Amy Steinberg

Online Love: Finding a Relationship on the Internet

One of the most appealing aspects of the Internet is its capabilities for bringing people together. The Internet has allowed school children in Iowa to connect with counterparts halfway around the world, while a housewife in Blacksburg can email a new friend in England. People with similar interest and goals can connect more easily, and can find each other in a new technical world. Before the Internet, these relationships may have never been possible. With this new medium for meeting people comes a new way to meet that one special person, a new way to find more than a friendship. The Internet has allowed people to find love where nothing was before. Men and women have met, fallen in love, and married at an accelerated pace due in part to the intensity of an online relationship. However, the appeal and excitement of online love does not always culminate in a happy ending. Still, finding online love can be an adventure, it can be fun, and it can end in happiness.

One of the hardest things to do in the social world is approaching someone you don’t know, starting a conversation when you know nothing about each other, keeping your cool and charm turned on while trying to read the other person’s mind, and all this while hoping you don’t have something stuck in your teeth. This is where the Internet has an incredible advantage over the "real" social world: the Internet is only, at first, about conversation. Since most people on the Internet right now do not have video capabilities, conversations are not hindered by physical appearances. People can talk freely to one another without having to worry about what their companion thinks about how they look or what they are wearing. Instead, the main concern in the cyber social arena is the quality of the conversation. Since many of these people meet in chat rooms or on online bulletin boards, the problem of initiating conversation is not as troubling as in the "real" social world because common interests are usually already known.

Where does one seeking an online love get started? There are three basic arenas for meeting people online: chat rooms, bulletin boards, and online personal ads. Chat rooms are actually channels which provide "real-time" conversations. Chat rooms usually have specific topics for discussion and thus attract people with similar interests. Many home pages now have links to chat rooms, where visitors of the page can find each other and talk, about the page, the topic of interest, or whatever may come to their minds. The chat rooms come in two basic varieties, public and private. In the social arena of the Internet, many people meet in a public chat room, where many participants are chatting, then move to a private chat room, where the conversations are only between those two people, and can turn to much more private matters. The private rooms, in most situations, are private, and are therefore not subject to the rules and regulations set forth by the provider of the chat rooms and enforced on the public rooms.

Bulletin boards, on the other hand, are not "real time" conversations. Instead, they are forums where participants can post messages for others to respond at their convenience. The bulletin boards, like the chat rooms, usually cover a specific topic or area of interest. In both of these arenas, the subject of the chat room or bulletin board brings together people of similar interests, an accomplishment which is sometimes more difficult in the "real" social world. Bulletin boards are exactly what they claim to be, electronic message centers. Bulletin boards do have a lax in response time which allows the participants to really think about their responses and formulate them appropriately. Thus, the bulletin board can sometimes have more intellectual and contemplative responses.

The final arena for meeting people online is personal ads. There are actual homepages which cater specifically to people who are wanting to meet a companion online. Online personal ads consist of areas where members can post a small ad, in message format, covering the basics of who they are and what they are looking for. Interested parties can then respond either through the service, or directly to the advertiser’s email address. However, most reputable personals pages do not allow their advertisers to post their individual addresses, so that the identity and safety of the advertiser is protected. In these cases, it is mandatory that respondents channel communication through the personal ad service provider. The personal ads online are perhaps most like that of their "real" world counterparts, so that the rules remain basically the same: be honest, be forthright, be personal, but be aware of predators and fakes.

At this new stage in the game, there are few statistics available as to the success of these forums for meeting people. The Internet Personals Page does give statistics of its advertisers where over twice as many men are posting ads as women. This statistic may speak for the medium, as many studies do show that more men use the Net than women. But exactly how successful are online relationships?

There are many factors which account for the appeal of an online relationship. As discussed earlier, the early stages of a relationship are not hindered by physical aspects or expectations. David Kohn writes in his article "Why Online Love Flourishes" that "a big part of the appeal is the purity of the connection. ‘You’re not distracted by the physical,’ says Avodah Offit, a psychiatrist who is an expert on online relationships. ‘You meet a mind across the screen’" (Kohn). The person on the other end of that long line is attracted to you and your mind, not your chest size or hair color.

Another part of the appeal of online love comes from the immediacy and intensity of the conversations, especially in chat room situations. People can type in their responses, and instantly a connection is made. The fact that the connection is made through a cold, technical computer does not obstruct these relationships. People can turn on their computer and instantly have someone at the other end, ready for a conversation. The person on the other end who reads what you write and becomes interested in your words and thoughts. The medium becomes much more personal than would normally be expected over a computer.

