Is It Possible to Love Online?

When I joined CatholicMatch, every inch of me longed for marriage. I just knew in my heart I was made for it, I was made to enter wholeheartedly into the sacrament.

Friends would tell me marriage is work, it’s not all fun and games, and I would say, I know, I know, I want that work, I long for that work.

And of course some part of me dreamed about that field of daisies we would prance in together, and the cute babies we would raise, and just having someone to ask me how I am doing every single day and look me right in the eye as I’d share with him my heart.

That was two and a half years and a vocation ago. Today, I sit in my house with laundry in the dryer and a husband mowing the lawn. My heart is full. But those friends were right: some days, Andy and I just don’t like each other very much! Sometimes, our pasts, our selfishness, our own insecurities get in the way of really loving each other well. This is why Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the Doctors of the Church, said love is an act of the will.

The week that Andy and I got married, I was incredibly stressed and we were both exhausted. This did not bring out the best in us. We were driving each other crazy and at some points not even speaking to each other. But on our wedding morning, I woke up with incredible joy (not to mention an alarm clock singing, “don’t worry, be happy”), and a friend handed me a letter from my soon-to-be husband. He wrote that although it had been a hard week, he was choosing me, and he would continue choosing me every day for the rest of our lives. I cried, sitting there by the river just hours from making vows, and I knew that the romance was in this choice, this challenging, messy choice, to love.

Choose to love, right now

But this choice to love doesn’t begin when you meet the one you will marry. This choice to love begins today, right now.

If you are surfing online profiles today, you too might know that longing I felt so deeply. CatholicMatch is your opportunity not to actually date online, but to expand the number of good, loving people you can get to know.

Imagine you are at a party, hoping to meet someone, but standing in the corner hiding behind a drink. You are looking around, wondering if he or she might be right for you, sizing them up, but not leaving your safe corner.

Are you going to go home having made new friends? Of course not, but this is how many people treat online dating: looking at some profiles, making judgments, but not actually reaching out and saying hi to anybody. It would be easy to say there are no good folks out there, but really, they could be sitting right in front of us, at that party or in that online profile, just waiting for us to reach out.

How to find the person you've been waiting for

We meet people in everyday life and online by making that brave move to walk up to someone and actually talk to them, by leaving that comfortable corner, stepping out, and boldly saying hi and asking a unique question to get a conversation going. The more you put yourself out there, the better your chances are that you will find that person you have been waiting for.

In marriage, and online, we have to choose to make the effort to love. Saint Thomas Aquinas knew that love is more than just a feeling, it is more than prancing in daisies, it is a daily choice to think of another before ourselves, to give ourselves to another.

We have to choose to put time, effort and thoughtfulness into meeting people online just like I have to put time, effort and thoughtfulness into loving my husband well in our marriage. These are the same love. In dating, we practice reaching out in kindness, we practice being vulnerable, we practice charity, and it serves as a foundation for a beautiful love in marriage.

I pray that you will be bold, as I was bold, the day I sent Andy that ridiculous message that began our friendship that continues to this day in marriage.

Boy is that choice worth it.