snap! except in our case it was 10 months later

Or Yahoo Messenger. My wife found me via a Yahoo mailing list we were both on, so I can recommend signing up for as many of those as you can. It helps to have lots of interests,

cor it just amazes me how many people actually do hook up via the internet
this has been the most i've ever spent on the puter in my life..yeah i'm hooked but if i was single i would never dream of stricking up any kind of relationship...just the thought of actually meeting someone is a little weird never mind a full blown romance, it's all a bit odd, not my cuppa tea at all, what happend with good old fashioned dating, ???

Then again if you've got your head screwed on and your honest I'm sure there's no harm done ..infact the opposite if I'm to believe several of you found your spouses this way

what's ICQ??

when we met, neither of us was looking for a relationship and certainly not with somebody 5500 miles away! but we found we liked each other, had similar interests and outlook and became friends ... after a while I plucked up the courage to phone and we spent the next six months getting to know each other online and on the phone ...

one of the major benefits from my point of view is that none of the "physical" parts of the relationship get in the way of getting to know each other ... we knew each other so well when we actually met in the flesh 6 months after our first meeting online that it felt like we'd been together for ages ...

it wouldn't work for everyone - in fact, I'm still pretty sceptical about online romances myself (!!) but it worked for us and thousands of others and was the best thing ever to happen to me ...

ICQ (I seek you) was one of the first of the major internet private messaging systems - predating MSN and Yahoo and is still very popular ..

mostly in Europe, started out of Israel didn't it?
Anyway, very handy stuff...but I use Trillian to access all the IM clients just because there's a couple muppets on yahoo and msn *l* nearly everyone one else I know uses AIM or ICQ, but what can ya do.

That sounds identical to us. By the time we met, we practically knew everything about each other.

Although it was exciting at the time, I sure don't miss being over 4,000 miles away and getting my BT phone bill

Internet romances can work if done correctly. Although ICQ is a cheap route, we found the telephone a much better way to get to know each other. People can pretend to be who they want to be online, but you can tell a lot about a person just by hearing them talk.

If they rant on and on about themselves without letting you speak, cancel your flight and stick to ICQ

Just make sure that your wife doesn't catch you

Snowbunny wants a British boyfriend/husband too. Bit of a queue going, though, quite seriously. It is really hard to convey to people through dating services that you want someone British and not American, despite your own American nationality and residence. The ones free to move (no kids) here or already here seem numbered in the single digits!

NCPenguin..... I think that if your Anglophile colleague is serious enough an Anglophile, she could join special interest groups based around things English -- footie, music, gardening in the UK, etc.

I'm honestly wondering how someone with such strict religious beliefs is going to LIKE and keep a Brit. No offence, but my own strait-laced relatives would be horrified at the rate of regular church-going, the use of swear words and vulgarities, the more casual attitude towards sex between people not married to each other....

'Spose there could be a "personals" section of this very site. (Hint: there's BIG money in that business.)

I also think it would be far easier were she to find a way to move there. Hey presto surrounded by Brits, and she could haunt the local Catholic parish church to see if there were anyone like-minded.

Snowbunny,
i cant believe that generalization about brits. I agree they are not as religious, well, not from my area they wernt. I have found Americans the same. there is more religion in the USA, more sex education, More emphasis on moral values, but they are ignored as much as in the UK.
That said, i met my wife online. Both of us had already been through an online relatonship before and didnt really want another one, but after typing to one another non stop, playing countless online games, and talking endlessly via msn messenger, we finally fell for one another. 5 months later i came to see her in the USA, 2 months after that she came to see me. Then things got really serious, we heard about this site, gathered information from helpful people, asked thousands of questions, and i finally got my visa to come here in august last year. We have been married for a year and 3 months and never been happier.
Online relationships do work, but my advise........... dont look for one, and dont be surprised if they dont work out, but sometimes you just find the perfect person. Just like "reality" (i hate using that term, as online is the same as reality if both parties are honest).

Please understand that I am comparing a very fundamentalist Christian state like North Carolina, and a devout Catholic girl, to the cultural norms of the UK. If the same girl were to find herself transported to the California Bay Area, she'd go through similar culture shocks. Yes, doubtless there are men who are devout Catholics in the UK; but she is currently living in a very sheltered microcosm.

By no means do I think the cultural norms of the UK are bad.... I *love* them! Sex education in the US is not really about sex; people were figuring that one out long before formal education it's more about imparting moral beliefs along with a bit of practical advice about not getting STDs. That's why it's ignored. You bet if the schools were teaching the Kama Sutra the kids might be more attentive!

I belong to several groups for British expats in my area and did consider bringing this American coworker along. However, I truly think her personality and views are odd to say the least and it would be embarrassing for me to bring her. Perhaps this is why she has had no luck with men so far.

Also, she has romantic notions of British men based on TV shows and movies like James Bond (yes, seriously) so meeting real British men might be a bit of a rude awakening, to say the least. Not that some British men aren't gentlemen...

<<snip>> [/QUOTE]




NC Penguin

Has she seen Shawn Of The Dead? (or is it Shaun? ack!) anyway.... some men are like Peter, some are like Shaun, and some are like Ed. Very few are like characters portrayed by Orlando Bloom, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Northam, et al. At least, if there are, they are in hiding when I go

Has she been over the pond yet? Sounds like a silly question, but if so, I wonder where she went. A visit to see the frazzled dads with their kids at Alton Towers, or at a footie match would be a closer view to reality.

www.kiss.com will let you choose nationality explicitly as a criteria. So you can choose "British" and see Brits only anywhere in the world. There's also a section on religious beliefs, that lets you affiliate, say you are "spiritual but not religious," or say you have "no religious beliefs."

Best of luck to both of you in her search

Of course I am actually just like any one of those characters... unfortunately one of my wifes friends think I an a importer of Porn, she found a copy of The Sun newspaper in our house, so now I am the English pervert.