Meeting Online

As many of you who read my earlier posts may know, I met my girlfriend, Catherine, on CatholicMatch.com.  I had searched the website for a little, and eventually paid for a full membership and began sending chat invitations.  I was about to send one to Catherine when, in fact, she sent me one.  We talked for a while that night, and since then we have only “missed” one night of talking to each other, specifically the day after.  We met in person on April 2, 2005, the day Pope John Paul II died.  We have now been dating two years, and plan to get married in about another two (once we are both done with school).
Having met online is an interesting status to have.  Whenever I tell someone, I usually say, “we met online, actually”.  However, I have lately been thinking that I in fact should not say “actually”.  Meeting online, if done properly, is far superior to attempting to meet someone in person in the world today.  Though it has its problems, I believe that it is truly the best method given the level of social decline we are experiencing today.  In this post I would like to point out some of the advantages, and then the disadvantages and how they can be overcome.

Firstly, meeting someone online is, in my mind, more traditional than so-called “traditional” dating.  In the typical, or perhaps formerly-typical, method of dating, one meets an attractive member of the opposite sex and begins to get to know them.  This is done in various settings, from disgusting bars to churches.  However, the one thing that these methods have in common is that they place emotionalism and physical attractiveness ahead of real compatibility and rightness for one another.  I do not mean that everyone doing this method places emotionalism above compatibility, but merely that it in fact comes first.  Think of it this way: I meet an attractive girl at church.  She is in fact not at all what I would look for if I were getting married: her goal is to become a priest and she wishes the Church would “just lighten up” about abortion.  However, I don’t know that.  I know she is attractive, and that she is at Mass.  Suppose, now, that I go out with her a few times, and forge somewhat of a connection with her.  Then I find out the bad stuff…well, I am in a bad situation.  However, if I could already rule out people with whom I am completely incompatible, it is much easier to find the one out of that pool who I can really love and marry.  CatholicMatch and other Catholic dating websites allow one to do just that.  I was able to skip over the really rather unhealthy step of rejecting several girls who I find interesting and attractive, and get more quickly to the process of legitimate discernment.  Furthermore, we both knew going in not just that we both were orthodox, but the degree to which we took that orthodoxy and that faith seriously.  We both knew, from the beginning of our relationship, that we were committed to creating a healthy Christian relationship, and eventually a healthy Christian family.  Perhaps less profound, but nonetheless important, is the fact that we knew that both of us were actually looking for someone.  You have no such knowledge of people you see at Church…that pretty girl two pews up might be planning to be a nun, or that guy across the aisle from you might already be engaged.  The ability to find others with the same priorities and the same intentions as one’s self is really such an advantage that I am surprised there is a stigma attached to meeting online whatsoever.  Furthermore, I believe that this method best approximates in our society what dating or courtship or whatever one wants to call it would be in a healthy society: potential matches are chosen based on suitability, and then attraction and love grows, rather than the other way around.

Now, however, I must address the downsides.  Firstly, there is the constant (and constantly mentioned) danger that the person with whom one is corresponding online is not truly who he says he is.  However, I believe this danger is easy to protect against in most cases.  I talked to Catherine on the phone within a week of talking to her online: had either of us sounded odd or different than we should have, we would have at least insisted upon an explanation.  Personally, I knew she was who she said she was from the first time I heard her: she sounded like she looked in pictures, I guess you would say.  Even then, of course, the potential couple must meet in person.  However, the dangers of this are not as great as some would make them out.  Catherine lives about two and a half hours from me, and I was talking to my family members for much of the time I was driving.  They would have known had anything gone wrong.  Furthermore, when I met her her two brothers were present, and would have been suspicious had they had cause to be.  Thus, these dangers are real, and must be guarded against, but do not constitute enough of a danger to discount meeting online as a possibility.  The other main disadvantage, then, is one of a somewhat more “traditional” bent: I am concerned about the fact that online dating allows one to meet someone from across the country or even the world and start an intense emotional relationship.  I would prefer if all Catholics could manage to meet another good Catholic in their own hometown.  I myself have lived in San Jose all my life, and now that I know Catherine I plan to move away and live in Fresno as soon as possible.  This seems, perhaps, to aid the rootless and nomadic way of life so common today, and I admit that this is a problem.  However, it seems to me there is a good side to this: most of us do not stand a chance of finding a good “home” with a good society where we live now.  Some of us do, of course…but most of us probably will have to move elsewhere if we want to live in a place conducive to raising a Catholic family.  Catherine and I have found places in the Central Valley which seem suitable.  If I had never met her and gone to Fresno in the first place, my plan would probably be to just continue to live in San Jose forever.  Thus, it seems to me that if our society were better online dating would present a big problem of rootlessness, but given that we are mostly rootless anyway, meeting someone who may be living in a better place than you do yourself may actually be to your advantage.

Anyway, perhaps I have overlooked something, and I do not pretend to be able to say that online dating is the answer for everyone, nor even for all Catholics.  However, I do believe that it is a good method and that it should be considered by any young Catholic who is dissatisfied with the state of “dating” today.  And besides, it certainly worked for us:

There we are at the top of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica on my family’s recent trip to Rome.