|
11-17-05
The
ease and swiftness of the Internet has provided for the potential of relationships spanning friendly & occasional interactions
to deep and profound love and love affairs.
Much has been written recently on the causes and problems concerning Internet/long
distance relationships. Statistics continue to rise for those who become attached to online friends and lovers.
Marriage/relationship
counselors as well as divorce lawyers have factored this new phenomenon into their practices. The ethics of online romantic
relationships are in constant discussion ...trying to place this cyber occurrence & consequences into the realms of everyday
'real life' living.
The Internet is here to stay and as long as people are capable of human emotion, bonds will be
made over the Internet. The dynamics of these relationships needs to be understood as the people involved, lightly or not,
have aspects of these encounters that affect other relationships.
This is just an initial commentary from me in order
to raise an awareness that may not have been currently present in your thinking. PDPJ
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online relationship
by Trina
Sun
Aug 12 2001 at 11:46:53
The internet, as I may have said before now, is a Very Big Place.
Many, many people
live here.
It's likely that if you become part of any online community that you will find yourself becoming involved
in relationship s as strong as any you have or have had in "Real Life"?
Just as in Real Life, relationships online
come in all different types. There's the annoyingly poor-me type flirt who gets on your nerves just by saying "Hello", the
person who knows everything and who you can count on to know the answer to your question, the harried, stressed one who will,
in spite of his tiredness, make time for any problem... as long as you ask him to.
And just as in Real Life there
are the few people with whom we just click. Some of these people cross the line and become Real Life friends, and some remain
known only through what they choose to share online.
Online romantic relationships can be some of the most intense
a person can ever experience. This intensity is heightened by the many frustrations that come with online communications;
time zone differences, lack of money to fund long periods online, unreliable equipment cutting conversations off at moments
of crisis (or at least of import) all add to the frustration which helps to build a relationship of this type up.
People
seem to feel more able to talk about their real, personal feelings, about anything you might care to name, online than in
Real Life. It is quite possible to find one's self in intensely personal conversations within minutes of meeting people in
online situations - conversations that would not take place in Real Life for weeks or months after meeting.
There's
also the fact that many of the people who spend long hours online are the people whose Real Life lives are somehow lacking
. Lonely people, quite often, ripe to fall into deep emotional involvements.
How do online romances begin? I don't
really know, anymore than I know how Real Life romances begin. Two people feel attracted to one another, spend more time together,
and fall in love. The feelings are just as deep and just as real as those felt in relationships where the people involved
are able to touch one another physically.
And the people involved in these love affairs are just as vulnerable to
hurt as those in Real Life love affairs. It is far far easier to misunderstand the intention behind a written word than a
spoken one. Arguments can blow up out of nowhere and nothing, leaving both people feeling shaken and confused. In a Real Life
relationship it is usually possible to go to visit the loved one and talk the problem out, or at least telephone . In an online
relationship it is likely the problem will remain unresolved for a long period of time - often 24 or more hours will pass
before both parties can come together again and begin to resolve their differences.
Online relationships also contain
much more scope for deception that Real Life ones. While it is possible for any person to cheat on their partner, only in
online relationships is it possible to cuckold someone at the same time as making love to them.
In short, online love
affairs are just as genuine as Real Life ones. They have the same highs and lows...
In fact, online relationships
of all types mirror Real Life relationships... but happen harder and faster.
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11-20-05
The Cyber Narcissist
By
Sam Vaknin
June 13, 2003
To the narcissist, the Internet is an alluring and irresistible combination of playground
and hunting grounds, the gathering place of numerous potential sources of narcissistic supply, a world where false identities
are the norm and mind games the bon ton. And it is beyond the reach of the law, the pale of social norms, the strictures of
civilized conduct.
Stalker
The somatic finds cyber-sex and cyber-relationships aplenty. The cerebral claims false
accomplishments, fake skills, erudition and talents. Both, if minimally communicative, end up at the instantly gratifying
epicenter of a cult of fans, followers, stalkers, erotomaniacs, denigrators, and plain nuts. The constant attention and attendant
quasi-celebrity feed and sustain their grandiose fantasies and inflated self-image.
The Internet is an extension of
the real-life Narcissistic Pathological Space but without its risks, injuries, and disappointments. In the virtual universe
of the Web, the narcissist vanishes and reappears with ease, often adopting a myriad aliases and nicknames. He (or she) can
thus fend off criticism, abuse, disagreement, and disapproval effectively and in real time - and, simultaneously, preserve
the precarious balance of his infantile personality. Narcissists are, therefore, prone to Internet addiction.
The
positive characteristics of the Net are largely lost on the narcissist. He is not keen on expanding his horizons, fostering
true relationships, or getting in real contact with other people. The narcissist is forever the provincial because he filters
everything through the narrow lens of his addiction. He measures others - and idealizes or devalues them - according to one
criterion only: how useful they might be as sources of narcissistic supply.
The Internet is an egalitarian medium
where people are judged by the consistency and quality of their contributions rather than by the content or bombast of their
claims. But the narcissist is driven to distracting discomfiture by a lack of clear and commonly accepted hierarchy (with
himself at the pinnacle). He fervently and aggressively tries to impose the "natural order" - either by monopolizing the interaction
or, if that fails, by becoming a major disruptive influence.
But the Internet may also be the closest many narcissists
get to psychodynamic therapy. Because it is still largely text-based, the Web is populated by disembodied entities. By interacting
with these intermittent, unpredictable, ultimately unknowable, ephemeral, and ethereal voices - the narcissist is compelled
to project unto them his own experiences, fears, hopes, and prejudices.
Transference (and counter-transference) are
quite common on the Net and the narcissist's defense mechanisms - notably projection and projective identification - are frequently
aroused. The therapeutic process is set in motion by the - unbridled, uncensored, and brutally honest - reactions to the narcissist's
repertory of antics, pretensions, delusions, and fantasies.
The narcissist - ever the intimidating bully - is not
accustomed to such resistance. Initially, it may heighten and sharpen his paranoia and lead him to compensate by extending
and deepening his grandiosity. Some narcissists withdraw altogether, reverting to the schizoid posture. Others become openly
antisocial and seek to subvert, sabotage, and destroy the online sources of their frustration. A few retreat and confine themselves
to the company of adoring sycophants and unquestioning groupies.
But a long exposure to the culture of the Net - irreverent,
skeptical, and populist - usually exerts a beneficial effect even on the staunchest and most rigid narcissist. Far less convinced
of his own superiority and infallibility, the online narcissist mellows and begins - hesitantly - to listen to others and
to collaborate with them.
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11-21-05
Book ~
Infidelity
on the Internet: Virtual Relationships and Real Betrayal (Paperback)
by Marlene M. Maheu, Rona Subotnik
Editorial
Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"Cybering," slang for virtual sex online, appears to be the dark secret of the
Internet, and it is creating havoc in the real world of relationships. The ease with which people can find partners for sex
a quick computer search can yield hundreds of opportunities, in chat rooms or on porn sites and the apparent safety of anonymous
encounters has tempted huge numbers of people to cheat on their mates. According to mental health professionals Maheu and
Subotnik (Surviving Infidelity), a large-scale study in 2000 reported that an estimated 20% of Internet users engage in online
sexual activity, and two-thirds of them are married or in a committed relationship. The many cybersex practitioners given
voice here demonstrate wide-ranging viewpoints about what constitutes infidelity. People cruise cyberspace for brief sex with
strangers or for lengthy affairs. Some believe cybersex is a harmless fantasy, while others acknowledge the harmful consequences
that discovery brings and express profound regret. Testimonies of cybering adventures solicited through a self-help Web site
elucidate the different motivations that drive people to have cybersex and the obsessive-compulsive behavior that can develop
among habitual users. Expressing zero tolerance for people who minimize the consequences of cyberinfidelity, the authors present
a program for kicking the habit and rebuilding a damaged relationship after an online romance has been revealed. Although
they allow for the possibility that in a climate of openness and honesty, extramarital cybering might be a nonthreatening,
permissible form of Internet recreation, their argument that cyberinfidelity is often damaging and addictive is convincing.
(Nov.)Forecast: If cybering is as widespread as the authors suggest, the audience for this book could be sizable. But do cheaters
actually purchase books on cheating? Sourcebooks apparently hopes so; the house has planned a 25,000 first printing.
Copyright
2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
*From Library Journal
Psychologist Maheu
(editor in chief, SelfhelpMagazine.com) and marriage counselor Subotnik (coauthor, Surviving Infidelity) contend that couples
may experience serious emotional harm when they turn to computers to vent stress. By chatting, e-mailing, and viewing pornography,
people become at-risk for infidelity and sexual compulsion. Offering revealing vignettes and a sometimes clinical narrative,
the text makes valuable points about the importance of communication, the pain caused by any form of cheating, the attraction
of cybersex, and the path toward healing. While the book effectively addresses the feelings of the spouse and shows that a
cyberaffair constitutes a real betrayal, it neglects to treat the "other man/woman" as a real person, thereby downplaying
the transgression. Also, several times in the text, the cyberaffair/sexual encounter is referred to as "fantasy," and the
individuals in the case studies often compare the "fake Internet world" with the "real world," further distorting the concept
of unfaithfulness. Readers thus come away with a conflicting message. Online infidelity and addiction is better covered in
Patrick Carnes's In the Shadows of the Net (LJ 5/15/01) and in a section of Emily Brown's Affairs (LJ 9/15/99). Only those
libraries that don't own such titles or need a one-stop source should purchase. Jeanne Larkins, New York
Copyright
2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
http://tinyurl.com/8urft
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11-21-05
Article in USA Today, January 9, 2003
Infidelity reaches beyond having sex:
Emotional intimacy, virtual affairs take hold in workplace
By Karen S. Peterson
USA TODAY
Cybersex and so-called virtual affairs on the Internet are all the buzz among professionals who study spouses who stray.