Perhaps the greatest part of the appeal is the illusion and mystery of the relationship. The participants in the relationship have room to imagine each other as they want, "with only a screenful of words to go on" (Kohn). Sherry Turkle, author of Life on the Screen, says that "the fact that the other is invisible, knowable only through their words, allows the projection of one’s fantasies. One has a lot of room to imagine…One then falls ‘in love’ with one’s fantasy to a certain extent" (Kohn). However, falling in love with a fantasy can be dangerous. It is highly possible that you could be so in love with your fantasy by the time you actually meet your online love, you won’t notice the reality. On the other hand, reality can be devastatingly disappointing. The important thing is that you keep your wits about you.

Meeting your love can be a wonderful experience. It is possible that your true soul mate is someone you meet over the Internet. However, it is just as likely that the person you meet could be a liar and a cheat, characteristics of a typical cyberpath. The following scenario could happen a lot more than reported:

In this case, the woman’s true love, her fantasy which she fell in love with, turned out to be a nightmare. The man in this story was a classic cyberpath. According to Baumrucker, a cyberpaths "manipulate others to meet their own selfish needs and feel no remorse for the suffering they cause" (Baumrucker). The fact that these people exist in the cyberworld as well as the real world only shows that technology isn’t that different from reality.

There are ways to avoid cyberpaths and other potential cheats. Most experts on the world of online romance agree that a cyber relationship should be treated no differently than a relationship offline (Baumrucker). The tips for having a successful online romance basically involve using your common sense. At first, you should enter the cyberworld not looking for love, but for friendships. This reduces the possibility of being blinded by the romance and excitement of it all. You should be honest with your online friend, and look for inconsistencies in behavior that might signal you’re dealing with a cyberpath. You should remember that finding love online and helping those relationships develop is a long process, and you should not rush things with the immediacy of the technology. Above all, think safely and logically, just as you would in the real world (Baumrucker). If your conversation partner seems to enjoy exactly the same things that you enjoy, it’s probably too good to be true.

Finding a cyberpath is not the only danger of living online. It is very possible that these late night conversations can replace real life social interactions. Computers have just as much potential for addiction as any other habit. "Students visiting chat rooms or playing MUD games can assume new, glamorous identities. Some start to believe that they’re loved and cared for in their new identities—‘an illusion that these online relationships are the same as the real thing’" (Murray). In this case, the danger is not in falling in love with your fantasy, but in becoming that fantasy. The Internet can be "addictive because it offers interaction with other people that ostensibly fills a social void" (Murray). Once time on the computer becomes a replacement for time in the real world, online addiction can take over your life. Just as with any addiction, the first step to recovery comes in admitting the problem, and turning off the computer. There are groups to help with online addiction, but it is quite ironic that one of the first groups for online addicts, the Internet Addiction Support Group, is an Internet service (Murray).

Another potential problem comes with some of the services. There are a lot of people online who are not looking for love, or even for friendship, but for conversations of a sexually explicit nature. On certain search engines, a query for the word love brings back more pages dealing with sex and pornography than romance and relationships. There becomes an equation online where love equals sex without really distinguishing between the physical and the emotional. Even on the Internet personals pages there are animated sexually explicit ads. If you are truly searching for friendship and not sex, you should stay away from any personals page with sexually explicit material. In conversations, an allusion to sex or sexual innuendoes should be an alarm in your head to end the conversation immediately. The illusion of Internet personalities allows people to act as they normally might not in the real world because there are fewer repercussions. People seem to act more promiscuous because they feel there is no danger online. However, the possibility of encountering a cyberpath still exists. The illusion factor allows people to pretend to be someone that they’re not, so that the wonderful woman you’ve just met online may turn out to be a eighteen year-old boy.

Part of the appeal of the Internet is that it allows people to escape reality without really leaving reality behind. There is a lot of interesting and reputable sites on the Internet, but there are just as many bad ones. It is important to keep an open mind when encountering different sites on the Internet, but it is still important not to let the technology fool you. Just because it is on an advanced medium does not necessarily make it credible, or safe. However, just as there are many stories of distress and heartbreak in the world of Internet romance, just like the real world, there are stories of success. Love can be found on the Internet, and it can survive. The most important and grueling test of an online love is the real world. An online relationship cannot stay online forever, if the participants want that love to grow and develop. Bringing an online romance offline can be the acid test which proves whether it is true love, or just a fly-by-byte whim.

Sources:

Baumrucker, Steven J. "Tips for Online Romance."

Available: http://www.romancesite.com/tips.htm

---"Romancing the Net."

Available: http://www.romacesite.com/excerpt.htm

---"How to Avoid and Detect Liars, Cheats, and Phonies"

Available: http://washington.xtn.net/~author/akido.htm

Kohn, David. "Why Online Relationships Flourish"

Available: http://www.packardbell.com/living/0214td12.asp

Murray, Bridget. "Computer Addictions Entangle Students"

Available: http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun96/onlinea.html

The Internet Personals Page

http://www.montagar.com/personals/index.html