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Choosing a mate from a picture on a computer screen

By Carl Heintze

Love, so the saying goes, overcomes all obstacles--even distance, culture and language. I don't say this with any foreknowledge. When I went looking for a bride half a century or so ago, I found her in the next town over. We celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary this year. I guess it is going to last.

But these days lovers are seeking--and finding--one another with increasing frequency on the Internet.

I know of two couples who've recently met this way. In one case the bride lives, or used to, in Thailand. The groom, on the other hand, is a Californian and he has lived here all his life.

In the other case, the bride-to-be is from France. Her future husband also is a native Californian who has lived here most of his life. Indeed, I don't think, until he met his future wife, that he had ever been to France, but then the first groom I've cited had certainly never been to Thailand before.

Neither distance nor language nor cultural differences seem to have erected any barriers to romance. In the first instance the bride moved to California. That is soon to be true in the second couple's case, too. The culture clash, if there is one, is going to be mostly absorbed by the woman.

In both cases the romance began when the brides-to-be and the grooms-in-waiting made contact on the Internet, started up an email correspondence and found love, romance and marriage as a result after a few months.

It didn't happen overnight, of course--well, not quite.

In the first case the groom went to Thailand to meet his future wife and her folks; in the other the bride-to-be came to California, partly on business and partly to see the guy to whom she had been writing. He later returned the visit to meet her folks.

In both cases one thing led to another, and marriage was not long in arriving.

I suppose romance has often been conducted long-distance in the past. Look at Cyrano, who wrote romantic letters to Roxanne for his friend, even though he was really writing them for himself.

And in the Sidney Howard play They Knew What They Wanted (later a movie), the vineyard foreman's picture is sent to the bride-to-be by the vineyard owner, who is much older and uglier. The marriage comes off eventually in spite of this, but not without dire consequences.

And I know of at least one other marriage, now nearing its 25th year, where the groom found his bride by advertising for her in an alternative newspaper. That wasn't exactly long distance. They both lived in the same town, but it was a sort of a long shot into the dark. The marriage has been remarkably successful, however, and the couple now has a child.

Finding a bride (or groom) this way is really an old story. There are, for instance, numerous families in Hawaii founded by the picture bride system. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Japanese men came alone to work in Hawaii, they often wrote home seeking brides, received pictures of prospects and ended up paying the fare for the one they liked.

Most of the time the system seems to have worked. A good many families in Hawaii can trace their beginnings back to a picture of grandma.

And we have only to look back into the days of kings and queens to remember when arranged marriages brought together princes and princesses for dynastic reasons sight unseen. (The camera had yet to be invented, and miniatures and portraits weren't much help.)

A lot of these royal marriages were marriages in name only, of course. The princes became kings and used their royal prerogative to find an attractive mistress or two (Louis XV and Madame Pompadour, for example, and King Edward VII and Lillie Langtry).

So the world of long-distance romance has always been chancy. Pictures may not always be worth a thousand words, and chance hitchings may not work, or not work for long.

On the other hand, they often have been remarkably durable. Perhaps that's because in countries where love is usually a chance encounter, love often does conquer all.

Couples brought together by chance--as is usually the case these days--find something and then a lot of things in common. They begin to build a common history. If they have children, they have a family, very important in holding two people together.

So the Internet romance probably is no more risky than any roundabout arrangement.

If you're looking for a bride or groom, take heart and click. You may find true happiness on your computer screen.