But the truly fertile ground for dangerous emotional attachments outside marriages is much more conventional: the workplace.
As more employees labor longer hours together, close friendships increasingly are taken for granted. And as more women move
into professions once dominated by men, there are greater temptations for both sexes.
There is a new ''crisis of infidelity'' breeding in the workplace, says Baltimore psychologist and marital researcher
Shirley Glass. Often it does not involve sexual thrill seekers, but ''good people,'' peers who are in good marriages.
''The new infidelity is between people who unwittingly form deep, passionate connections before realizing that they've
crossed the line from platonic friendship into romantic love,'' Glass says.
Glass' 25 years of research on ''extramarital attachments'' adds to a growing understanding of just what constitutes infidelity
and why it happens.
She believes affairs do not have to include sex. ''In the new infidelity, affairs do not have to be sexual. Sometimes
the greatest betrayals happen without touching. Infidelity is any emotional or sexual intimacy that violates trust.''
This revised concept of an affair is embraced by increasing numbers of Glass' colleagues. People are ''incredibly devastated
by their partner's emotional affair,'' says Peggy Vaughan, who has researched infidelity for 20 years. ''They separate over
it, divorce over it, this breaking of a trust, a bond.'' The third edition of Vaughan's The Monogamy Myth will be released
this month.
A platonic friendship, such as those that grow at work, edges into an emotional affair when three elements are present,
Glass says:
* Emotional intimacy. Transgressors share more of their ''inner self, frustrations and triumphs than with their spouses.
They are on a slippery slope when they begin sharing the dissatisfaction with their marriage with a co-worker.''
* Secrecy and deception. ''They neglect to say, 'We meet every morning for coffee.' Once the lying starts, the intimacy
shifts farther away from the marriage.''
* Sexual chemistry. Even though the two may not act on the chemistry, there is at least an unacknowledged sexual attraction.
Glass sums up her research and that of others in Not ''Just Friends'': Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal
the Trauma of Betrayal (Free Press, $24), now arriving in bookstores.
''This is the essence of the new crisis of infidelity: friendships, work relationships and Internet liaisons have become
the latest threat to marriages,'' Glass says.
Affairs that take place in chat rooms on the Internet are classic examples of emotional infidelity.
How many have affairs, either emotional or sexual, is difficult to gauge. After reviewing 25 studies, Glass believes 25%
of wives and 44% of husbands have had extramarital intercourse.
About two-thirds of the 350 couples she has treated include one or both partners who have had some type of intense affair,
sexual or emotional. The most threatening to marriages combine both, she says. Sixty-two percent of the unfaithful men and
46% of the women met their illicit partner through work.
Researchers identify many factors contributing to infidelity. Proximity at the office is key for Glass. ''My research
and the research of others point to opportunity as a primary factor. . . . Attractions are a fact of life when men and women
work side by side.''
Many other risk factors may be in play. They include:
* Family patterns. Unfaithful parents tend to produce sons who betray their wives and daughters who either accept affairs
as normal or are unfaithful themselves, Glass says.
* Biochemical cravings. Changes in brain chemicals during an affair can create a ''high that becomes almost addictive,''
says Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman, author of Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy.
Bonnie Eaker-Weil, author of Adultery: The Forgivable Sin, says the biological need for connection can result from ''severe
stress, loss or separation'' that often can be traced back to childhood.
* Internet temptations. Increasing numbers of cyber-affairs are breaking up stable marriages, says psychologist Kimberly
Young, author of Tangled in the Web: Understanding Cybersex From Fantasy to Addiction. She cites the anonymity and convenience
of the Internet, as well as the escape it provides from the stresses of everyday life.
* Increasing premarital sex. The more premarital sexual activity, the greater the chance of an extramarital affair, Glass
says. ''Because girls are more sexually active at younger ages than they used to be, married women are not nearly as inhibited
about crossing the line.''
* Child-centered marriages. Parents with dual careers and limited time ''often collude to give what time they have to
the children. Their bond is built on co-parenting, and they don't make time for themselves,'' Glass says. Stereotypically,
the husband finds somebody at work to share his adult interests.
Some affairs happen, Glass says, ''because people have certain beliefs they think will protect them. They believe if they
love their spouse and have a good marriage, they don't have to worry. They don't exert the caution that might be necessary
or create the boundaries to make their marriages safe.''
Basically monogamous partners drawn to interesting colleagues at work find themselves in ''great internal conflict.''
Her best advice: ''The more attractive we find somebody, the more careful we have to be.''
How to keep temptation at arm's length
There is no such thing as an affair-proof marriage. But couples who want to protect their unions from infidelity can be
mindful of the dangers. To keep a marriage healthy:
* Stay honest with your partner. ''Honesty is the trump card for preventing affairs,'' says Peggy Vaughan, who has studied
affairs for more than two decades. Her Web site is dearpeggy.com. ''Make a commitment to sharing your attractions and temptations.''
That helps to avoid acting on them. Dishonesty and deception cause affairs to flourish, Vaughan says.
* Monitor your marriage. ''Realize if there is something missing,'' says psychologist Kimberly Young of St. Bonaventure
University in southwest New York state. ''Be willing to try to fix it.'' Assess whether needs are being met.
* Stay alert for temptations. ''Be very careful of getting involved in the first place,'' Young says. ''Know the dangers.
You can be drawn to an affair as to a drug. And once you are past a certain point of emotional connection, it is very hard
to go into reverse.''
* Don't flirt. ''That is how affairs start,'' says Bonnie Eaker Weil, whose Web site, www.makeupdontbreakup .com, features
tips for preventing infidelity. ''Flirting is not part of an innocent friendship. If you think there might be a problem with
someone you flirt with, there probably is a problem.''
* Recognize that work can be a danger zone. ''Don't lunch or take private coffee breaks with the same person all the time,''
psychologist Shirley Glass says.
* Beware of the lure of the Internet. ''Emotional affairs develop quickly, in maybe a few days or weeks online, where
it might take a year at the office,'' Young says. ''There is safety behind the computer screen.''
* Keep old flames from reigniting. ''If you value your marriage, think twice about having lunch with one,'' Glass says.
Invite your partner along.
* Value the intimacy of your marriage. ''Reveal as much of yourself to one another as possible,'' Atlanta psychiatrist
Frank Pittman says. ''You will find it less necessary to form an intimate friendship with someone else.''
* Make sure your social network supports marriage. ''Surround yourself with happily married friends who don't believe
in fooling around,'' Glass says.
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11-21-05
AAMFT Consumer Update
Infidelity
After the devastating disclosure of infidelity, intense emotions and recurrent crises are the norm. The good news, however,
is that the majority of marriages not only survive infidelity, but marriage and family therapists have observed that many
marriages can become stronger and more intimate after couples therapy. An extramarital involvement (EMI) is the catalyst for
approximately 50 percent of the couples who initiate treatment. A striking paradox is that while polls indicate 90 percent
disapproved of extramarital relationships, a national survey reported that 15 percent of wives and 25 percent of husbands
had experienced extramarital intercourse. When emotional affairs or sexual intimacies without intercourse are included, the
incidence increases by 20 percent.
Causes and Types of Extramarital Relationships
The causes of infidelity are complex and varied. Affairs can occur in happy marriages as well as in troubled ones. Although
the involved spouse may not be getting enough from the marriage, sometimes the involved spouse is not giving enough. Reasons
for EMI include low self-esteem, relationship deficits (e.g., lack of affection), or a social context in which infidelity
is condoned.
Multiple affairs may indicate an addiction to sex, love or romance. Love and romance addicts are driven by the passion
of a new relationship. Sexual addicts are compulsively attracted to the high and the anxiety release of sexual orgasm. But
such release comes with a price -- feelings of shame and worthlessness. In contrast, philanderers who perceive extramarital
sex as an entitlement of gender or status take advantage of opportunities without guilt or withdrawal symptoms.
A new crisis of infidelity is emerging in which people who never intended to be unfaithful are unwittingly crossing the
line from platonic friendships into romantic relationships, particularly in the workplace and on the Internet. Emotional affairs
differ from platonic friendships in that there is 1) greater emotional intimacy than in the marital relationship, 2) secrecy
and deception from the spouse, and 3) sexual chemistry. Internet affairs, which cause marital distress despite lack of actual
physical contact, exemplify emotional affairs. However, combined-type affairs in which extramarital intercourse occurs within
a deep emotional attachment usually have the most disruptive impact.
Vulnerabilities for EMI can be linked to marital problems (e.g., avoidance of conflict, fear of intimacy) or life cycle
changes (e.g., transition to parenthood, empty-nest). Some dissatisfied spouses begin an extramarital relationship as a way
of exiting from an unhappy marriage. More frequently, however, the marital history is re-written to justify an ongoing affair.
It is unreasonable to compare a forbidden love affair that is maintained by romantic idealization with the routine familiarity
of a long-term marriage.
The Impact of Discovery
It is common for both spouses to experience depression (including suicidal thoughts), anxiety, and/or a profound sense
of loss following the initial disclosure. The reactions of the betrayed spouse resemble the post-traumatic stress symptoms
of the victims of catastrophic events. Common reactions to the loss of innocence and shattered assumptions include obsessively
pondering details of the affair; continuously watching for further signs of betrayal; and physiological hyperarousal, flashbacks
and intrusive images. The most severely traumatized are those who had the greatest trust and were the most unsuspecting. The
involved spouse may fear that they will be punished forever for the betrayal while they grieve for the lost dreams associated
with the affair.
Treatment and Recovery
The first issue to be addressed in therapy is clarifying whether the purpose of treatment is rebuilding the marriage,
resolving ambivalence about whether to remain married, or separating in a constructive way. One spouse may want to reconcile
while the other spouse is still ambivalent or has decided to leave. Most family therapists work with the couple together as
the primary approach. However, an ambivalent spouse or a severely agitated spouse may also need some individual therapy sessions.
