Friend-finding websites disappoint, say psychologists

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Find-a-lost-friend websites are "agents of disillusionment", says an Auckland psychotherapist, warning that people seeking old mates or lovers need to be realistic about what they might discover.

"I think that people are just working out a fantasy when they do this," says Rev Dr Philip Culbertson, a psychotherapist and lecturer in theology at Auckland University.

He says loneliness drives people to seek others through such sites.

"I think human beings are incredibly lonely - they're looking for fulfilment in a relationship to alleviate that sense of loneliness."

Our lives are too frantic and stressed to allow the formation of meaningful relationships, so we look to rekindle those of the past.

"It's an attempt at a quick fix ... generated by existential loneliness. It's something about not being alone, something about belonging."

Dr Culbertson's warning comes as TV2 prepares to air a documentary, The One that Got Away, tomorrow at 7.30pm.

With the help of Ponsonby psychologist John Aiken, it tracks three people as they seek out long-lost first loves. One is Julie, a happily married mother of two, who waved her teenage fiance Greg goodbye at Auckland Airport 22 years ago but didn't hear from him again.

Amanda, a Christchurch 30-year-old, wants to track down the boy who gave her her first kiss (behind the bike shed at intermediate school).

According to Mr Aiken, the subjects were driven by curiosity as well as a need to seek closure.

Their biggest worry beforehand was that they would not even be remembered: "You can tend to forget things that are painful," says Mr Aiken.

The interest in seeking old mates, he adds, was often triggered by a major event such as a relationship break-up or a move to another part of the country. "All sorts of things can make you revisit where you are going and where you were in the past."

Dr Culbertson says he has had two recent experiences where people from his past have re-entered his life - briefly. One was a school acquaintance from his childhood and the other was a lover from 1963.

In both cases, he says, after the sometimes intense reminiscing was over, conversation - and contact - petered out. "There was no joint shared experience over the subsequent 40 years of our lives" on which to base a new relationship.

One young woman says that after a former flatmate got in touch with her, they exchanged a few emails. When the conversation flagged, she stopped responding to the former flatmate's messages.

"But she keeps emailing me - I think she wants to be my special email friend ... someone should write an etiquette for such sites - don't pester people with emails if they don't reply!"

Another says: "I found an old schoolmate through findakiwi and we met for a drink. Unfortunately, we seemed to have absolutely nothing in common, and we haven't been in contact since."

But given the globe-trotting and often entrepreneurial nature of New Zealanders, the sites can act as one giant business-card list for the formation of liaisons of a different kind.

OldFriends' Kiwis Abroad section lists where New Zealanders are living overseas - for example, in the United States there are 5501 of us, and in Namibia just three.

Dr Culbertson advises people to be realistic about what they might find - their childhood best friend, given the passage of years, might have become a complete stranger.

"People need to be cautious about what to expect," he says.

"The person they're finding in this renewed contact is probably not the person they wish them to be, nor the person they once were."

A major part of Mr Aiken's role in the filming of the documentary was to help the subjects deal with disappointment. "People were pretty philosophical and put it into perspective pretty quickly."

Friend finders

Popular New Zealand sites include www.findakiwi.co.nz
(which claims more than 145,000 members) and www.oldfriends.co.nz
(claims 365,349 members)

Overseas sites include schoolfriends.com.au
and alumni.net

Statistics provided by Nielsen NetRatings New Zealand show that OldFriend's website traffic grew from 102,548 unique browsers in May last year to 151,308 this May.