We found love online

When happy newlyweds walk down the aisle, holding hands and beaming with joy, many witnesses both single and coupled look on with a tinge of envy and nostalgia respectively. The image of the couple awakens a yearning for love that makes lonely hearts wonder why they are yet to find that kind of love.

People look for love in almost any place where crowds gather: in pubs and nightclubs, churches and workplaces, on the streets and lately on the internet and other social networks.

While one can only meet a limited number of people face-to-face, the internet has opened up a whole new avenue of possibilities in the world of dating. It is only on the net that one can find billions of potential mates, only a click away.

The idea of using the World Wide Web to meet new people, especially for dating, began with online dating sites. But social networking sites have taken things a notch higher. These sites have millions of profiles to choose from. Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website had over 500 million active users worldwide as of July 2010.

On a site like Facebook member profiles have almost every detail about a person that anyone looking for prospective romance can ask for. In addition, the members of social networking websites upload hundreds of pictures making it easy for those who are searching to choose the person who appears most attractive.

Unlike the internet where people sometimes hide their true identities, with Facebook, you can, through other friends get to see the identities of even those who have not uploaded their pictures.

Photos many be enough to sway a searcher’s decision, but the additional information allows one to do a thorough background check on the person he or she is interested in. This, in turn, enables the searcher to weed out all unappealing candidates and narrow down to those that fit the bill.

Men who admitted to using facebook to search for potential dates, explained to the Saturday Magazine how they do it. According to them, once one has short listed potential dates, they send friendship requests to the chosen few and wait for a favourable response.

If a woman accepts the friendship request and adds the man as a friend, the man then sets his plan to woo her into play. The usual tactic is to try to impress the woman by commenting on all her status updates, and sending her virtual gifts and endearing messages.

The aim is to make the impression that he is a caring man who is fun to be around. Once a good impression has been made, the two can start flirting, exchange numbers and plan to meet offline. This cycle could take any amount of time from days to months depending on the woman’s response.

But not everyone joins social networks to tap into the large pool of potential romantic encounters. Some, while just content to have found a way to keep in touch with their current friends and reconnect with old ones, accidentally find an added benefit of being on a social network.

Three people shared with the Saturday Magazine about how they found love, accidentally, on social networking sites. One is a woman whose innocent facebook friendship with a previously unknown man, has turned into a strong offline relationship; while the other two are a couple in their mid-twenties, whose virtual friendship on the Hi5 network culminated into a marriage.

When Karen Karambu* accepted a friend request from Paul Gitahi* she had no idea that he would later become her boyfriend. She had joined facebook in 2007 to keep in touch with friends, and finding love online never crossed her mind.

It was uncommon for her to accept friendship requests from strangers, but she added Paul as a friend because they had mutual friends. He also sent a message telling her who he was and why he wanted to be friends. Karen saw no harm in adding him to her network.

From the beginning, they both made it clear that they were not looking for love online. They had both been hurt before, and facebook was the last place Karen would think of forming a relationship, especially not with a stranger she had just met.

Karen and Paul started chatting about anything and everything under the sun, and she noticed that Paul was different. He sounded mature – a quality she appreciated deeply.

Apart from chatting, they also exchanged inspiring messages and before they knew it, it was time to exchange phone numbers. A little while later, they felt they had developed enough trust to meet for the first time. They continued to meet regularly as friends and as the friendship grew, so did the attraction. The two finally gave in to love and they have been dating for the last one and a half years.

Karen and Paul are not the only couple whose relationship began after an online encounter. Their love may still be brewing, but *Lydia and *Derrick Juma's online love-story went on to blossom into marriage. They have been married for a year now, five years after their first meeting on Hi5 – a social networking website.

Years earlier, when Lydia’s teacher told her Standard Eight pupils to write a list of the qualities they wanted in a man and to pray about it, Lydia heeded her advice.

But when she joined Hi5 in 2006, she did not imagine that God would use the internet to answer her prayers. Lydia was now a university student and had pondered over the possibility of staying unmarried for life.

Having heard so many negative stories about marriage and having experienced quite a number of failed relationships, she felt that marriage might not be worth her while after all. Lydia joined Hi5 after receiving an email invitation from a friend. She thought it would be a good way to keep up with her friends’ activities, while reconnecting with old friends.

The same year, Derrick joined Hi5. He wanted to meet new people and have fun, and believed the website provided that opportunity. So it was not long before he engaged the site’s search feature to find people within his age group living in Nairobi.

His search turned up a number of results and Lydia’s profile was among them. After looking at the profiles, he decided to send her a friend request. He liked her pictures and the fact that her status update had something about her graduating at about the same time he, too, would be graduating.