One way to help couples rebuild marriages after the disclosure of infidelity is based on an interpersonal trauma model
-- a process of recovery and healing leading to forgiveness. The first stage of recovery after the impact of the disclosure
establishes safety and addresses the painful emotions and traumatic symptoms. Understanding the vulnerabilities for the EMI
and telling the story of the affair comprise the middle stage. Integrating the meaning of the affair into the present and
moving on into the future is the final stage of healing and forgiveness.
A wall of secrecy in the marriage and a window of intimacy in the affair usually characterize extramarital triangles.
Reconstructing marriages requires reversing the walls and windows by erecting a wall with the affair partner and a window
of honesty with the marriage partner.
Establishing safety. Recovery cannot begin until contact with the affair partner is terminated. Stopping an affair does
not just mean ending sexual intercourse. All personal discussions, coffee breaks and phone calls must also be stopped. When
the affair partner is a co-worker, the contact must be strictly business, and necessary or unplanned encounters must be shared
with the spouse in order to rebuild trust.
Telling the story of the affair. A guiding principle is how information will enhance healing. However, a destructive process
of interrogation and defensiveness never promotes healing, even if the answers are truthful. The initial discussions commonly
resemble the adversarial interaction between a detective and a criminal. Simple facts such as who, what, where and when can
be answered during the early stage to relieve some of the pressure for information. It is preferable to delay complex questions
about motivations and explicit details about sexual intimacy until the process itself is more healing. The disclosure process
evolves in therapy from a truth-seeking inquisition to the neutral process of information seeking – similar to a
journalist and an interviewee. The final phase is one of mutual exploration with an empathic process.
Signs of healing and recovery. 1) The marriage is stronger and is couple-centered rather than child-centered. 2) The vulnerabilities
for infidelity are understood and addressed as they occur. 3) The couple has developed trust, commitment, mutual empathy and
shared responsibility for change.
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11-21-05
Is It Cheating?
By Kathleen Kelleher
It seemed like nothing at first.
The man and woman met at a West Los Angeles school their children attend. The man, who is divorced, and the woman, who
is married, spent time together volunteering on school projects. School-related meetings led to meeting for coffee. Talk turned
from the non-personal to the personal.
The woman began revealing her feelings of distress about her marriage. The man listened, empathized and offered up the
pain-filled details of his divorce. Each time they saw each other, entre-nous intimations were exchanged, deepening an emotional
connection that fairly sizzled with an underlying sexual tension.
There is heavy petting, and there is heavy emoting. Both constitute infidelity to a marriage or primary relationship.
Psychologists call an affair without any physical touching extramarital emotional involvement, emotional infidelity or an
emotional affair. In emotional affairs, deep, personal intimacies are traded, instead of fantasies of the flesh.
The hallmarks of an emotional infidelity are secrecy and sexual chemistry, according to Shirley Glass, a Baltimore-area
clinical psychologist who has studied infidelity for the last 25 years. Friendships, whether they are hatched over the Internet
or in the flesh, begin and develop quickly when someone connects with a person who appears to be empathetic and who shares
common interests.
The first transgression of an emotional infidelity is when two people share information about problems in their primary
relationship that their respective partner would feel was a violation. This flags vulnerability and possible availability,
writes Glass in the forward to "Infidelity on the Internet" (Sourcebooks Inc., 2001), co-written by psychologist
Marlene Maheu and therapist Rona Subotnik.
Trouble looms large when one person intimates feelings to a potential sexual partner, things they are unwilling to confide
to their existing partner, Glass said. Suddenly, the emotional intimacy in the friendship is deeper than that of the primary
relationship, drawing the two people closer to a sexual affair. A primary relationship is even more threatened when marital
troubles are discussed with someone who has no vested interest in the marriage, according to Glass.
"Once you have an emotional infidelity, it can make the jump to someone else's bed a whole lot closer," said
Gary Neuman, a Miami Beach clinical psychologist and author of "Emotional Infidelity" (Crown Publishers, 2001).
Neuman argues in his book that people need to learn to invest their emotional selves in their primary relationship, not in
intense emotional bonds forged with colleagues and friends. Neuman believes that if too much is spent outside the primary
relationship, not enough is left to sustain it. "An emotional infidelity is about consistently sharing with someone (outside
the relationship) things that you are not sharing with your spouse."
The reason people have emotional affairs is they are looking for emotional nourishment on some level that they are not
getting in their main relationship, added Ann Langley, a marriage and family therapist at the San Jose Marital and Sexuality
Centre.
A 49-year-old mother of two teenagers fell into an emotional affair with a man who flirted with her online a few years
ago. He was romantic and a great communicator, everything her then-husband was not. The woman has no intention of trying to
woo the man away from his wife and daughter, she said, and they have met about four times. "It is safe," said the
woman. "He knows I wouldn't interfere with his marriage and that I wouldn't put him through that emotional trauma."
"We are like best friends," she said, adding that her marriage was over before the cyber affair. "There
is a kind of desperate romantic thing to it that is appealing. The last couple of years, I have had more romance with him
than I had in 25 years of marriage."
Unzipping the heart with someone outside a primary relationship can be motivated by fear that revealing oneself to a spouse
or primary partner will invite humiliation, rejection and pain. "Maybe your partner is a prude and you can't explore
your sexual fantasies or express parts of yourself with him," said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist
and author of many relationship books. "So as not to deny parts of yourself, and so as not to try to make your partner
into something he is not, you go outside your main relationship to explore."
One woman in her 50s exchanges sexual fantasies online with men anonymously and secretly, telling the men that she is
married and doesn't want to pursue anything. The woman argued in a message board posting on the Web site that her fantasy
swapping has benefited her marriage by reinvigorating her sex life with her husband.
For people determined not to leave their existing relationships, Schwartz said, an emotional affair is an attempt to reconcile
conflicting needs. But some people engage in emotional affairs for the extra zing. "Some people have these emotional
affairs, and they are doing the same kind of flirtation and seduction as in a physical affair, and are taking themselves out
of the primary relationship," Schwartz said. "It might as well be sex."
Kathleen Kelleher is a free-lance writer in Los Angeles who writes on health and relationship issues.
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11-21-05
Developing Personal and Emotional
Relationships Via Computer-Mediated Communication
by Brittney G. Chenault
The Internet is not about technology,
it is not about information, it is about communication-people talking with each other, people exchanging e-mail, people doing
the low ASCII dance. The Internet is mass participation in fully bi-directional, uncensored mass communication. Communication
is the basis, the foundation... The Internet is a community of chronic communicators. (Strangelove, 1994)
1. An Introduction
to CMC and Emotion
The idea of a community accessible only via my computer screen sounded cold to me at first, but I learned
quickly that people can feel passionately about e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these
people I met through my computer... (Rheingold, 1993, 1)
Emotion is present in computer-mediated communication (CMC).
People meet via CMC every day, exchange information, debate, argue, woo, commiserate, and support. They may meet via a mailing
list or newsgroup, and continue the interaction via e-mail. Their relationships can range from the cold, professional encounter,
to the hot, intimate rendezvous. Rheingold describes people in virtual communities as using the words they type on screens
to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional
support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little
high art and a lot of idle talk (3).
More than a few of that list of activities are emotional." People bring their
real-life problems and personalities with them to their "virtual" lives, and, therefore, CMC must inherently include all kinds
of emotional content. None of us are so thick-skinned that a "virtual" interaction couldn't bring a flush to our face as we
read a flame directed at our latest post to a newsgroup. Virtual-schmirtual... ASCII can prick -- or please.
Moreover,
beyond simply carrying emotional content, CMC becomes a new way for people to "find" each other, a way for personal relationships
to build-at least, that is what Rheingold (1993) and others have seen. However, Kiesler (1984), Stoll (1996), and others have
found CMC to be an inadequate way for people to share emotional content, let alone develop meaningful, long-lasting relationships,
due to the lack of nonverbal "cues." Rheingold argues against this view of CMC as lacking, by asking: "Who is to say that
this preference for one mode of communication-informal written text [instead of face-to-face]--is somehow less authentically
human than audible speech?" He continues:
Those who find virtual communities cold places point at the limits of the
technology, its most dangerous pitfalls.... but these critiques don't tell us how Philcat and Lhary and the Allisons and my
own family could have found the community of support and information we found on the WELL when we needed it (24).
This
review essay will survey some of the critical approaches to CMC and emotion, with special emphasis on scholarship dealing
with CMC and the development of personal relationships.
2. Definitions and Assumptions
Lea and Spears (1995),
note that, currently, relationship research "privileges certain types of relationships while neglecting others," including
relationships made through CMC. On-line relationships are just one of the many understudied relationship types . Lea and Spears
write that, to date, scholars have "concentrated primarily on romance, friendship, and marriage among young, white, middle-class,
heterosexual Westerners whose relationships are conducted in the open..." (x). Lea and Spears argue that studying on-line
relationships offers challenges to relationship research, choosing to focus on the "social context" for the development of
what they call "electronic relationships" (not the best term, in my opinion), viewing all personal relationships as "socially
situated" (199). Thus, the definition of a "personal relationship," under Lea and Spears' view, takes into account its social
context.
CMC relationships are not only worthy of study-one would think that scholars would be lured to their complexities.
Slowly-so slowly-this is happening. But it's taken longer than it should for CMC relationships to receive scholarly attention.
Many scholars (and others) assume the following about CMC-initiated and conducted relationships. They are:
*
casual
* temporary
* false
* lack deep (or any) emotion
You will see these assumptions arise
again and again in the literature -- but rarely with any bite to back up their bark. My intention is to show many sides of
the CMC relationship issues, and to hopefully go beyond the typical assumptions.
