Internet dating or Internet failing?

It's 2014 and gone are the days of courting and romantic letter writing. Now whatsapping, social media stalking and snapchat are the introduction to any potential love interest. If you haven't liked their photo on Facebook, tweeted them or found them on a dating website then it seems you cannot expect true love!

I myself have been trying out a few dating websites over the past few years as have many people I know. In fact internet dating popularity spans various ages and experiences; divorcees looking for new love, youngsters looking for fun or even women searching for 'the one' they are all there.

The days of meeting somebody on a night out are old hat, they are usually fuelled by alcohol and the relationship rarely leads to anything more serious as the promised text of the next day almost never arrives. What about meeting someone through a friend or at work? That can happen but now our lives are so rushed and crammed full, that trying to squeeze in another person takes time and effort and sometimes more change to your daily routine than you expected.

For some reason internet dating seems more appealing, it's less committal, you check your page at the end of the night and reply to a few messages. There's an instant ego boost - somebody out there finds me attractive - whether you like them or not is irrelevant you can now go to bed slightly more fulfilled than you were when you woke up. A pattern is now formed and that repeats but you don't seem to notice.

You may go on a few dates from these websites, but in my experience you rarely get to date number 2. Each app's own feature where you can scroll left or right over each face is addictive and creates brand new boxes that each prospect needs to tick. You become paranoid that you are fussy when you don't find somebody attractive, as you insist that you want compatibility and chemistry, but then beat yourself up when a guy who seemed interested suddenly stops replying.

It's instant gratification at its best. Instant communication; instant ego boost, instant flirtation, instant feeling and therefore instant disappointment and instant heartache. Everything is at the swipe of your keypad and the click of your camera. More often than not you are invested in a person before even actually meeting them!

The immediate feature of everything the internet has to offer is actually the cause of more stress and upset than help in the dating game. Before mobile phones you made a date and stuck to it and didn't really speak in between. Now there are days of texting involved and hours of waiting as you see that they last read your text 4 hours before! Facebook says they are online and they are ignoring you, they tweeted an hour ago but didn't reply to yours, its brain ache!

Drew Barrymore's line from the film He's just not that into you makes this exact point,

"I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, and so I called him at home, and he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting."

Now 5 years on instead of learning from this, the problem is even worse. A new website Hetexted.com is a relationship advice platform where women can upload pictures of text conversations they had with men and seek advice on why they haven't responded or what their text actually means. The value of a single text is now likened to that of an actual date it requires so much analysing afterwards! Internet dating is fashionable and social media is the norm and both become so easy and accessible you forget what your main focus was at the start of it all - to find someone who wants a relationship and hopefully fall in love.

In our attempt to search for this we have made it more complex and ultimately more stressful. It's easy to say don't look for it and it will find you, but unfortunately that is not the case anymore. Everyone is looking for it and it seems what they are finding is instant and exciting but not altogether that incredible or everlasting.

So Geography was important afterall!

Who knew that after hours of learning about rocks and volcanoes the most boring lesson of the week would actually turn out to be very important? Of course I am not referring to exactly what was taught in the classroom, but more how our lives can cover oceans and continents alike.

Travel has become a big part of society today. People like to go away for a holiday to relax, escape their lives and experience something new. Others like to take years and explore their favourite destinations to discover and find themselves. Sometimes travel is a necessity, we might travel for our job or for a religious endeavour. As people we do not like to be stationary as we can get bored with the continuous and so travelling provokes a new and healthy change in our lives.

Geography can sometimes become an obstacle, mainly within relationships. We cannot always live near the people we love. Families are divided across the world. We are forced to wait months in between seeing close friends. Romantic relationships can end because the couple cannot commit to a long-distance relationship. This can become ironic as you can meet your soul mate online and they have to live across the other side of the world rather than on your doorstep! Whether we allow this to affect us is the question.

I guess what I have recently learnt is that we sometimes let geography control us when we hold all the power. Once we allow someones address or the problem of travel to get in our way, we become a victim of earth and water!

My plea to you is as follows: Go visit that friend you have wanted to for the last year. Stop pouring over holiday brochures, start saving and book that dream getaway. Do not give up on a good romance because it might take a train or two to make it work. Finally to the kids: Pay attention in school, you might learn something!

The Missing Piece.

Started writing in my diary thinking this was something I didn't want to share with the world, then changed my mind. As how can you be afraid to share what you don't have?

Watched 'Dear John' this evening and in addition to sobbing for most of the film I got thinking. I absolutely knew that as it's from the same writers as 'The Notebook ', it would be a heart-wrenching romantic film and I therefore expected to cry but not for the reason I did. Ironically and probably quite ignorantly what made me the most upset was the fact that I could not understand how they felt, having not not known that type of love in my life yet. The type of love I call - The missing piece.

