easier to remain sensible online when you are already in love. You should be supersensitive to red flags, and never let love or the hunger for a relationship cloud your thinking.

What about local matchmaking Web sites? There are plenty, since providing this service is quite an effective way of pulling in as many visitors as possible and building a community around a site.

Birojodoh.com, Biro Jodoh Elektronik, Indonesian Dating Services and Jodoh Indonesia Net are just a few such local Web sites.

Fringe benefits? The last question we asked Rose and Lilly in the e-mail interviews was "Would you do it again?" It was a joke, of course, but Lilly had a very positive answer.

"After I posted my picture on the Web, I got e-mail messages from quite a few people. Many of them are still my friends today."