Interpersonal Attraction
Almost
all theorists agree that interpersonal attraction is a "positive or negative attitude toward another person" (Berscheid &
Hatfield, 1978, 2). "Attitude" means a "person's readiness to respond toward an object, or a class of objects, in a favorable
or unfavorable manner." Interpersonal attraction (or interpersonal hostility) is defined as "an individual's tendency or predisposition
to evaluate another person or symbol of that person in a positive (or negative) way" (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978, 2)
Measures
of attraction discussed include some that do not come into play in CMC, nor can they be measured, including: eye-contact (how
long individuals engage in mutual eye-contact appears to be a determinant of interpersonal attraction) "inclination" to one
another (leaning towards and other body language); and the distance one stands from another. However, other "measures" can
occur in CMC, including favor-doing (exerting oneself to "provide benefits for another") (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978,
17-18).
Albert Mehrabian (1981), in Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes, writes about
the "nonverbal and implicit verbal behavior" in communication. He asserts that in the "realm of feelings" our "facial and
vocal expressions, postures, movements, and gestures" are very important. When our words "contradict the messages contained
within them, others mistrust what we say-they rely almost completely on what we do" (iii). (See Section 4 , "Reduced Cues..."
for perspectives reflecting the belief that absence of cues negatively impacts CMC).
As people continue to interact
and maintain a relationship, they "gradually move toward deeper areas of their mutual personalities through the use of words,
bodily behavior, and environmental behaviors" (Altman & Taylor, 1973, 27) And, in CMC, bodily and environmental aspects
are reduced or removed, giving words/text all importance. Within any interpersonal interaction there is an "exchange" in communication.
We read between the lines. We look for cues and for an equal amount of exchange between communication partners, ideally. Who
is talking more? Who is writing more? Who writes and responds to more e-mail, and how frequently? Because often in CMC people
are interacting with relative "strangers" (people they have never met "in real life"), the dynamics of when to disclose, and
what to disclose comes into play: ... "people are discouraged from expressing personal feelings to strangers and so it becomes
necessary to rely on implicit behavior to infer how another person feels and how to pursue a relationship further" (Mehrabian,
156). Altman and Taylor (1973), in Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships, assert that the important
aspect of "social penetration" processes (i.e., "range of interpersonal events occurring in growing relationships" including
verbal and nonverbal exchanges [3]) concerns the "reciprocity" of communication exchange and disclosure: "Will one person's
disclosure increase the probability that the other person will disclose?" (50)
Jourard & Lasakow (1958) hypothesized
that "liking" another person is a result of having "disclosed" to the person, almost "independent of that person's reaction
to the disclosure" (cited in Altman & Taylor, 50). Altman & Taylor posit an interactional theory: "Revealing leads
to liking and liking leads to revealing," as a cyclical and continuous set of events (50).
Lea and Spears (1995),
note that interpersonal cues are "more likely to be sensitive to the communication bandwidth of the medium of interaction
and may ... take longer and be more difficult to communicate than social cues." They differentiate between social attraction
and personal attraction. Social attraction is "attraction to those aspects of the self that are conferred by membership of
or affiliation with certain social groups or categorizations," while personal attraction is "attraction to the idiosyncratic
aspects of an individual" (226). Personal attraction is not based on group processes, but instead on "interpersonal processes,"
such as the development of intimacy (227).
Lea and Spears also argue that technology, including CMC, does not weaken
social conditions of communication "so much as afford more efficient opportunities for constituting them" (229). Wellman and
Gulia (1995) state that the limited research to date suggests that relationships developed on-line are "much like most of
the ones they develop in their 'real life' communities: rather weak, intermittent, and specialized."
Laurel N. Hellerstein
(1985) also found that heavy users of e-mail and electronic conferencing, in a university setting, were more likely to use
the computer to "initiate new friendships, make new friends, and communicate with others," whereas "light" users tended to
do build relationships in other ways. Hellerstein studied the "social use" of CMC (the "Cyber mail" and conferencing system)
at the University of Massachusetts, describing a "computing subculture" in the university made up of approximately 250 people.
They sampled 650 members of the university community, with a total of 236 people completing an on-line questionnaire. The
sample was divided into heavy (55%) and light (45%) users of the e-mail and conferencing system. Heavy users used CMC to meet
social needs (191). The most active users made friendships via CMC that were later carried on "off-line," including romantic
relationships (194). Findings included that users of the e-mail system would greet each other, even in person, by their computer
nicknames rather than their given names (193). Regular users of the conference and mail systems interacted socially on and
off the computer, forming a "cohesive group" (194). 1
Emoticons
Emoticons combine punctuation marks and symbols
into miniature sideways faces that reveal sender's mood. They are also sometimes called "smilies." Adding ;-) to the end of
a sentence "lets others know you're joking or feeling cheerful" ("Cybershrink," 20). Adding a frowning face, such as :-( achieves
the opposite effect. Anna Nelson says that emoticon use is highest in "meet and greet" situations where one wants to appear
approachable (21). Some researchers have posited that emoticons are useful in making up for the lack of nonverbal context
cues in CMC.
Emoting
Some people seem to use these depersonalized modes of communication to get very personal
with each other. For these people, at the right times, CMC is a way to connect with another human being (Rheingold, 147).
Some computer-mediated MUDS allow users to type out narrative descriptions of conversational nonverbal behaviors.
Participants can "say"-send typed messages which appear surrounded by quotation marks and preceded by dialogue tags, or they
can "emote" or "pose" (Walther & Tidwell, 1995). Emoting, in MUDs, is a way to use commands to bring action and emotion
to language. For example, if my name is "Brittney" in a MUD and I type "emote cries out loud," the result for others on the
MUD would be "Brittney cries out loud"-giving my "character" action and movement-and even emotion.
The use of poses
as well as words to convey meaning gives MUDs an "odd but definitely useful kind of disembodied body language." In Internet
Relay Chat (IRC), people also use emoting, by typing "/me jumps up and down" (translated to users on the channel as "Brittney
jumps up and down"). Rheingold comments on the new dimension that emoting gives to your MUD and IRC conversations: "Instead
of replying to a statement, you can smirk. Instead of leaving the room, you can disappear in a cloud of iridescent, bubble-gum-flavored
bubbles" (148). This "new dimension" could be considered a way of adding socioemotional content.
Lack of Data
Lea
and Spears admit that the comprehensive analysis of CMC is not currently possible. In my opinion, it never will be. Currently
limited by the "paucity of available data" (199), the very nature of CMC will always pose problems for researchers. Most people
are not going to knowingly allow access to their personal correspondences, in any format. It is easier to study group interaction,
but how does one study CMC at the one-on-one level? First of all, most CMC data is from organizational studies.
Furthermore, it is only a very few studies
that have focused on organizational CMC for social and recreational purposes. These include Ord (1989) and Finholt & Sproull
(1990). A very few ethnographies of network communities formed in bulletin boards exist. Reid's 1991 thesis, Electropolis:
Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat, was unable for review, but appears to be a promising ethnography.
3.
Invisible Friends and Lovers: Can CMC Support Real Personal Relationships?
"How does anyone find friends? " Howard Rheingold
asks this question in The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (1993). Rheingold sees CMC as offering
a chance to "magnify" your chances of finding a peer group-and friends. Rheingold uses his own personal experience to exemplify
this phenomena. The Virtual Community includes Rheingold's account of his time on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) --
an electronic bulletin-board system, the types of communication which occurred there, the people he met-who helped him and
whom he helped. Writing of his daughter, who grew up seeing her father sitting in front of a computer screen at night, he
says:
My seven-year old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible friends who seem to gather
in his computer. Sometimes he talks to them, even if nobody else can see them. And she knows that these invisible friends
sometimes show up in the flesh, materializing from the next block or the other side of the planet (1).
Rheingold describes
an "emotional attachment" to his "invisible friends," an attachment that he shares with millions of people participating in
"virtual communities." He describes finding the WELL as discovering a "cozy little world that had been flourishing without
me, hidden within the walls of my house." Rheingold writes: "...I learned quickly that people can feel passionately about
e-mail and computer conferences. I've become one of them. I care about these people I met through my computer..." (1).
Rheingold's
activities on the WELL included participating in a Parenting Conference, giving information and emotional support to a friend
who just learned his son was diagnosed with leukemia. Another family's emotional trials were described via the WELL:
Sitting
in front of our computers with our hearts racing and tears in our eyes, in Tokyo and Sacramento and Austin, we read about
Lillie's croup, her tracheotomy, the days and nights at Massachusetts General Hospital, and now the vigil over Lillie's breathing
and the watchful attention to the mechanical apparatus that kept her alive... (19)
The father of Lillie described
above, Jay, wrote of his WELL experience, describing it as one of "solace" and "support": "Any difficulty is harder to bear
in isolation. There is nothing to measure against, to lean against. Typing out my journal entries into the computer and over
the phone lines, I found fellowship and comfort in this unlikely medium" (Rheingold, 20).
Parks and Floyd (1996) explain
that a personal relationship develops as "its participants come to depend on each other more deeply and in more complex ways"
and that as relationships develop, breadth and depth of interaction increases including variety of discussion topics, activities,
and communication channels. Parks and Floyd distributed a questionnaire to participants in Usenet, finding that more than
half (57%) of the subjects recording breadth scores in the upper half of the scale, meaning that the number of and types of
communication interactions were increasing as relationships developed.
Lea and Spears (1995) point out the particular
"technical," as well as social power that CMC has in configuring relationships, seeing it as a positive rather than negative
effect of CMC:
As a text medium, some of the most delicate and perhaps questionable bases of people's relationships
that are reenacted daily through talk are freshly exposed to the actors themselves, to their partners, and to third parties...
Coupled with this, the immensely powerful information storage and search capabilities of computer technology mean that every
word of every conversation ever conducted between two people via computer can be accurately retained and perfectly recalled
at will by either party ( 232).
