When You Meet on the Internet, You Lose the Chance for a Great Story

There are a myriad of reasons why relationships generated through online dating sites are rife with potential failure. For argument's sake, let's assume the person you're communicating with is really the person in the photo. And let's assume you pass all the superficial tests and hurdles, and actually meet and get along. Despite all this, there will always be a major obstacle: the story.

Great meeting stories tell us a lot. No matter what the commercials say, given the odds, actually meeting the right person via an online Web site may be as unlikely as winning the lottery. More importantly, though, you're lacking the great story.

My friend, "Chloe," a member of my "Council on Female Affairs," who gave up on Internet dating years ago, likened the chances of meeting anyone decent online to winning the lottery. Compared to the vast number of people who play the lottery, how many people really hit it big? The same goes for Internet dating.

As a storyteller, I have a certain affinity for these meeting stories. I always consider myself more of a pragmatist than a romantic, but still, story matters.

This great meeting story is probably one of the reasons why, several years ago, my ex-girlfriend never honestly told her parents how we met. "Eva" thought her parents would not understand and would disapprove of her meeting a guy through a popular online Jewish dating service.

Instead, she constructed a string of lies that she told her family and friends. It had something to do with us meeting at a party or something. During the 18 months of our tumultuous relationship, I never really figured out what she told her parents about how we met, because every time she talked to them on the phone, she did it in her native tongue, which I did not understand. She also sometimes conducted telephone conversations in her language in front of me with at least two ex-boyfriends, which also helps explain the demise of our twosome.

The meeting story is part of the lure of the romance. Whether you call it fate, kismet or bashert, believing that that special person might accidentally wander into your life when you least expect it is part of the hope that drives the single, unattached, depressed or just plain lonely. It's the hope. But we've all been there, too.

Some friends and people I've met have shared great meeting stories with me. I know people who have met their spouses on New York subways, a busy street corner, on a double date with two other people, at a singles group, even at a Shabbat service.

Plus, I can take at least partial ownership in the storytelling rights to the four couples I've gotten together in the past decade: two legal marriages, one common-law marriage and one three-year-old exclusive dating relationship. With my singles group up in Syracuse, I got two people together at an event I organized, but they fizzeled after two dates. Can I receive partial credit?

In my life, there have been a couple of these cosmic or comic brushes with fate that did lead to serious relationships: the winetasting party more than a decade ago at which I had tentatively agreed to meet a friend and only got there because I went home from work early with a splitting headache, or the chance encounter with a girl I had a passing conversation with a week earlier at a Jewish organization meeting who was studying in the carrel next to mine in the law library.

These off-chance encounters blossomed into long-term relationships and became fodder for great meeting stories, especially when details are woven in: She asked for two business cards, then reached across the table, pulled the pen from my shirt pocket, wrote her phone number on one and handed it back, or the whispered conversation in the library when, after 20 minutes of chatting, she politely asked, "What's your name again?" Of course, I had remembered hers.

Sure, those are abbreviated versions of the stories. There's a ton more to them and to those women and, obviously, there were no happy endings. But they're still good stories that had their high points at times.

As we all troll the Internet or other places, some of us might be in search of a good story as much as we are that special person. A good story might have a bit of suspense and some interesting characters (though I know I can live without drama and tragedy). So, maybe that special person is just around the corner waiting for that off-chance encounter at that place you were not planning on visiting at that certain moment. It does happen sometimes.

We can all hope. Then again, the lottery only costs a dollar.

Contact Roy S. Gutterman at www.Lrev.com. Single & Mingle will be on hiatus till the fall.