Virtual Expressions of Love to Sweeten the Day

So I'm sure that up til now I've come across as the typical 'heinous bitch' shall we say? I seem cynical and jealous of everything romantic. However, this is completely false. At the core, I remain a sappy romantic. In fact, one of my favorite past times is to surf the web and find cute love quotes or send silly and romantic e-cards to my guy friends. In my opinion, the e-card is one of the sweetest ways to send a little love to someone in a very simple way. Granted, it's not as personal or meaningful as the old-fashioned love letter, but at the same time, it's a visually appealing gift, and it's quick and simple to do.
My favorite site for all this sappy business is AdoringYou. It has e-cards for every possible relationship you could think of, even the breaking up e-card. That, to me, might be an even worse way to end a relationship than the whole breaking up on Facebook thing. However, there are a few really cute little cards that are fun to send to friends, especially the 'Missing You' cards. I know that it's something I like to do, especially when I feel like a friend is having a tough week and could use a pick-me-up.
AdoringYou also feeds my cute love quotes addiction. It has quotes submitted by people who have visited the site as well as some famous quotes. My favorite quote of all time is included:
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life:That word is love." ~Sophocles
One other thing I loved about this site was that it has little love coupons you could print out to give to your significant other, which I thought was a totally cute idea. What's better than giving a coupon for love??

On-Line Confessions of Love

I happen to be a really big fan of poetry. I love to read it and I love to write it. I was doing a search for poetry the other day, and I was shocked to find a site that provided Cyber Love Poems. The site is dedicated to providing "poems written by people who fell "victim" to cyber love." I was shocked that there was actually a set of poems written on this specific topic. I was more shocked to find that I didn't hate all of them. Some of them were pretty well-written, and all of them seemed to have some pretty intense emotions.
The first poem on the page is titled Cyber Soulmates by CJ Heck. Again, I was very sceptical at the first reading of this, and I've already expressed how I feel about on-line relationships. However, one line in his little limerick did sort of make me nod my head and think "Ok, I can see where he's coming from." The line reads:
They understood from the inside out because that's how they began.
So these were two people that had built a relationship based on words. They most likely spent hours talking on-line and on the phone before ever meeting. I'm sure they exchanged photos and things of that sort, but honestly, there is a big difference between seeing some one's picture and actually being in a room with them. I can appreciate the fact that they must have felt a very strong connection based purely on each other's words. One would assume they found honesty, truth, and some form of compatibility there before meeting and getting a sense of that new chemistry which exists on in physical proximity between two people.
Tammy Hoover's poem, Love Always also had a beautiful image. Granted, her style of writing was completely without any structure, her words seemed to speak loudly enough without proper punctuation. She writes:
unlike she's ever loved
without all the pretense
and confines
that she had believed
to be love
the way she knows
even though
this love will remain untouched
it has touched her
I really loved this thought of pure, untainted love. It has this beautiful, optimistic feeling but still remains realistic. I'm not sure what it was about it that I appreciated so much, but it pulled on a heart-string.
Anyways, I never thought that poetry about on-line love would be something I would enjoy reading, but apparently I was wrong. I guess poetry can really be made out of just about any topic...

On-line Dating: Guide to Love or Gateway to Disaster?

It is impossible these days to watch tv without seeing one of those commercials for an on-line dating site whether it be E-Harmony.com or Match.com, we see them every day. All of these commercials claim that they can help you "find that person who's been waiting their whole life to meet you" or something equally appalling and false. I happen to have a personal, and incredibly embarrassing, tale in respect to online dating. Yes, it's true... I fell victim to the call of the ultimate anonymous relationship. It does seem appealing in some senses. There's no pressure to meet anyone if you don't like what you read and it's certainly easy to feel like you've learned so much about a person just by reading their on-line profile.
I joined Match about four years ago as a freshman in college. It was rough time for me since I went to a performing arts school and pretty much every single guy that went there was gay. Eventually I was craving a male companion, and for some reason I thought joining an on-line dating site would be a good idea. Keep in mind, this was before it was a widely publicized form of dating. Which makes me appear even more the idiot. Anyways, after doing the whole describing my entire personality in 1000 words or less deal, I started to get some responses to my profile, most of which were 40 year old men looking to be my 'daddy'. However, I did find a few people that seemed interesting and I even met one guy that went to a school very near to mine. Now here's the problem with on-line relationships, even more so than "real" relationships: There's no real way to tell when you're being lied to. My mistake? Believing that this kid had cystic fibrosis and was going to die before he was 40 and he really just wanted to show me the cool computer the Make-A-Wish Foundation gave him. You can probably figure out the rest of the story, but I'll tell you this much, the kid definitely did not have any fatal disease. Although by the time I was done telling him off, he was possibly fearing for his life.
My point to this story is that web-sites that claim they can match your personality perfectly based on asking you a million pointless questions such as "Are you outgoing or introverted? Do you like to laugh? What do you look for in a partner?" seems completely ludicrous to me. My favorite part of the Match.com website is the question and answer link. Take a look, it's pretty entertaining the way they try to validate their site.
On a slightly less cynical note, I have actually witnessed some success stories in relation to on-line dating. My aunt met her husband through a dating site for people in her religion and my cousin met her husband through a site for singles with kids. So I suppose it can work for some people, but my advice would be to proceed with caution. A LOT of caution.

