Love @ First Site Traps Email-order Brides And Grooms In Web Of Passion
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday March 31, 2001
Abigail has met five promising men on the Internet. She slept with one; it didn't develop any further, but they're still friends.
The 35-year-old writer from Sydney's inner west doesn't regret it, or any of the other ``enlightening" experiences she's had since joining an online dating service in December.
She says she's not embarrassed about romance by computer. However, she preferred not to use her real name for this story.
Far from being a freak, Abigail is typical of the 378,000 people who last month visited the top five Australian dating Web sites RSVP, ninemsn, blueskysnog, soulmates and Excite according to the research group Red Sheriff.
The 88,000 members of RSVP a profitable Web site founded in 1997 swap 20,000 emails and set up 5,000 dates a week.
There have been 500 marriages, says RSVP's boss, Aengus Mulcahy. Excite announced yesterday that visits to its personals service had tripled in six months.
Such statistics, coupled with the first Australian university study of Internet romance, suggest that Internet lovers are much more common than previously thought.
But while more people are meeting online, few are willing to admit it.
Online lovers have trouble telling their family and friends where they met because they are embarrassed about it, according to a 12-month study, We Met on the Net , by Linda Cruickshank, a graduate student at the University of South Australia. This may hide the true popularity of what is widely considered the practice of a desperate few.
Of eight couples in the study each of whom met online and carry on long-distance e-mail relationships half said they felt stigmatised.
However, all were planning marriage or long-term commitments, despite doubtful reactions from family and friends. (``He could have been an axe murderer, or some lunatic out to get me with a wood chopper," said a 42-year-old woman of the initial reaction to her Internet partner).
Newcastle couple Martyn and Nichola Webster married a year after meeting online and are now expecting their second child. They got to know each other by email while Martyn, 35, was working in India, and Nichola 32, was in Newcastle. Now Nichola's sister is engaged to an Internet lover, too.
``The impression people get is it's something desperate people do and quite often come to grief because of the psychos out there," says Martyn. ``But we know a lot of people who are doing it."
Significantly, the stereotype disappeared when Internet partners were introduced to parents face-to-face, said Cruickshank.
``Once they did meet, it wasn't even an issue," says Brisbane-based Daniel, 26, of his father and online girlfriend, 23-year-old Sydneysider Heidi.
Now he's teaching his recently divorced father to use online dating.
``My parents and grandparents grew up in a generation where they didn't have the technology. They couldn't take it seriously that you could develop anything by email. [But] I suggested the idea to my father and he took to it with arms wide open."
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald