The Enid Blyton Society

I know we had a thread on this two or three years ago but I figured there was no harm in making a new one

As I have mentioned, next year I am getting married to a man that I met on an online dating site. We talked online for a year or so before meeting in person (possibly just under) and have been together in real life for over a year. To me, online dating is just an extension of the fact that I spend a lot of my time online and it's a way that I feel comfortable meeting and getting to know new friends and potential partners. A surprising number of people still look at me as though I were peculiar though when I mention that I met my fiance online!

So, have any of you tried it? Successfully? Horror stories? Would you, potentially, be happy to give it a go?

I met my husband way back in the dark ages. Mobile phones were the size of a house brick, and computers filled an entire room. The internet was just a twinke in someone's eye (Bill Gates?) Our early courtship was conducted by good old fashioned letter writing and the occasional phone call made from a public telephone box.

As mentioned elsewhere, cutting edge technology for me was the introduction of electric typewriters!

As a parent of a teenager daughter, if she turned around and said she'd fallen in love with someone she'd met on-line I'd probably have a blue fit!!

Seriously, I don't think there's any harm in forming a friendship/relationship on-line if a person is sensible. I can't see it's any worse than getting chatted up by a complete stranger in a pub/nightclub (ah, those were the days ).

Surely Al Gore invented the internet?! ;P

It's nice to be able to get to know someone fairly well before you meet them, though of course there is more scope for duplicity on the internet.

My daughter met her husband through the internet. After 2 disastrous marriages where her partners were met in the 'normal' way, she has at last found real happiness with a super chap. There's a lot to be said for being a 'penfriend' for a while before arranging a meeting. Good luck to you Jo. I wish you every happiness.

Thanks One thing I've always found, and I've met a lot of people from the internet in real life now (most in friends capacities I mean!) is that I've never met anyone irl who was significantly different to my online perception of them. Perhaps I am just lucky that way.

I met my wife-to-be online in the spring of 2000. (Yes, turn of the millennium and all.) Can't claim it was an unqualified success, but we just celebrated our tenth anniversary together and are still the best of friends, so I guess I can't complain.

Fatty wrote:I met my wife-to-be online in the spring of 2000. (Yes, turn of the millennium and all.) Can't claim it was an unqualified success, but we just celebrated our tenth anniversary together and are still the best of friends, so I guess I can't complain.

But how many couples who met more conventially can claim a success story? I think at the end of the day it's down to the two people involved, how and where they met doesn't really matter.

*waves to Fatty*

Does forming close friendships count?

I meet a lot of people in real life, but only speak to most of them because courtesy dictates me to. If someone there strikes me to be a fun person, I might chat with him/her online for a long time. And perhaps later I'd hang out with them - but I have to admit for me even friendship doesn't really start unless I've communicated with them online.

Yes, I've 'dated' someone online, when I was about 14/15 - I'd met him in person once before we started seeing each other online.

It didn't end very well as he suddenly had a crisis of confidence and told me that he wasn't as lovely as I thought he was from on online chatting and broke all ties with me. He got back in touch 6 months or so later and we started going out again (including meeting in person once) but it was never the same (and then he cheated on me with a mutual friend while visiting her in the US).

It's all water under the bridge now though, we end up emailing each other every few years just to catch up.

I talk to a lot of people online now, but when I was younger I didn't.

I was just about the right age to take on board the whole internet danger thing after the Holly Wells and Jessica[I feel bad cause I've forgotten her last name] but that really convinced me not to trust anyone online.

I've never done the 'dating' thing. Possibly because I'm not on the right sites or that men just don't find me attractive, I don't know, but I've made a lot of friends on here.

When I was younger and my mum first went to meet some of her internet friends I told her to be careful and have her phone on in case anything happened. Her friends, who she meets up with regularly, still laugh about it, but think its sweet.

Mum also came with me to my first EB day under the same pretext, though she didn't tell me this til last year.

Nowadays I'm fairly well balanced in meeting people who I've spoken to online in the real world. I think meeting Fiona was probably the furthest I've actually been so far to meet anyone, and I was very nervous that morning. Very.

I've got a friend I've made through E-Bay, we regularly chat via e-mail and exchange Christmas and Birthday cards. We've never actually met, and it's unlikely we will due to the distance between us. My children are forever nagging me about having an internet friend, even though I've shown them photos of the lady, they say (quite rightly) that the photos could be of any body. I'm just hoping that their caution about meeting people on-line applies to their own lives.

Pippa-Stef wrote: I was just about the right age to take on board the whole internet danger thing after the Holly Wells and Jessica[I feel bad cause I've forgotten her last name] but that really convinced me not to trust anyone online.
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Nowadays I'm fairly well balanced in meeting people who I've spoken to online in the real world. I think meeting Fiona was probably the furthest I've actually been so far to meet anyone, and I was very nervous that morning. Very.

I'm glad you got over your fears! I think it was Jessica Chapman? I remember the names but I can't recall the details. I have a picture of two girls in my head both wearing red football strips, would that be right?

Yeah that sounds about right.

I don't think I could call it a fear exactly, more of a waryness.

Pippa-Stef wrote:I was just about the right age to take on board the whole internet danger thing after the Holly Wells and Jessica [I feel bad cause I've forgotten her last name] but that really convinced me not to trust anyone online.

Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered by someone they knew - a caretaker of a local school, who was also the fiancé of a teaching assistant in their own school who worked with their class. I don't think internet relationships had anything to do with it. Or do you mean that hearing about cases like that made you more wary in general, especially of people met online?