By Alket Aliu
Social networks have often led to a revival of social relations. There, we can find a childhood friend, a person with whom we have lost touch, with whom we can exchanges wishes or express gratitude.
We can also chat to unknown people and in several cases, these people turn into close people. Even into lovers.
Ervin J. is a 33 year old from Durres, who says that he’s passionate about Facebook. “I have many friends, more than a thousand. Most of them are girls, whom I don’t personally know. But there are also people whom I have met on Facebook and had real relations with them”, Ervin says.
He says that he chats with many of these unknown girls, while two years ago, he had a relationship with a girl that he met online. “It was a relation which didn’t last very long. We weren’t made for each other”, Ervin says.
But this experience has not disappointed him.
“Of course I didn’t give up. Several months ago I met Era online and today we’re engaged”, Ervin says.
Another happy story is that of Marsida Kojku from a village of Elbasan, who has graduated in Korca as kindergarten teacher. Today, Marsida is 21, while two years ago, she met a young man on Facebook. She didn’t know that Arsen Bajraktari was from a remote village of Peshkopia.
“At first, everything started as a game. Arsen started to tease me and I responded. Then we started to talk about serious things. I felt that we were becoming friends, until we personally got to know each other and fell in love”.
Marsida says that her parents were against this relationship as Arsen’s village was more than 6 hours away from her village, but every obstacle was overcome. They are married and Marsida is waiting to become a mother now.
A history of two youngsters, who lived hundreds of kilometers from each other and perhaps, they wouldn’t be with each other had social networks not existed.
But acquaintances in social networks not always have a happy ending. Ilda Dedja from Dibra is a ballet dance living in Tirana today. She says that many years ago, when she was only 18, she met a young man on Facebook, which she saw as the “Prince Charming”.
“He told me he was 24 years old and I liked his way of communicating. He was a serious young man and he told me things that made me feel safe. I knew I had found a mature person, ready to start a life together”.
Ilda says that she continued to talk to the young man for 6 months.
“I asked to meet him and get to know him personally, but he kept on delaying the meeting. At first, I valued this, because I thought he was doing it not to give the impression of a Gigolo, but then I started having doubts. After insisting so much, he agreed to meet me in a bar”.
Ilda says that when she went to the bar, she faced the shocking truth.
“He was 42 and married. This was the first and last meeting. After that, I just tried to forget him”, Ilda says.
But she doesn’t seem to have forgotten this experience, although a decade has passed.