Lydia was not one to spend a lot of time on social networks, but even when she saw the request, she did not respond immediately. It was not her style to accept requests from strangers, but she did her background search and liked what she saw on Derrick’s profile. She liked his afro hairstyle, his smile and his ‘beautiful eyes’. His interest in music also worked in his favour: he strummed the guitar while she played the piano.

“On my birthday I added him as a friend,” Lydia remembers.

Once the connection hurdle was behind them, they were ready to build their online friendship. Both were looking for someone who did not know them: a person to whom they could rant about their deepest frustrations. Their virtual friendship provided such an avenue and they became online confidants for each other.

“I had just joined the media industry and with a hectic work schedule, I had little time to interact with my friends and share my frustrations with them. So Derrick became the person I could rant and rave to without inhibitions,” Lydia explains.

Derrick, too, was happy to share his disappointments, fears and hopes with Lydia. He felt safe pouring out his heart to someone who was willing to listen and, above all, someone he would probably never meet.

“Ours was a candid no-strings-attached online friendship and we provided emotional support for each other,” he says.

After some time, Hi5 started experiencing technical difficulties and the site became an obstruction to their now regular communication. The two moved to yahoo and started chatting and exchanging long emails.

When Facebook started gaining momentum in Kenya, Lydia registered as a member - again to keep in touch with her friends. But before long, Derrick found her again and sent her a friendship request; she wondered why this man was following her everywhere but still added him as a friend.

From their regular online interaction, they knew almost everything about each other, but they had never met physically. He, however, had had the opportunity of seeing Lydia on TV since she was working as a presenter on a local TV station.

It was now one year since they first connected on Hi5 and they decided to exchange phone numbers. That was in December 2007, when Lydia was covering the now infamous General Elections. To her surprise, Derrick was the first person to call her inquiring about her safety, when things turned chaotic.

A few weeks later, Derrick and Lydia finally decided to meet. They watched a play together, had dinner and talked for hours on end.

“At this point we had developed mutual trust and we felt we could finally take the friendship offline,” Lydia says.

Her first impression of Derrick was that he was “too handsome” and there was no possibility of her dating him.

“I was not ready to deal with the flood of constant female admirers I imagined he had,” she recalls.

He, on the other hand, already had a negative perception of people who worked in the media and was not willing to date Lydia seriously.

“I had heard about the impropriety of media personalities and I did not want to be entangled with that kind of girl,” he explains.

Having decided to remain platonic friends, they continued to meet regularly.

Lydia remembers how before meeting Derrick, she had vowed to marry the next man she met without dating him.

“I was frustrated by past failed relationships and I did not see the point of dating only to be hurt again,” she explains.

She had long given up on trying to change a man to fit into her ideal of a good man, but she still hoped for the right man to come along. She continued to hold on to her list of desired qualities, and prayed for a God-fearing man to come her way.

Lydia and Derrick had never discussed religion before, but on the day they did, she asked herself if he could be the one she had been waiting for all along.

“he said he was born-again and suddenly I wondered if he was God’s answer to my prayers,” she recalls.

After six months, their resolve not to date melted and Derrick asked her out.

“Most women assume they are in a relationship immediately they sit down for coffee or a drink with a man, when in reality, the man has never talked about dating. I liked the fact that Derrick asked me out when he was ready to date me,” Lydia enthuses about accepting to go out with him.

From then on, it was a marathon dating and four months into the relationship, Derrick was talking marriage.

“We were at the coast visiting with my family and I told Lydia: this time next year, I want you to marry me.”

Lydia panicked and told him not to talk about marriage unless he was serious. But deep within, she knew he meant every word.

Her family and friends were already taken with Derrick and her mother had already termed him a “good catch”. His family and friends had also been welcoming and loved her to bits.

“There really was nothing to keep me from marrying Derrick. He had all the qualities on my list, well….except for the fact that he was not dark,” Lydia laughs.

So when, within a few months, Derrick proposed again, she said yes and the couple exchanged vows on November 21, 2009 at a colourful ceremony at the Nairobi Baptist Church.

No one really knew about their having met online, but by the time their families and friends found out, everyone had already seen what a wonderful couple they were together.

The couple occasionally gets emails from people who want tips on how to find love online, especially after their wedding ceremony was aired on a wedding show on a local TV station. But they are hesitant about encouraging others to look for love online.

“Although being on Hi5 enabled us to meet, I wouldn’t advice anyone to take that route. Social networks are good for building friendships but people should be wary of going online specifically to search for love,” Derrick says.

He adds that if he were a mother, he would never allow his daughter to have a relationship with someone she met online.

Lydia also calls for caution when dealing with people one meets on the internet.

“Not everything you see on Facebook is genuine. Be careful about people you meet online,” she advises.

The couple says that before meeting a friend online, a person should inform his or her friends of their whereabouts, meet the person accompanied by a friend and meet the person in a public place. This, the couple says, will help to ensure the safety of those involved.

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