Facebook: Break Up Cop Out

Facebook: A way to keep people connected or a public display of your life for anyone to see? Sure, there are privacy controls that can be set to exclusive, but not many people use it because then friends can't search for you. So instead, the facebook community puts every move you make on the website out on display for anyone to see. This type of information is found right when signing onto facebook on the home page. There is a list of changes your friends have made to their profiles, if they changed their profile picture, and of course any changes in relationship status. All this information is listed under the "News Feed". To make things even more accessible, any of your friends can go to your personal profile and look at your very own "Mini-Feed" which maps out each of your personal movements; who's written on your wall, where you've left comments, what new groups you have joined, who has added you as a friend... and yes, if you just ended a relationship. As if such an event weren't hard enough, we now have to advertise our loss and heartbreak to the entire virtual world. The worst part of it is when it shows a little broken heart next to the words "Jane is no longer in a relationship with John". Just rub it in a little more facebook.
The possibility for disaster with this system is huge. Example: I had been in a long distant relationship with a guy that lives in Florida for about a month. I thought things were going great, we were happy, I was going to fly down to see him.... until I signed onto Facebook and right at the top of my News Feed was the little whole heart and the tag "Dustin Wessel is now in a relationship with Carrie Nobody". How do you handle finding out the person you thought loved you is in a relationship with someone else? That's a tough enough thing... but to find out on something as impersonal as Facebook??? I'm concerned about this. I've heard so many people getting into fights and crying because someone 'un-friended' them on this stupid website. Give me a break. I joined Facebook specifically because everyone told me I should since it was so great. I really don't get it. If I want to leave an old friend from high school a stupid message I can either call them or leave an instant message or something. I do not need yet another tool to use as an excuse for not having face-to-face communication with a person. Also, Facebook gives people an even easier way to end relationships. Just change your "relationship status" in your profile. What a cop out.



The Publicity of Facebook Break-ups

Climbing the Relationship Ladder

I spent time searching the web for helpful sites about relationships, and I stumbled across one of the most entertaining, vulgar opinions of the dating scene I've ever encountered. This website is entitled Intellectual Whores and the article I looked at is called the Ladder Theory. This guy goes through and gives situations where a male and a female meet each other and the different possible outcomes. He explains how men have a 'ladder' where they place every single woman in their lives. The ladder starts at the bottom, putting the ugliest, most terrible women and works up to the top, elite, hottest women. This guy says that every woman on the ladder, with the exception of the bottom rung, is simply a possible sexual encounter. He claims that there is no possible way a guy can just be friends with a female. Every single woman is simply a journey to the bedroom. On the other end, women have two ladders. They have the sex ladder, and the friend ladder. As females, we instantly place men on one of the two ladders, and once they are there, it is nearly impossible to switch ladders. Once a guy is put onto the friend ladder, he should not attempt to cross over onto the sex ladder. And if he is on the sex ladder, he wouldn't want to be on the friend ladder anyways because to a guy, there is no need to be friends with a girl.
The entire ladder comes across as sarcastic and cynical in respect to women and the attempts at relationships, however, through much of the sarcasm and vulgarity, there is some truth to be found. The pie charts portraying the men and women's rating systems are accurate. Women are attracted to men with money and power primarily, then attraction, then a slew of other unimportant items. Men however, are attracted by looks first, and then the potential of if a woman will put out.
What does all of this have to do with heart break? I think if men and women better understood each other's intentions, heart break would be less likely. Of course this is a very shallow representation of what constitutes attraction and potential love between two people, but isn't physical appearence and approachability what initially attracts two people to each other? Maybe if women understood that most men are just trying to get into their pants, they would be able to sheild themselves from becoming emotionally attached to that strong, confident man. And men would be much better off if they realized that for women there is a very fine line between being a friend and having the potential to be more.
Things would become easier for people looking for relationships if they were honest from the outset. If a man were open and honest with the girl he is persuing, he could get what he wants. There are pleanty of women out there who are just looking for a one night stand as much as a man is, and if they were simply upfront about it and stopped playing stupid mind games, everyone could just go home with someone who wanted to go home with them and then everyone would be happy. Ideally anyways.
The Ladder Theory is a useful tool. It shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I think if you look closely you can see where some of the truth lies. Take a look... it can't hurt.

The Ladder Theory