You know the type of love I mean right? Well maybe you don't. Love that consumes you, love that keeps you breathing. Love that keeps you awake at night and gives you a reason to wake up in the morning. Love that is your moon, stars and sun. The type of love that once you find it you can't imagine letting it go and the thought of that ever happening fills you with indescribable fear. Love where you know the bad and good and it doesn't matter. Love that makes you so frustrated and then so fulfilled at the same time. Love that completes you. Love like Romeo and Juliet, Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, Pocahontas and John Smith and of course love like Bella and Edward.

I am of course aware that with all the good, love can also bring pain and heartache. Which in turn provides a way for us to learn, grow, adapt and change. Without it I therefore feel I am missing an opportunity, missing a piece in my life. Is something missing or am I just missing out on something? The sensible answer it that it is just not the right time for me to experience this 'something'. Who knows? Who cares? Well annoyingly enough I do and that is a good point. The more time and effort I spend caring and worrying about my empty space, is probably what delays the missing piece from finding it. Ironic and irritatingly sensible, this discovery doesn't make the process any easier.

I constantly remind people about how I have no interest in marriage and kids, but yet I wish for something linked with those two things to complete me in a way that one day they will also. I feel without any knowledge of real love how can I imagine myself devoting my life to it. Irrelevant of my age and the fact that I am just starting out in life, I feel behind and confused because I don't know why. Life isn't a race and love is not always a bed of roses and films only show love that is fake right? I believe that anyone who feels this, has found themselves in a similar predicament to me and handles it by being bitter.

Maybe I am behind. Maybe I am missing a piece. Or maybe I am just making a puzzle of everything. All I will say is that when or if I ever do find the missing piece, I will do everything and anything I can to make sure it is a perfect fit. By perfect I don't mean a fantasy, I mean perfectly real. A perfectly real missing piece for a perfectly real puzzle.

Love or Hate - There's a fine line....

Have you ever heard about how the feelings behind certain emotions are triggered by the same things? When it comes to how we feel, complete opposites become oddly linked. This is mostly found between the emotions of love and hate. As the famous quote by Francis Smedley says,'All is fair in love and war'.

I think we are often confused by the idea that the people we truly detest and spend our life resenting, being jealous of, or bullied by, we may subconsciously really want to like us. Or maybe we act in a hostile way towards them, because we just don't understand them and haven't taken the time to try.

Most people try to live their life by the rule that hate is a strong word and they should endeavour to avoid using it. By definition, 'hate is an intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.' The confusion comes when we realise that hate is an intense emotion much like love. If we didn't care about the object of our hate in even a small capacity, we wouldn't spend the time and effort hating them in the first place. This is often why little boys tease and playfully hit girls in order to seem macho, when really they just fancy them. It can take years to reach emotional maturity and so we cannot always fully understand what our deep emotions are trying to tell us. Sigmund Freud observed that 'people are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate'.

What happens then, when we start to confuse our emotions and become unsure what we are actually feeling? When it comes to love, people are often scared to admit they are experiencing something that will mean giving away their heart and soul to someone else, as it also gives them the power to crush that heart or give back their love at any moment. I guess our feelings are greatly ruled by fear.

Our emotions usually change with different people. It has been said that you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your family. Obviously we would choose a romantic partner also. I believe that in terms of love and hate it is not necessarily about choice. The family bond we share with our relatives and loved-ones usually means that we vow to forgive and forget most things. As most grudges are overridden by a greater need for them as a person. What happens however when this can't be achieved? Have we failed in a universal necessity? What if sometimes the only emotion we can feel is hate in the form of anger, disappointment or apathy? I guess an example of this would be when someone finds their partner cheating, or when a child feels betrayed by a parent.

Often when we become accustomed to a situation and a person, we end up accepting them as they are and therefore try to ignore their faults and so fail to see when they are truly in the wrong. Once again if we are always the person to compromise and make-amends we are not ever solving the issue just pushing it further under the rug and building up more dust. I find that the main problems created within relationships come down to unfairness and disrespect. There are varying levels of respect expected depending on the relationship. We hope that in a romantic partnrship, respect would be mutual. It sometimes becomes tricky within family relationships as those with age and experience on their side are expected to recieve greater respect. Children are also taught to respect their elders, that means that however old those children get they will still have relatives older. So what happens when those children become adults and their elder is wrong or unreasonable? Are they absolved of this normal disrespectful behaviour, because this generational belief made no stipulations upon its creation? When it comes to family, the stakes are always higher because the love shared in these relationships is always the strongest. Therefore the opinions and judgements of these people will always matter the most.

I think it important to realise that most things in life are linked in one way or another. Love and hate are so similar because we cannot have one without the other. The same with a sickness and it's cure, in this instance that would signify, a disagreement and a solution. Martin Luther King Jr echoes this point, 'Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it. I guess main item that links all these things is passion whether negative or positive, passion is present in everyday life. It it present within us as human beings in the form of an innate desire to live. Passion for love, Passion for hate, Passion for life. The line may be fine but it is intense nonetheless!