< PREVIOUS   ||   PREDICAMENT OF THE WEEK >
 

Where to look in the first place.

We all know about Internet personals, but what I hear over and over is that people really do meet -- MEETmeet -- through message boards and groups and other communities (sports, role playing games, issues) organized on the Internet. Singles, start your search engines.

Dear Breakup Girl,

My problem is that I don't know what my problem is. I'm 21, and I haven't had a real boyfriend-girlfriend relationship yet. I have dated a few people, but it has never amounted to anything more. My relationships with the opposite sex are always as the friend-boy and not the boyfriend. I enjoy having those relationships, but lately it's been really hard for me. Within the last year, I fell so hard for a good friend of mine that I bounced twice. Unfortunately, she didn't quite feel the same way. After the ER taped my heart back together, I tried to continue with my loveless existence.

I just don't seem to meet people. Some of my friends and family have told me not to worry and that, "I'll meet someone someday." I guess I wonder why that someday has occurred repeatedly for other people I know while my someday is still to be announced! I'm an engineering major (only because I thought I'd be able to drive a train), and there are not that many available people in my major. I'm not as social as I could be, but I don't like going to college parties where everyone is always intoxicated and out of their minds. There just aren't a lot of social centers where I live.

If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that doing nothing yields nothing and that if you want something done, then you better get off your butt and do it yourself. Perhaps I am worried about nothing, but I have to wonder why I cannot find someone when friends of mine can. Should I continue to go about my life and hope that I will someday run into Ms. Right? I just don't know what else to do.

--Hopeless (emphasis on the less) in the Big T

Dear Hopeless,

I understand how stalled you feel. But there is one social center that perhaps you haven't explored, and I suggest you make tracks there. That's right: the Internet superrailroad. Why, it took the BG supercomputer mere seconds to find a crossroads like this: "Fan Junction" at Trans Magazine, with tons of info about trips and trade shows and memoriabilia-seeking classifieds (also see eBay) and the like. People meet this way, I am telling you. There's the kind of something you and your butt can do to make your someday come sooner. ( Just remember that that "I Choo-Choo-Choose You" card got Lisa in trouble. )

Love,
Breakup Girl

And everyone? Don't forget to troll here for copycat ideas. And dates. Yep, it's cold (or, depending, dry). But work the 'net, and you just may find someone (besides k.d. lang) to sing "I'd walk through the snow barefoot, if you'd open up your door." (And hey all you "hoties," spelling counts.)

For more on finding a non-scary chat room, a username more felicitous than ManHatr, etc:

Cyberflirt: How to Attract Anyone, Anywhere, on the World Wide Web, by Susan Rabin.

Men Are from Cyberspace : The Single Women's Guide to Flirting, Dating, and Finding Love On-Line, by Lisa Skriloff and Jodie Gould

And meanwhile...

< PREVIOUS   ||   PREDICAMENT OF THE WEEK >