In short, CMC conversations are not tied to time and place in which they were originated,
taking the concept of asynchronous communication to its limits. Yet, despite asynchronicity, time can matter. Walther and
Tidwell (1995), did find that the time lag of replies did relate to perceptions and seemed to serve as "nonverbal cues." (see
"Time Matters," in Section 6 of this document.)
Love?
Can "love" be found and fostered via CMC? If one believes
that love is essentially in the mind of the person "in love," then it seems that it can be found. Theorists generally agree
that "romantic love is inexorably tied up with fantasy" (Berscheid & Hatfield, 153). As Waller and Hill (1951) put it:
"Idealization is an essential element in romantic love" (120). How better to idealize than through CMC, where one is left
to paint his or her own mental picture of someone?
Despite this rich fodder, the research regarding on-line "intimate"
love relationships is sparse. Most of the writing in this area comes from the popular press, including articles in magazines
such as Time, Essence, Glamour, mostly with such themes as "finding love on-line." In one such article, "E-mail romance? Can
the Internet help your love life?" (Glamour, February 1996) Lesley Dormen gives examples from office romances, such as one
that "Vicky" describes. She exchanged increasingly sexy and intimate e-mail with a colleague in another department of the
corporation: "Every day our dialogue got more explicit. When that message sign blipped, I'd be practically orgasmic." However,
according to Vicky, in face-to-face encounters, nothing changed: "I'd see him in the hall and blush like crazy, but he'd be
totally normal. Rocklike. It was bizarre!" (Dormen, 1996, 106)
When Vicky finally got "fed up" with the situation,
she pulled the man into her office and asked him if they indeed where going to "get together." His response was: "I don't
know what to say... Maybe, maybe not. Can't we just do this e-mail thing for now?" Vicky pulled the plug on the relationship,
feeling like she was "electronically had" by a man through his "romantic cowardice behind a computer screen" (106).
In
contrast to Vicky, Claire e-mails back and forth with her boyfriend a few times every workday and finds CMC comfortable, making
interaction "smoother" and "more direct," like "whispering together in the dark-e-mail breaks down barriers between us" (Dormen,
1996, 106).
Dormen's article gives real-life examples of CMC "romances" but it is told mostly from the female perspective
without getting input from both sides of the relationship. Also, it is not a scholarly piece, not going into much detail,
not including actual e-mail dialogue.
In "He Typed, She Typed," (Essence, February 1996) McLean Greaves and Jeanette
Valentine tell both sides of the romance "story," each detailing his/her version of their on-line encounter-one that was "arranged"
by Essence magazine. Valentine liked Greaves' humor, analysis, and gender politics, but admitted she was also concerned about
"more superficial matters," like appearance, just in case they clicked and wanted to meet in real life. They started out talking
about romantic atmosphere, meeting on American On-Line. Valentine (nick JJJVVV) wrote: "After three months of teasing we be
here. I envision a Brooklyn rooftop in the moonlight... You do have a fireplace, right?" (80). Greaves (nick Bredren) responded,
"I don't have a fireplace but I have a TV remote control and a bottle of chardonnay" (80). After the initial CMC attraction,
Greaves writes: "The tempo slowed to a platonic pitch, however, as the novelty of our computer-driven connection gradually
wore off" (80).
Other incidences of romantic relationships in CMC can be found in articles by Chidley (1994); De Lacy
(1987); and Smolowe (1995). In scholarship, Parks & Adelman (1983) also deal with this subject (unable for review).
4.
Reduced Cues: CMC Cannot Foster True Relationships
Filtered Out
...In several critical ways computer discourses at
least superficially appear to stand outside the conventions of everyday orality and literacy (Aycock & Buchignani, 1995,
184, citing Crane, 1991).
CMC is seen as inferior to face-to-face communication by most of the research in the past
ten years. This is not universal, as, according to Nancy Baym (1995), "too much work" in CMC research assumes that "the computer
itself is the sole influence on communicative outcomes" (139), but those perspectives will be covered in the next section.
In 1987, Culnan and Markus described an approach as the "cues filtered out" theory (also called "reduced cues") which
posits that the computer has a "low social presence" because it filters out important aspects of communication that participants
in face-to-face communication are privy to (paralanguage-pitch, intensity, stress, tempo, volume), leaving a conversation
in a "social vacuum" (Baym, 140). Culnan and Markus (1987) identified an assumption that substituting CMC for face-to-face
communication will "result in predictable changes in intrapersonal and interpersonal variables" (423). Similarly, Sproull
and Kiesler (1986) outline a "lack of social context cues" hypothesis. Social context cues include nonverbal cues which "define
the nature of the social situation and actors' identities and relative status" (Walther, 1993, 383).
Lea and Spears
(1995) point out the various arguments against CMC's ability to foster personal relationships, including relationship research
and theories' emphases on (1) physical proximity; (2) face-to-face interaction; and (3) nonverbal communication as the "essential
processes of relating" between humans (233).
Additionally, Baron (1984) considers CMC as ill-suited for "social uses
of language," despite the evidence of social interactions throughout CMC (IRC, MUDs, Usenet, e-mail). All in all, many researchers
are asserting that only the "illusion" of community is created via CMC, that the only relationships created are "shallow,
impersonal, and often hostile" (Parks & Floyd, 1996) (see Section 5, on "The Dark Side" for coverage of the hostile side
of CMC). People interacting via CMC are, arguably, getting lower "social context information," and, according to Sproull and
Kiesler (1986) become more "self-absorbed versus other-oriented" in CMC, leading to "flaming" and posturing to increase status
(to negate the equalization effects of CMC) (Sproull & Kiesler, 1986). Moreover, Berger and Calabrese (1975) assert that,
under "uncertainty reduction" theory, in CMC if you are not able to reduce uncertainty, then the development of personal relationships
will be prevented or very difficult to attain.
Tuned Out
Recent author of Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll questions
the validity and permanence of e-mail communication:
Who here reads all their old E-mail? Who here reads letters from
friends, relatives, and lovers, years and years later? After they are taken out of the old shoe box?
What does this
say about E-mail?.... E-mail is thought of as immediate, therefore you don't have to reflect about the message. Since E-mail
destroys meaning and content, it also destroys reflection, at BOTH the SENDING and the RECEIVING end. Most of us have 3 buttons,
Return, Delete, Store (Stoll, quoted by Louis Boncek. Jr., notes from Stoll lecture , found at: http://www.oswego.edu/~boncek/Stoll/
lecture.html)
Stoll (1996) asserts that CMC, in this case, e-mail, is taking time away from real-life human
interaction, tuning us out of the "real world":
For example, if I want to use email, I know I would have to invest
many hours of my time just to learn how to use it. I have to figure out how to use a computer. I have to learn how to log
in to the Network. I have to learn what's changed, what's busy, what's novel about things. All of these things are an investment
of my time and energy. I could equally well invest that time and energy in talking to some friends around a table at the coffeehouse.
I could spend that time and energy fooling around with my cat, Milo. What I'm worried about is that people advertise email
as being revo lutionary. "It'll change the way our lives work." I doubt it. I doubt it. (Hart, 1996, interview with Clifford
Stoll, "E-mail connection: Love it or leave it?" found at:, http://zeppo.cnet.com/Content/Features/Dlife/Email/stoll.html)
Stoll assumes that to make and have "friends," you must interact in "real-life," and not via CMC. He asserts that,
for him, his time is much better invested in being in a "real physical world" where he can "be with people" rather than investing
time and effort in "this virtual world called the Internet" (Hart, 1996). The assumption, however, that Stoll makes is that
interacting with participants in CMC is not "really" interacting with "people."
Stoll asserts that e-mail communication
"denies the sense of who you are and where you are," and that it leaves out the "most important things about you," including
appearance, personality. He asks, "Might it be that the nature of electronic mail limits you to only that which you wish to
show to other people?" (Hart, 1996).
5. The Dark Side
There can be an ugly side to CMC, including threats, violations
of privacy, sexual harassment, even virtual rape. Brenda Danet, Lucia Ruedenberg-Wright, and Yehudit Rosenbaum-Tamari (1997)
assert that cyberspace is "by no means wholly benign," and that CMC can release "aggressive, even shockingly malicious behavior,
including sexual harassment and racism."
Chuq Von Rospach warns in his "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community"
(1997): "Never forget that the person on the other side is human," asserting that because in CMC you are connecting to a network
via computer, it is "easy to forget that there are people 'out there'." CMC, while bringing people from isolated and distant
geographic locations together, also can bring a person into contact with bitter, even dangerous people. The very thing that
makes it wonderful can also make CMC difficult for some. As one CMC participant notes: "anyone who plans to spend time on-line
has to grow a few psychic calluses" to protect against flaming, insults, unwanted sexual advances, and so on (Dery, 1994,
2). The personal relationships one makes may not always be positive, supportive ones.
John Markoff, in "Virtual Death,
Death, and Virtual Funeral" (1990), writes about how e-mail and other forms of CMC have influenced how we interact and form
relationships, including how we die. He wrote about a California man who committed "virtual suicid e" before physically taking
his life, reaching out and destroying his contributions to the WELL (the same WELL that Rheingold detailed in The Virtual
Community). Some WELL subscribers were, although saddened by his death, angered by his actions, believing his WELL postings
were "no longer his to destroy," and were property of the community (Barry, 1991, 187).
Other examples of hostility,
threats, and the darker side of CMC are found in the popular press, including: Chapman (1995) and Dibbell (1994) (see "A Rape,"
later this section).
Flaming; Threats; Telling It Like It Is
When you grab people's attention often, and monopolize
the "public soapbox," the response can be cruel. Like the legendary audience at the Apollo theater in Harlem, the WELL's audience
can "create a star or boo a bad performer off the stage" (Rheingold, 35).
