Falling in love before even first sight

[saagar]

ISSUE: LOVE... Even before first sight?
By Maleeha Durvesh

I had often heard people talk about love at first sight. It was and still is pretty difficult for me to digest how one can actually fall head over heels in love with a person merely on the basis of his/her physical appearance.

I hadn’t got the answers to all my questions when I came across something else. Forget first sight, nowadays people also fall in love even before first sight. You might be thinking I have gone crazy but believe me what I’m saying is perfectly true and all this is thanks to the Internet.

Nowadays, when people use the Internet for chatting either on MSN messenger, Ebuddy, Orkut, Facebook or whatsoever site, they come across many strangers. These strangers are often termed as ‘our Net friends’ in the modern day language and soon we realise that something more than just friendship exists between us and one of them and that’s when it happens… love, even before first sight.

We talk to that person and decide that we have a lot of things in common therefore we get drawn to him/her and begin to think of a relationship. I don’t get how one can decide to enter a relationship with a person who is still a stranger to you. Although we might know a lot about the person we are in contact with via the Internet, the information we have might not be true, the person opposite may be hiding a lot of things from us. A recent survey among youngsters proved that every four out of 10 relationships take seed from the Internet and then germinate after meeting the person face to face.

While chatting, we don’t even know whom we are talking to. Whether the person opposite is revealing his/her true identity or not? What kind of a relationship has a base which has started from a lie? Despite knowing the facts, youngsters still chat to strangers and then end up in a state of confusion determining whether to believe and trust his/her newly made friend or not.

Recently, when I discussed this matter with some of my friends I was opposed by them saying that technology advancements have made us capable of having video conferences and voice chats. However, I believe all these things are only capable of giving the outer appearance of the person you are talking to and not a summary of his/her feelings or character. A teenage relationship is very delicate as we are involved in it more emotionally than practically. Using Internet to establish a relationship is like playing with your feelings yourself. Usually girls take all this stuff very seriously and then cry their eyes out if they are ditched.

Therefore, the only message I would like to convey to the youngsters of today is that there is no such thing as love before first sight. All this is just infatuation, in other words termed as puppy love which ends as soon as one realises that all this will lead nowhere. It often takes a long time to get to know the real identity of the person we have been talking to for months and some people actually do tell the truth about themselves to the person they are chatting with. I think teenagers should concentrate more on their studies at this age and refrain from the Internet relationships if they don’t want to counter a heart break or end up in hot water, the rest is up to them. Cheers!

DAWN NEWS - MAGAZINE SECTION 21st Dec, 2008.[/b]