Finding love online has its ups and downs

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BY MICAH MERTES / Lincoln Journal Star

Once thought of as a last resort for stalkers, dorks and the antisocial, Internet dating — or e-mance, if you will — has become an increasingly popular mating ritual.

It’s quite likely that a good chunk of lovers celebrating Valentine’s Day today met online and have forged a “real”-ationship outside the confines of the cyber scene.

 According to a recent survey by Internet company IncrediMail, 86 percent of people who use social networking sites every day, such as MySpace and Facebook, have asked people on a date via the Web.

[+]Enlarge

(Kim Stolzer)

(Kim Stolzer)

A more traditional dating story

Some people meet through Facebook.

Others meet via a Franciscan nun.

Lincolnite Melissa Ford, 39, is the latter.

This Sunday, she'll celebrate her one-year wedding anniversary with her husband, Joseph Ford.

Melissa was living in Lincoln. Joseph was in Maryland. And their mutual friend thought they'd be perfect together. The nun knew them from their days at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

They met and hit it off.

"We commuted back and forth," Melissa said. "And we eventually got engaged."

They won't see each other today or on their anniversary Sunday because Lt. Ford is stationed at the Diego Garcia military base.

But he'll be home to visit his wife next month.

— Micah Mertes

And that doesn’t even include those who have come together through “Finding-the-One” sites such as eHarmony or Match.com or various online personals.

One couple celebrating V-Day today are Jennifer Rutt and her bf Jay, who met through Yahoo Personals more than a year ago. Two months after their first date, they moved in together.

The way they met caused Rutt’s coworkers to be a bit skeptical, she said.

“One of my female coworkers said, ‘I could never do that!’”

 But Rutt said she’s caught a few of them checking out sites for singles during their lunch break.

“I think a lot more people do meet this way than are willing to admit,” she said. “In past generations, before the arrival of the Internet, people would need to meet others through a friend of a friend or in a bar or other public place. With neither Jay nor I being much into the public scene, the technology angle was perfect for us.”

In some respects, Rutt said, MySpace and Facebook are even better dating services because you can learn more about a person from a profile than a personal ad.

However, Dawn O. Braithwaite, a communication studies professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said while the technological channels of meeting people are revolutionary, the essence remains the same.

“We think of this as very new,” she said, “and it is new, but it’s also not. It’s just finding people through a computer instead of a phone or newspaper.

“But the technology has in some ways opened the world. You’re no longer limited by geography, age, socioeconomic status.”

And unfortunately, she noted, you’re no longer limited by the truth.

You can fib about all facets and details of yourself, maybe doctor those Facebook photos to remove all your blemishes.

“This can be very disappointing for people who do eventually meet face-to-face,” Braithwaite said.

But for the most part, she said, an Internet love life can lead to good things, as long as you’re as smart and savvy about it as you would be with any relationship.

“Finding someone online can be a wonderful thing,” Braithwaite said. “And it can lead to jump-starting a relationship.”

For some couples, it can skyrocket a relationship.

UNL student Beth Ribarsky is getting her PhD in communication studies but might as well be getting a doctorate in dating. It has been the prevailing subject of her research and what she’s writing her dissertation on.

She’s found that with online dating, things move a lot quicker than normal.

“When people meet online,” she said, “they partake in hyperpersonal communication, which is communication that exceeds what we would consider normal self-disclosure. People are exposed to all this information. And it changes the dynamics of dating. The relationships that start this way often will escalate much quicker than they might typically, in a face-to-face situation.”

Ultimately, social networking sites have led to the death of the blind date, since it’s almost impossible to go into a date “blind” anymore.

In the past, you’d go through all the regular stages over dinner  — “What’s your favorite movie?” “What religion are you?” “What’s your major?” — while now it’s just a matter of perusing that profile and getting a fairly solid idea of what a person’s like before you even speak.

“This can relieve a lot of the stress about meeting people,” Ribarsky said, “and it can be a good chance for people to reach out to people they might not know directly.”

Like cybersweethearts Jay and Jennifer, who, because of their online hookup, now have someone to keep them warm on V-Day.

But not every e-mance leads to a real-life love affair.

And it’s probably not a bad idea to run a Google search on your potential significant other to make sure he or she isn’t a pervert or serial killer ... or perhaps a Nickelback fan, if that’s a deal-breaker.

Just in case.

Reach Micah Mertes at 473-7395 at mmertes@journalstar.com.