Some CMC exchanges take the form of what
John Barry (1991) terms a "flame"-an "electronic diatribe" (243). Disputes via CMC can be quite powerful, affecting one's
"real life," as Rheingold exemplifies: "...Bandy, one of the WELL's technical staff, quit his job in a dispute over a personal
relationship with another online character" (35). Flaming is one the most-explored topics in CMC, including articles by Grant
(1995), and Lea, O'Shea, Fung, and Spears (1992).
Mark Dery (1994) defines flame wars as "vitriolic on-line exchanges...
often... conducted publicly"(1). Another definition is "sudden, often extended flare-ups of anger, profanity and insult" (Danet,
1997). Less often, "flames" are in the form of "poison pen letters" via e-mail. Dery describes it as follows:
...the wraithlike
nature of electronic communication-the flesh become word ... reincarnated as letters floating on a terminal screen-accelerates
the escalation of hostilities when tempers flare; disembodied, sometimes pseudonymous combatants tend to feel that they can
hurl insults without impunity (1)
Edward Mabry (1997), in "Framing Flames: The Structure of Argumentative Messages
on the Net," defines flames as "messages that are precipitate, often personally derogatory, ad hominem attacks directed toward
someone due to a position taken in a message distributed (posted) to the group." Mabry studies the CMC use of "framing" strategies
within "flames," hypothesizing that "framing strategies are related to the emotional tenor of a disputant's message" and that
the emotional involvement would be "curvilinearly related to the appropriation of framing as an argumentative discourse strategy"
(Mabry, 1997, abstract). Mabry asserts that the acceptance, and perhaps even "cultivation" of argumentative discourse, such
as flaming, in CMC stands in "sharp contrast to the conventions of ordinary social conversation." Imagine attacking someone
with the vehemence found in some flames "in real life." One interesting finding of this study is that the communicators seemed
to try to "neutralize" effects of negative emotional spirals when they arise.
A Rape
Sherry Turkle (1996) explains
that "virtual rape" can occur within a MUD if one player finds a way to "control the actions of another player's character
and thus 'force' that character to have sex" (55). Turkle goes on to ask if a virtual community which exists "entirely in
the realm of communication," dare ignore sexual aggression "that takes the form of words"? (55). Julian Dibbell (1994) writes
about "A Rape in Cyberspace," in which a "voodoo doll" program was used to force characters in the MUD, Lambda MOO, "a very
busy rustic chateau built entirely of words," to do and say things:
They say he raped them that night. They say he
did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired.
They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal
things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because
it all happened right in the living room-right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and fireplace-of a house
I've come to think of as my second home (237).
While not a "physical" rape, the people behind the characters involved,
the other members of LambdaMOO, and other members of the Internet community were very upset by the behavior of "Mr. Bungle,"
who introduced himself as a "fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum-stained harlequin garb and girdled with
a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription "KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH!" (Dibbell, 239).
One
of the assaulted women, whose character was "legba," a "Haitian trickster spirit," posted a public statement on an in-MOO
mailing list called "social-issues," a portion of which follows:
...I'm not calling for policies, trials, or better
jails. I'm not sure what I'm calling for. Virtual castration, if I could manage it. Mostly, [this type of thing] doesn't happen
here. Mostly, perhaps I thought it wouldn't happen to me. Mostly, I trust people to conduct themselves with some veneer of
civility. Mostly, I want his ass (242).
Dibbell writes that this woman confided that as she wrote those words, "posttraumatic
tears" streamed down her face, which should serve as a "real-life fact...to prove that the words' emotional content was no
mere playacting" (242). People involved in virtual communities are vulnerable to this type of vicious, hurtful behavior, just
like in real-life. And, obviously, just because something happens to one's "character" in a MOO, does not keep out emotional
investment.
The Bungle Affair shook up the relatively peaceful community of LambdaMOO, bringing the "outside world"
and its violence to the forefront, right into the community's "living room," which is where Mr. Bungle chose to place the
assaults within the LambaMOO chateau.
[For more on the Bungle incident, see Richard MacKinnon's article -- Virtual
Rape (1997).]
6. Other Views
The absence of physical and nonverbal cues should not be taken to mean that the computer
medium is impersonal or devoid of social cues, or that the cues it transmits lack the subtlety of those communicated face-to-face
(Lea & Spears, 1995, 216).
In fact, there is a high degree of socioemotional content observed in CMC (e.g., Rheingold,
1994; Ord, 1989; McCormick & McCormick,,1992; Rice & Love, 1987), even in organizational and task-oriented settings
(Lea & Spears, 217). And although there are fewer paralinguistic cues in CMC, there is a learning curve, and people who
are "seasoned communicators" in CMC become "adept at using and interpreting textual signs and paralinguistic codes..." Even
first-time users form impressions of other communicant's dispositions and personalities based on their "communication style"
(217). Thus, CMC does carry emotional and impression-forming content.
Time Matters
Joseph Walther and Lisa Tidwell
(1995), argue that CMC often conveys nonverbal cues in terms of chronemics, or "time-related messages." Different uses of
time signals in e-mail to affect interpersonal perceptions of CMC correspondents. They assert, with research support, that
time is an "intrinsic part" of our social interaction and that time messages in a communication event convey meaning "across
multiple levels" (361). Walther and Tidwell state the following about time in our communications:
Time is a resource
in our culture, and may be akin to other resources the exchange of which marks more intimate relations. How time is used helps
to define the nature and quality of relationships with others (362).
Two variables were used: the time of day message
was sent, and the time lag until a reply was received, testing how these time manipulations effected perceptions of intimacy/affection
and dominance in CMC messages. Although e-mail is asynchronous, time can be "more directly controlled and manipulated" in
computer-mediated interactions (Walther & Tidwell, 1995, 360; Chesebro, 1985). Anyone who has sent an e-mail message and
known that the recipient was on their computer reading e-mail, yet was not "answering" the mail knows that how quickly a recipient
responds can affect the sender's feelings. If a person receiving e-mail responds right away, it could be perceived that this
person is interested in what the sender has to say, if not, the other participant could view the lack of expediency in replying
as a snub. Walther and Tidwell look at the "cues-filtered-out" research. They mention the process of "emoting" or "posing,"
previously mentioned, and assert is use for "re-introducing affective messages in a medium without many of the cues" used
in face-to-face interaction (358).
Hypotheses included: (1) time interacts with message content such that a social
message sent at night is more intimate/affectionate than a social message sent during the day, and a task message sent at
night is less intimate/affectionate than a task message sent during the day and (2) time interacts with message content such
that a slow reply to a social message is more intimate/affectionate than a prompt reply to a social message, and a prompt
reply to a task request is more intimate/affectionate than a slow reply to a task request (Walther & Tidwell, 364).
Make
an Impression
Walther (1992) had previously outlined the "social interaction processing" theory in "Interpersonal effects
in computer-mediated interaction: A relational perspective," supported by further articles (Walther, 1993; Walther & Burgoon,
1992). Walther (1993) also found evidence, within a "social information processing perspective," that computer-mediated groups
gradually increased in impression development to a level "approaching that of face-to-face groups" (381). Social information
processing suggests different rates and patterns of impression development using alternative media, such as CMC. Thus, it
takes longer to find enough information to be able to form a form impressions via CMC, but that it does happen, according
to Walther, and that process by which we form impression is not actually "altered" via CMC, only slowed down.
SIDE
Theory
Lea and Spears assert, based upon recent research by Walther (1994) and others, that personal relationships can
and do develop in CMC: "albeit more slowly..." because the lack of cues toward self-disclosure, development of trust, and
communication of int imacy, take longer than in face-to-face communication (217). They have found a high degree of "socioemotional
communication" observed via CMC, even in task-oriented settings (see also Ord, 1989; Rice & Love, 1987).
Lea and
Spears ultimately argue that, by moving current relationship theory away from a dependency on "physical co-presence of individuals"
and into a realm where attraction and social dimension are seen as essential components to forming relationships, CMC can
be seen as a viable avenue for relationship-development. Lea and Spears (1995) argue that the reduced cues approach is "ill
prepared" to account for the development of personal relationships that is occurring currently via CMC, as it relies too heavily
on the "physical and spatial aspects of interaction" (220).
The closest thing to a review of literature relating to
CMC and relationship development is Lea and Spears (1995), "Love at first byte?" It is, by far, the least biased and most
comprehensive, although, due to its publication date, does not include anythi ng published after 1995. Lea and Spears argue
that existing communication and personal relationship theories have ignored settings that do not involve frequent face-to-face
interaction.
In this article, Lea and Spears outline the "SIDE Theory" which is used to explain how subtle interpersonal
cues affect CMC judgments and actions. They predict that the absence of cues and personal knowledge about communication partners
causes the few personality cues that appear in CMC to take on great value, leading to an "over-attribution" process, building
stereotypical impressions of partners based on language content of CMC messages.
An Equal Chance
In contrast to
the "overwhelmingly negative characterization" of the CMC "social climate," Baym (1995) writes about the "egalitarianism"
that many see CMC allowing people-making aspects like appearance mute points and giving everyone who can type an equal chance
(140). CMC allows women and minorities to have their voices heard. Walther (1992) sees this as a balancing of participation.
However, the very equalizing aspects of CMC that are seen as positive can also, as the reduced-cues perspective points out,
can cause problems and miscommunications. Also, the anonymity of CMC, while granting participants more equal status actually
"impedes resolution" (Baym, 140).
Showing Support
Wellman and Gulia (1995) ask, "Can people find community on-line
in the Internet? Can relationships between people who never see, smell or hear each other be supportive and intimate?" And
answer, "yes":
Even when on-line groups are not designed to be supportive, they tend to be. As social beings, those
who use the Net seek not only information but also companionship, social support, and a sense of belonging (Wellman &
Gulia, 1995).
