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‘I Found True Love in Cyberspace’
WHEN I was thirty years old, I felt really frustrated whenever people asked me, “You’re 30…and not married?” which I otherwise interpreted as, “Hey, you must start looking for men or else you’ll be sorry!”
My biological clock seemed to set its alarm on me to start looking around. If I wasn’t lucky
to find love in person, I was thinking to myself, maybe I’ll meet my Prince Charming online. After all, almost all my friends had a Yahoo Messenger (YM) account and like me, they were addicted to chatting online.
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I wasn’t really an old timer when it came to online chatting. All my life, I had been waiting for Mr. Right to come along and sweep me off my feet and ask me to marry him and live with him happily ever after. But I guess nobody seemed to notice me and I had to do something about it. Waiting forever would do me no good. To find true love, I realized I had to do some searching. And where else would I search? I thought of no other venue than the cyberspace.
So I tried chatting online one day, creating a username that would catch the attention of the chatters in an international chatroom. I soon became familiar with what ASL means, and what to do when someone requests that I view his webcam, and the other line to view mine.
Well, finding my soulmate online was not easy as I thought it would be. If you’re the type who waits for someone to start a conversation with you, you’d have to create a catchy and unique username that would draw chatters to click your YM. Otherwise, you’ll just be invited to view the webcam of jerks inviting you to have cybersex or you’ll receive pop messages to click URLs linking to pornographic sites.
I guess I was lucky that I was discreet and had some good sense to separate the chaff from the wheat. One way you can tell that a guy is playing or goofing around is that he immediately asks you to marry him the moment he sees your webcam–flattering you that he has fallen in love with you at first sight. Any guy who’d tell you that has probably told every girl he meets that he’s fallen in love with her at first sight—and like they say about playboys, the more, the merrier.
Despite receiving spams in my inbox, I continued to chat online, hoping a professional who’s decent would drop by the chatroom and click my nick. I almost wanted to give up on my search, thinking I’d never find that particular person I’m looking for.
I, then, decided to change my chatting schedule. Instead of chatting in the morning and afternoon when people all over the globe are fast asleep, I switched to chatting during nighttime. Also for a change, I tried clicking on a hobby room for earth lovers because I’m concerned with environmental issues—and because I was sure that jerks would never think of joining a room with a serious side to it because they know for sure that it would probably be a boring place to hang out in.
Then it happened: just when I was about to turn off my laptop, someone clicked my nick and asked, “What is your standpoint on marine life destruction?” Now, what do I know about marine life? I didn’t try to be smart so I asked him what he does for a living and he answered, “I’m a marine biologist.” To keep the ball rolling, I tried to evade his question and took interest in marine life.
I felt like a student attending a biology class. He asked me what I do in return and I told him that I am a teacher in Filipino. He began asking me what it’s all about which I took delight in answering.
Soon we were taking turns in being a student and a teacher that we completely forgot marine life destruction, environmental conservation, and the other whereabouts of the chatroom. From then on, I decided to remain invisible to the rest of those in the room and focus my attention on this biologist.
It seemed that he’s telling me the truth about his background: that he’s divorced with a son and has lived in the United States for three years, teaching marine biology. Soon enough, we talked about anything under the sun and I found myself looking forward to evenings when I would connect to the Internet and chat with him online.
I found myself falling in love with him, and he felt the same thing for me. I didn’t pretend that I was a hard-to-get girl. I only acted naturally. We gave ourselves time to know each other and see if this online romance would work. I guess he was interested in me the moment I asked him what he does for a living. If I annoyed him, he would have ended our communication a long time ago. But it went on and on until our feelings grew deeper.
He said he wanted to meet my family and he wanted me to meet his. So he flew all the way from the United States to meet my family and he paid for my airfare to the U.S. We were formally engaged and agreed to wed here in the Philippines.
I’m now living with him and his six-year-old son. I still keep in touch with my friends in the Philippines to tell them I’m living a wonderful life with this man. I never expected I’d meet him in the most unlikely places. It’s probably patience that paid off. Patience and discretion, I should say. - As told to Ma. Aurora Sicat
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