Never say never again

Is it possible to fall in love with a person you have never met? Or is it just an attraction? Aryan Vaid discovers...

I remember reading, not too long ago, a spiritual guide that explained the phenomenon of love. In some pages it sought to explain the love affairs of people who had never ever seen one another but had fallen in love after an exchange of ideas. And in some cases, it happens through letters (remember pen pals), and now on the internet.

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And how do people feel in such relationships? I argued the next day at the seminar of my book lovers’ meet, about this idea of a love affair without two people ever coming face to face.

Zing thing
It seemed like an improbable idea. I thought of people in this situation as people who were more in love with the idea of love than actually being in love. Maybe the daily vacuum in our sometimes-difficult lives has to be filled in with such attraction.

As impractical as the idea may be, it provides us with that zing which makes life interesting. To each his own. But this is something that would never happen to me.

At least, that’s what I thought. I spend a fair amount of time on the net, at times reading and at other times connecting with my contacts on various social networking sites.

Once I met a very pretty girl online. I could only gauge her beauty from her pictures she had posted on her site. Initially we exchanged pleasantries, ideas and even information.

Communication.. desire
Soon we discovered that we had a lot in common. It came to a point where I could share almost anything with my new friend. The fact that I was attracted to her looks was obviously a plus point.

And then, being so far away from each other (she’s in the US), allowed me to open up with her, with no fear of being judged.

So I communicated with her through the phone and the internet. I shared almost every part of my life with her. Eventually we began to treat it like a relationship.

It had all the ingredients of an ideal relationship — communication and desire. But there was no physical contact between us.

This baffled me. I asked myself if I was turning into one of those cases of people who had a vacuum to fill in their lives.

And yes, almost all my earlier beliefs about such relationships were being put to test. I was being increasingly drawn to a person whom I’d never come face to face with but still everything about this relationship felt like just any other.

Ruled by emotions
We had our share of petty fights and jealousy. We made up after our fights. At times, we had silly meaningless conversation for hours.

I didn’t know why this was happening but deep down, I was glad. Anyway, the point is — can we ever truly explain the phenomenon of attraction? Try as hard as I did, to explain this, the point is our emotions are bereft of logic.
How does this story end?

Well, it hasn’t. We’re still friends and I learn more and more about life. No matter how logical and intelligent we like to think we are, ultimately, we are just creatures ruled by our emotions. One can never say never. You just never know.