Is On-Line Love Possible?

When I was a small child, there were certain 'aunties' I would not kiss goodbye. We were about to leave, and my mother would prompt me 'kiss Auntie X goodbye' and I would absolutely refuse. This led to great anger and embarassment for my mother, who would later question me about why I would not kiss Auntie goodbye. I clearly remember telling her the reason was that Auntie did not 'smell' right. This was the best description I could give at the time, even though Auntie did not have horrendous body odour, there was something about Auntie that did not smell right and I did not want to kiss her. I now think that it was one of those indefinable things that make us either like or dislike people, but as a child I always associated that with 'smell'.

I only recently thought of that again when I heard that one my old 'smelly'Aunties had died. It led me to speculate about why we like or dislike some people,and what it is that makes us fall madly in love with people. I once thought I was in love with someone based on the quality of his voice over the telephone. When I actually met him, it was a great shock. He was so absolutely not the person I thought he was and I was no longer in love with him from the moment of first meeting.

I also like the way people move their hands (I find hands intensely fascinating) and have fallen in love with people for the way their face moved when they smiled. Of course I have only ever fallen in love with them if they 'smelt' (for want of a better word)right. I am sure that everyone falls in love with people on the basis of things of which we are not aware, maybe a type of chemical reaction or the scent of their pheromones.

I have written somewhere else about the man who hideously murdered his wife because he thought she was having a love affair on-line and he had become insanely jealous. It now appears that the woman was a member of Second Life, a virtual worldwide community. Since in that community you give yourself a new name, and can make up any qualities you like,the way you dress, the way your hair hangs, everything about yourself, it would appear then that if you were to fall in love with someone on Second Life you might not be falling in love with that person, but you are falling for an idea that the other person wants you to have about him/her.

But suppose you are in a community where people do not make up an avatar but post real photos of themselves and you chat with them a lot. Maybe you even speak to them via Skype. You now have a face and a voice. Two real things. But is that enough to fall in love? What happens when you meet that person and they 'smell' wrong? What if you have abandoned your previous family and friends for that person and then they are not who you thought they were? What if they eat with their mouth open and you have just lost everything you had before, for them? What if the person who was so witty on-line was really only witty because they had access to a book of clever quotations and Google search facilities?

My grandmother always said 'never buy anything until you have had a chance to test the goods', I think maybe in the case of on-line falling in love, she may have been right.