From Online Date To Happily Ever After

Today I look at my wife and smiled. I had gone through a winding road to finally found my significant other. It was conventional way of finding a match though, through mutual friends. After several meet ups, cups of coffee and joyful convo in a group, we went out just the two of us.  She is a lovely woman with long legs and genuine smiles. In addition, she is witty and very expressive. Long story short, my gut talking and I listened. I have never felt better than this, yes… I found my other half. I feel comfortable and I am my self when I am with her. Well, that is how I met her, the strong woman who fills my every breath.

I believe that every love story is different and it has its own uniqueness. Each brings up color to our life, some has lifted us up while some happened to let us learn how to mend a broken heart and to get back on our feet. We could meet someone on the street, smiled at each other, exchanged a few words and ended up on a date the day after. We could be friend with someone for ages and unable to recognize there has been sparks all along. We could fall in love to our blind date or to a person we have never met in person before. Love happens without notification and it is undeniable.

Back in the early 90s youths were familiar with pen friends. A way of communicating and sharing bunch of stories to other pen friends’ member all over the world. I know a friend who married her pen friend. Then during the mIRC era in the mid 90s. It was all begin with ASL PLS. Beside providing room to talk about specific theme, it was also often that member of a channel organized a meet and greet. mIRC was also used as an online match maker. No real identity only nick name, and everything starts from simple conversation. I wonder how could I fell into endless chat back then.

Today, online relationship is common. Some account might be deceiving, but there are many that showing genuine profile. It is our call whether to showcase our true identity on social media like Facebook or make it private. There are many who found their true love through social media or online dating service.

I started thinking about this topic, finding love online, after a pre wedding photo shoot with a lovely couple. It never crossed my mind that they owe their love story to the internet. During the photo session the couple embraced each other. As a Bali based wedding photographer, it is my task to explore their feeling and captivate the sparks through my lens. I always seek to show the chemistry of a couple in every frame, and to spice each photos with their personal character. I believe love ties different characters and that indescribable feeling a couple have for each other open possibility for two persons to unite in diversity. I saw cupid spreading his magical love powder all over this couple.

My search on google about finding match online has landed me on several pages where people with this particular experience share their stories. Some of them embarrass to open up about meeting their couple online due to bias often happened about online dating. Hence they built stories or simply said they met through mutual friends. While other share their experience regarding the topic as well as providing tips to meet a match on the internet.

From my point of view, it doesn’t matter where and how we meet our life partner. What most important is how we feel about each other and how we accept each other. It is important to feel comfortable and secure to be your self with your couple around. Only then the chemistry builds and love happens. Respecting and caring. It doesn’t matter what people say, this relationship is about you and her/ you and him. Who knows if my love story I told you in the beginning of this writing is the decoy one? The fact is I have a loving wife besides me, and the couple I mentioned were happy together.

**Words by Kartika Dewi