Emotional support is a non-material social resource that is "relatively easy to provide from the comfort
of one's computer," although skeptics question the quality of such support (Wellman & Gulia, 1995). Several articles in
the popular press deal with support groups and people finding emotional support within CMC, although rarely with a scholarly
focus. Many of the articles in the popular press emphasize ways in which special populations, particularly disabled persons,
can use CMC to improve the quality of life and to receive support. These include: De Leon (1994), Bock (1994), and Lewis (1994),
and Kanaley (1995). Baym (1995) also deals with this phenomenon, with a more scholarly approach.
Other Relationship
Concerns
Malcolm Parks and Kory Floyd (1996), in "Making Friends in Cyberspace," attempted to study the "relational world
actually being created through Internet [sic] newsgroups." Parks and Floyd address these questions:
* How often do
personal relationships form in Internet newsgroups?
* Who has them?
* How close or developed do they become?
* Do relationships started on line migrate to other settings?
Parks and Floyd assert from their findings that
"high levels of relational development are occurring" via CMC, in the case of their study, through Usenet newsgroups and e-mail.
Also, Nancy Baym (1995) uses the example of a Usenet group rec.arts.tv.soaps (r.a.t.s.) to assert that Usenet participants
can create a "dynamic and rich community filled with social nuance and emotion," finding a highly social, evolving, and interactive
community within Usenet (138).
McCormick and McCormick (1992) also found a surprisingly high amount of what they labelled,
"highly intimate content," in their study of e-mail communication at a university. McCormick and McCormick studied the e-mail
of approximately 700 undergraduate students with e-mail accounts on the college's super-mini computer. Their findings showed
that e-mail served a "purely social function" for most undergraduates in the study. Less than half of the e-mail in the sample
addressed work or school-related concerns. Some concerns about the methodology include that users where not informed that
electronic mail was being collected for research. Each time users logged on, however, they were notified with a warning: "Electronic
mail can be read by anyone." 2
Wellman and Gulia ask, "Are strong, intimate ties possible on-line?" Personal relationship
theorists tell us that strong ties have a number of characteristics, including:
* a sense of the relationship being
intimate and special
* with a voluntary investment in the ties, and
* a desire for companionship with the
tie partner;
* an interest in being together as frequently as possible
* in multiple social contexts
*
over a long period
* a sense of mutuality in the relationship
* with the partner's needs known and supported
* intimacy often bolstered by shared social characteristics such as gender, socioeconomic status; stage in the life-cycle,
and life-style
(Wellman & Gulia, 1995, summarizing research of Duck, 1983, and others).
7. CMC Relationships
Expanded: On-Line Goes Off-Line
Parks and Floyd (1996), found evidence that relationships that begin via CMC may not necessarily
stay in the CMC realm. I have had personal experience with a newsgroup, alt.angst in which, apparently, five "romantic" relationships
began within a six-month period in which I read the newsgroup-and were discussed publicly on the newsgroup. Of these five
relationships, at least three moved to an off-line/real life setting. Apparently, within Usenet groups, which sometimes are
highly interactive, this is not an uncommon occurrence.
Parks and Floyd (1996) cite a female newsgroup participant,
who indicated that she met a friend via a Usenet support group "because we both found that we were the only ones on one side
of a major debate," and that they later "got together 'off-line' to compare notes and viewpoints." It is interesting that
people who interact "on-line," often refer to interactions not via CMC as "off-line," with a slightly "negative" connotation,
perhaps. Although "on-line" and "off-line" life can be seen as permeable, people do still feel the need to talk about them
differently and to segment their two "lives."
From the way that "meeting on-line" is becoming more accepted, it is
perhaps moving from the exotic to the everyday happening, and this move can be seen as somehow validating its social acceptance:
... If cyberspace is becoming just another place to meet, we must rethink our image of the relationships formed there
as being somehow removed and exotic. The ultimate social impact of cyberspace will not flow from its exotic capabilities,
but rather from the fact that people are putting it to ordinary, even mundane, social uses (Parks & Floyd, 1996, found
at: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/vol1no4.html )
8. Conclusion
Jill Smolowe
(1995) asserts that the vast majority of people surfing the Internet and communication via CMC are there "in search of social
interaction, not just sterile information" and that 80 percent are looking for "contact and commonality, companionship and
community" (20). Furthermore, Parks and Floyd (1996) showed that personal relationships conducted via CMC are "common," with
just over 60% of people in their sample reporting that they have formed a "personal relationship" with someone they had initially
contacted through a Usenet newsgroup. I do not see how the results of research and the personal accounts outlined in this
literature review can be pushed aside-how anyone can say that a community is not possible via CMC, that personal relationships
are not happening. They most certainly are.
In fact, people are intrigued by CMC personal relationships because the
technology is still "new." These relationships are entering a realm of curiosity and popularity which is due to the relative
"newness" and apparent exotic flavor of the phenomena. It is even pervading our popular fiction. A 1996 novel by Stephanie
D. Fletcher, E-Mail: A Love Story, consists of electronic posts sent and received by the protagonist, including "emotionally
volatile" ones to electronic lovers: "While these relationships are not real, the consequences are ("Who says e-mail is dull?",
found at http://www.radix.net/~wlefurgy/cinc01.htm, Culture in Cyberspace web site).
As
for the debate over the efficacy of CMC, Wellman and Gulia assert that the "dueling dualists" on opposite sides of the CMC
debate are feeding off each other:
...using the unequivocal assertions of the other side as foils for their own arguments.
Their statements of enthusiasm or criticism leave little room for the moderate, mixed outcomes that may really be the situation.
CMC is a social phenomena. It is all about people communicating with other people, in any way they can. As Baym (1995)
argues: "CMC not only lends itself to social uses but is, in fact, a site for an unusual amount of social creativity ....
Social realities are created through interaction as participants draw on language and the resources available to make messages
that serve their purposes" (160).
In conclusion, CMC "blurs" traditional boundaries between interpersonal and mass
communication, allowing for "new opportunities and risks for the way individuals relate to one another" (Parks and Floyd,
1996; Lea & Spears, 1995). In recent CMC scholarship, this blurring and traversing of boundaries has been debated and
misunderstood as a negative phenomenon, concentrating on what CMC does not offer, rather than what it does, and rather than
looking at the positive possibilities and outcomes. The "virtual community" is not a mythic land of milk and honey, but neither
is it any more dangerous, hostile, or unwelcoming than "real life."
Recommendations for Research
In the end, the
argument should not be whether or not -- if -- CMC can properly foster interpersonal relationships. Instead, scholarship can
move into the "how" and "why," and beyond the mere "if."
The popular press has given CMC-fostered personal relationships
much more attention than have scholars in speech communications, sociology, psychology, and other related fields. Perhaps
scholars do not deem the area worthy of scholarly inquiry. I disagree with that assessment, and find it a shame that some
of the best details about CMC relationships are found in glossy magazines instead of being studied and written about in prestigious,
peer-reviewed, respected journals. I do predict that this will be changing, and that sociology and anthropology in particular
will be forced to pay attention to the phenomenon as it becomes more and more common. As of now, it is indeed "understudied,"
as the Duck (1995) book, Understudied Relationships, asserts.
Further research needs to be conducted in several aspects
of CMC and personal relationships. First and foremost, the paucity of data must be overcome. Second, the idea that face-to-face
communication is the only "real" and desired form must be overcome. Then, areas of personal relationships and CMC which need
expansive exploration include:
* Development of on-line relationships in special populations (Parks & Floyd,1996)
* How CMC participants manage uncertainty, build trust, and make the leap to "friendship" 3
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11-21-05
Emotional skills on the Internet
Confused images of emotions
The Internet has a rather confused image in terms of emotions. On the one hand, as a complex technical system, it is frequently
portrayed as evacuating emotions and depersonalising relationships. Or if there are emotions, they are seen to be doubtful,
fake, phoney, unreal - with notable stories of people playing at what they are not. At the same time, the Internet is pictured
as the land of extremes: sex, violence, racism, religious fanaticism,... For those who are more in the know, emotions can
still be quite strong. Flaming is a common phenomenon, in which people blow their top on-line. Rather like car drivers busily
picking their noses with what they imagine to be unseen impunity, computer drivers blast off at others from the supposed security
of their private space on the safe side of the screen. This lack of self-restraint is not limited to the on-line community,
however, but is part of a more widespread move to unbridled individualism, lack of self-restraint and the absence of consideration
for others.
Taking another perspective ...
Seeking to attribute particular emotions or their absence to Internet use may prove to be misguided if not futile. A more
constructive approach to emotions and the Internet might be to raise the question of what emotional and relational skills
are required in the on-line world and how these might be acquired or enhanced. Here are some suggestions:
Attentive reading, thoughtful writing
Almost all on-line exchange is text-based. As a result, emotional and relational skills have a great deal to do with picking
up emotional signals in what others write and being aware of the emotional impact of what you write yourself. As text lacks
many of the emotional clues that enrich face to face exchange, it is all the more important to pay particular attention to
how words are used. What convictions, value judgements and emotions do words express and how are they perceived by reader(s)?
Writing, as it is taught in schools, has to do with grammatical and lexical correctness and, if you are lucky, the appropriateness
of the structuring of ideas. The initial effort necessary with emotional aspects of writing is one of awareness. Ways and
means have to be devised to draw people's attention to this facet of on-line exchange. Beyond awareness, the old adage "practice
makes perfect" has never been truer than with writing! .. and writing for others has the added advantage that not only
can you be less complacent and self-indulgent, but also there is no better testing ground for how emotions are expressed and
understood.
Dealing with your own emotions
All those involved in teleworking must be aware of having feelings related to loneliness, abandon and lack of recognition
creeping up on them. A couple of days without messages from people that count and you begin to wonder what is happening. Not
only do you need to know how to deal with such feelings yourself but, being aware of them, you can be of great help to others
working on-line by your consideration and concern in how and when you write to them. Setting up a small group of people whom
you can talk (or write) to about such issues can be a great help. Ideally creating such a "considerate culture"
amongst those people that count the most for you would be the best. At the beginning it may seem an unnecessary burden when
work is bustling to get done, but in the long run it will improve communication and efficiency.
