Slipping Into A Wormhole

I’m a 17-year-old girl from Kerala. I have a friend on Orkut who is a few years older than me. He is one of my best friends on Orkut and in real life, even though we’ve never met each other. When I’m talking with him, I feel the presence of a close friend, but when we’re not talking I start thinking that maybe I’m in love with him. During direct communications we act like good friends, but inside my heart I feel a special kind of attachment towards him that may be love. I don’t know that whether he loves me or not. He doesn’t have a girlfriend and he sometimes says that he would like to meet me in person. Even if there was something romantic there, there would problems because we are from two different religions. So I don’t think it would be a successful love. But still I love him. I already said that this love feels like a good friendship when I’m talking to him on the phone, and that’s why I can’t say about it to him. If he loves me then what should I do? Our love would not be a success story. How do I know whether he loves me or not? Or maybe you could give me a good suggestion to control my mind because I’m always thinking about him when I’m studying, eating, walking… even in my dreams. What do I do?
–Is This Love Or Not?

Jesus, what a hot mess this letter is. “I love him when I’m not talking to him, I can’t get him out of my mind but we’re only friends when we talk, I want him to love me but our religions would make our relationship unsuccessful, I hope he doesn’t love me, actually I hope he does love me,” and so on. As I was reading it I could feel myself slipping into a wormhole in the time-space continuum and slowly losing my grip on reality: When I came to, I found the stone tablet broken on the floor and my chisel stabbed into my cheek. Thanks a bunch.

First off, I don’t see what the religious question has to do with anything unless you happen to be some kind of fundamentalist or you think your folks would give you hell for dating outside the tribe. Let go of that nonsense. That said, who cares whether he loves you or not? Who cares whether you love him or not? You’ve never even met before, so what you’re feeling isn’t love anyway. It’s silly, 17-year-old infatuation. It’s as ridiculous as claiming you’ve fallen in love with a movie star. If the knowledge that you’re being a melodramatic adolescent doesn’t help “control your mind” and snap you out of it, I don’t know what will.

Rules For Being Human

I am an 18-year-old guy. I recently found a girl on Orkut who I think is my soulmate. We like the same things and we have the same thoughts. We are really friendly. We chat at least twice a week and I’m really interested in her. How do I make sure she is not already committed?
–Worried About Online Love

You know, it’s crazy what the kids get up to these days on the Internet. Makes me glad that I’m still hammering out my column with a stone tablet and a chisel. Look, kid, you can’t possibly know that this girl is your soulmate from talking to her twice a week on some lame networking website. You can’t even be so sure that she really is a girl, and not just some 45-year-old overweight guy with breathing problems and a rash. The question you should be asking here is not whether she’s already committed, but whether you know her well enough to consider the possibility of getting together in the first place. And you can only find out the answer to that by meeting in person and hanging out like real humans.

That being said, there are some basic rules of safety that everyone should follow when meeting up with a stranger from the Internet. 1.) Always meet in a crowded, well-lit place, and during the day. 2.) Let a friend know who you’re meeting, where you’re meeting, and how long you’ll be. Ideally, you should have the friend come along and hide out incognito-style wherever you’re meeting, just to keep an eye on things. 3.) Keep a cell phone and some cash for a rickshaw handy in case you need to make a quick getaway. (No sense hanging around with no money if the other person turns out to be a dork or psychotic killer.) 4.) Never give out any identifying details about where you live.

You follow those rules, and you should live long enough to figure out whether you actually like this girl enough to hunt woolly mammoths together, or whatever it is kids get up when dating these days.