From all reports, instant love is just one of those things that happens to a couple. Look across a crowded room and there is the person of your dreams. No if-ands-or-buts that is the person for you. Others, however, feel that the instant love found by others is purely infatuation. Never mind that 75 percent of all marriages formed from a perception of instant love in the United States are still solid (50 percent divorce rate for developed love.) How to decide if instant love is a viable theory is likely an impossibility but many are trying to pin it down. If you are looking, however, it may happen a lot quicker then you think.

Three, five or 10 second love

A collaborative college study in the United States has found that there is a quick choice being made by people regarding their future relationships. One might think that two people, meeting for the first time, need at least a few minutes to figure out if they have any future together, let alone instantly. But it appears this is not the case. In most of the 169 couples involved in this study a decision about what type of relationship they would have took only between 3-10 seconds (there was no difference in the results between 3 seconds and 10 seconds.)

Friend, foe or lover

Within this time period the couples quickly assessed what kind of relationship they might like to see develop with their opposite. Those that decided on a positive relationship, determined from a questionnaire, were more likely to sit closer to that person, communicate well and more often with that person and feel closer to that person after 9 weeks then those that felt less positive about their chosen person. What this means is open for speculation but it does appear to show that people are making snap decisions about people they are meeting for the first time.

It’s what’s inside counts

Developing love proponents indicate that love is about getting to know the other person over time. What is inside the person is what counts in a long term relationship and time is the only way to figure this out. A consideration that shows that physical appearance attraction and instant love fails is found in those marriages where appearance dictated the marriage. These marriages failed. Love needs to be developed not found instantly. People advocating instant love fall right into step in this case indicating that instant love is a love developed. It just means that the couples involved are starting a few steps further down the path.

It will take work

However one cares to look at the issue one thing is for sure. Developing a close relationship takes time and effort whether you believe in instant love or not. How much time and how much effort is simply a matter of how much the couple puts into the relationship. Whether the relationship is instant or developed isn’t really the point. The point is that a couple has found one another and is trying to have their perception of love fulfill their lives. Neither is an easy path but the same reward is trying to be found.

Since the introduction of Internet to govern our daily lives, not just our lifestyles but also the entire outlook that many of us used to house in our heart regarding the world outside have undergone seas changes. Take for instance the world of entertainment or education, business or ecommerce – everything is now accessible from our desktops. Moreover, Internet has helped us reduce the geographical distance between two individuals and enabled us to get in touch with virtually strangers. However, like any medium of communication, Internet also has its loopholes. And with the baddie opportunists all around the place, these loopholes are so vulnerable to become the vices of the medium!

You must have already heard about the various Internet dating scams that are so much in vogue these days. Call it a limitation of the medium or call it its inadequacy, the Internet is increasingly become the site for several violations and Internet dating scams stand a cruel testimony to it. While on one hand we find several entities trying to bridge the racial, geographical, and sexual gap between several individuals with the help of several social networking sites, on the other we find several individuals preying on these sites for their personal benefit.

Amongst these, Internet dating scams top the chart and the trend is only increasing with the increase in the number of people subscribing to these sites. This is how a usual Internet dating scam operates. A scammer usually creates a fake identity and manages an account in a social networking site, more specifically an online dating site. Once over with the registration, which is most of the times accompanied with a fake name and a fake photo, the person simply waits for people to contact him/her for dating purposes. In due course, either the scammer approaches a person for a potential romantic relationship or is approached by a vulnerable person.

What follows for some time is simple and predictable – the victim and the scammer correspond regularly and all symptoms of a potentially successful relationship are carefully chiseled by the scammer till he/she urges the victim to send money for dealing with an emergency situation that has suddenly sprouted up. Otherwise, the scammer may also tell the victim that he/she needs the money as airfare of meeting the victim. The most vulnerable victim complies and is thrown to the utter frustrating situation when one fine day the scammer stops interacting or the victim is left awaiting at the airport for a lover who is never to come!

These events not only drain the victim off money but leave him or her mentally devastated. Obviously, the victim suffers a lot of anxiety and frustration, while the scammer plans his/her next catch. If the scammer is professional, he/she may lay the bait on more than one victim simultaneously. Although these events cannot be controlled by the owner or the manager of these online dating sites, these happenings can be made to fall flat if the users are a little more alert and if they know how to deal with these situations.

Have fun and take care!