What's more, in communication carried out at a distance almost uniquely by e-mail it is easy to misinterpret what is written
and attribute intentions that are not necessarily there. Gravitating in the on-line world requires making a clear distinction
between your own emotions and those you attribute to others and what they really think and feel. Once again awareness is the
first step so that people become attentive to this aspect of communication. Some people are naturally sensitive but others
need to make an effort. It helps to ask yourself what you are feeling and how these feelings are being expressed in what you
write. Ideally you need to be able to ask for clarification when there is a doubt. This can be difficult in a helter-skelter
world where results are required quickly and emotions are seen as extraneous. There's a need to create a considerate culture
in which it is known that speed of delivery can result in loss of quality especially when it leads to ignoring potential misunderstandings
and conflicts.
Collaborative working
Collaborating with others, especially on-line, requires a certain amount of self-restraint as well as concern and respect
for the others involved. Misplaced or ill chosen words can do much damage. In working on-line, there's a very great need to
understand and to clarify the work that is being done together. Many current ways of working involve chiefs and Indians but
not necessarily direct collaboration. In collaborative working, there's a great need to encourage all the members of the team.
Recognising the value of the others in the group and letting them know you appreciate them can be quite a help. Compliments
and praise are all too rare. Good leadership has a lot to do with helping everyone in the group move towards common goals.
You need to be open to what others are suggesting and be able to capitalise on their ideas however foreign they may seem to
you. At the same time, you need to be able to assert your opinion without seeming aggressive or domineering. Knowing when
to lead and when to follow is a very useful asset.
Ideally you should be able to discuss these considerations with your fellow teleworkers. However, such meta-considerations
are not always welcome. It can be useful to discuss such relationships with others who have similar experiences. How about
setting up a small peer group? Such on-line exchange can be a gold-mine as not only does it allow you to make the most of
the experience of others but it also brings you to formulate your thoughts clearly in writing for others and helps you realise
the value of your own experience.
Assisting learning
We need to begin with how we learn ourselves. Are we curious about what is going on around us? Do we ask questions and
try to find out as much as possible about a subject that interests us? We need to be able to ask those essential, naive questions
at the risk of appearing a blithering idiot. Only when you admit that you don't know is there any chance of learning. What
and how can we learn from others? School - and beyond it the individualistic society we live in - has drummed into us the
idea that copying is bad. There is no shame in admitting that we can learn from others. Someone who was very important for
me once said "You can learn something from every person you meet." I must admit, I find it very hard to live up
to.
Being aware of the process of learning can be a great help in helping others learn. The whole concept of learning, especially
on-line, is shifting away from the provision of information to being able to raise an awareness of learning processes and
help others master these processes for themselves. As mentioned elsewhere here, discussing personal experiences in learning
and teaching with others doing similar work can be a great help especially when it is done in writing as on-line exchange
requires.
Alan McCluskey, St-Blaise, 6th March 1997.
For further information about Emotional Intelligence:
Emotional Intelligence Services, http://ei.haygroup.com - information, resources, tools and an online test of Emotional
Intelligence, including insights from Daniel Goleman, bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence.
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11-21-05
Cyberspace: Love Online
By:
Hara Estroff Marano
Summary: Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's book, Love Online: Emotions on the Internet, shows how Internet chatting
can affect real relationships.
An extraordinary number of people spend an extraordinary amount of time online connecting
with other people. They reveal their deepest darkest secrets to folks who may be strangers and they often find these relationships
so compelling they seem more emotionally real and alive than the marriages they are actually in.
Indeed, online relationships
can be unusually seductive. They are readily accessible, they move very quickly, and under the cloak of anonymity, they make
it easy for people to reveal a great deal about themselves.
Putting themselves into words, getting replies while they're
still in the emotional state of the original message, relying heavily on imagination to fill in the blanks about the recipient,
people communicating online are drawn into such rapid self-disclosure that attachments form quite literally with the speed
of light.
How this happens, and the subtle but important ways it influences "real" life, is the subject of a fascinating
book, Love Online: Emotions on the Internet, by Aaron Ben-Ze'ev. A philosopher who is now president of Haifa University in
Israel, Ze'ev does not think intimate Internet relationships, and even cyber sex, are all bad. But he does think they could
have an impact on the way we conduct offline life and even change our view of infidelity.
Ze'ev calls cyberspace a
kind of "mentally nude commune," where people often strip off their masks. What nudity leaves undone, imagination finishes.
"Imagination, which paints cyberspace in more intense and seductive colors, also helps people satisfy some of their most profound
desires." It frees people from the limits imposed by their bodies and their surroundings.
What's so ironic about using
the internet is that it's a solitary activity that leads to social contact-while it isolates users from their own families,
the people in the very next room. One reason it does this is that Internet use is almost addictive; the rewards of contact
are so immediate and so pleasurable. And while cyber relationships can be more sincere and open than offline relationships,
they also leave a great deal of room for deception, although online relationships are marked more by dreams than deception.
There is, of course, a price to pay for this activity-"the risk of being captured by your own desire," is the way
Ze'ev puts it. Despite the opportunity for intense disappointment, which lies just a click away, online affairs are flourishing.
They are not merely a whole new type of relationship with their own unique characteristics; Ze'ev calls them "the first real
alternative" to face-to-face relationships.
Online affairs are, above all, safe. There's no danger of pregnancy or
sexually transmitted disease. "Having an online affair is like going to a party whenever you want to, without having to leave
your home," says Ze'ev.
The strange mixture of physical distance and emotional closeness of online affairs is what
makes them so intense. And it's such a novel development, such a new kind of interpersonal experience, Ze'ev contends, that
our own emotional systems are not prepared to deal with such contradictory elements in a relationship. Yet the contradictions
and uncertainties of online romantic relationships allow emotions to play a much greater role than in other relationships.
Ze'ev doesn't think online relationships will ever replace offline ones, but he does think the advent of internet
relationships will ultimately force us to relax our view of romantic exclusivity and romantic betrayal. We will gain more
of a sense of "romantic flexibility." Imagination, he says, "lets us wander through the jungle of our own wishes and desires."
Still, he says, there are times when chatting is cheating. And there's a very simple way to know when you've crossed
the line-there's deception.
If you engage in an Internet relationship that you keep secret from your real-life mate,
you're engaging in deception. "Chatting is not cheating when the significant other knows about it," says Ze'ev. The trouble
with deception is that it kills intimacy and ruptures trust in the primary relationship.
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11-25-06
Cyberpsychol Behav.
Internet
relationships: people who meet people.
McCown JA, Fischer D, Page R, Homant M.
Psychology Department, University
of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan, USA. mccownja@udmercy.edu
Current research suggests that the Internet has become
a popular medium for forming interpersonal relationships. Not only are many people developing cyberfriendships, but some move
beyond virtual communication and interact more directly through telephone contact and face-to-face encounters. This pilot
study examined the personality characteristics of 30 participants (17 men and 13 women) who were regular Internet users and
who had used the Internet to meet people mainly through chat rooms. The findings of this study suggest that people who use
the Internet meet others tend to be truthful in general in their interactions although both men and women often did not reveal
their true names. Eighty percent of the subjects formed casual or friendly relationships, whereas 6% formed intimate or romantic
relationships. Approximately one-third of the subjects made some form of offline contact, with 40% talking on the telephone
and 33.3% meeting face-to-face. Furthermore, examination of personality styles indicated that cyberfriends tend to be socially
skilled, have strong verbal skills, and demonstrate empathy for others. Most subjects were careful about protecting their
anonymity, and none of the subjects who met face-to-face did so without first talking on the phone. This suggests that individuals
who make friends via the Internet tend to take appropriate precautions and find this medium an effective and safe way to interact
with others and to expand one's social system.
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11-26-05
What makes an online relationship
successful? Clues from couples who met in cyberspace.
Baker A.
Sociology Department, Ohio University, Lancaster,
USA. bakera@ohiou.edu
From a larger study of 68 couples who met online, eight couples were chosen as cases representing
the sample to illustrate two kinds of outcomes: "successful," continuing couples, or "unsuccessful," relationships that ended.
All respondent accounts from questionnaire data, interviews, and e-mail correspondence between partners were closely examined.
Four factors emerged which seemed to differentiate among the two types of relationships begun online: (1) meeting place, where
they first encountered each other online; (2) obstacles, barriers to getting together overcome by the couples, such as distance
and previous relationships; (3) timing, period spent writing or talking before meeting offline, and how intimate they became
before meeting offline; and (4) conflict resolution, ability of the people to resolve problems in communication. People who
first met in places based upon common interests, who communicated for long periods of time before meeting offline without
too much intimacy, who worked through barriers to becoming closer, and who negotiated conflict well tended to stay together.
Future research and analysis can further determine how the process of forming and maintaining successful relationships begun
online compares to those started offline.
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11-26-05
Finding sex partners on-line:
a new high-risk practice among older adults?
Strombeck R.
HealthCare Education Associates, Palm Springs, CA
92264, USA.
By the year 2004, it is estimated that more than 34 million older Americans will be Internet users. The
revolution in mass communication has changed the way people of all ages interact. Studies indicate that love and romance rate
very high among the concerns of older adults using the Internet, and older adults are using it to meet other people. Numerous
web sites targeting older adults include channels for developing personal relationships. Although studies suggest that individuals
who seek out sex partners on the Internet may be at increased risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases, very little
is known about the attitudes and behaviors of older adults who seek and find sexual partners on-line. Because the number of
older Internet users is predicted to grow exponentially as baby boomers age, research is needed about the Internet attitudes
and practices of older adults.
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11-26-05
Subject: Re: Internet Relationships
Answered By: leep-ga on 29 Sep 2002 02:41 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
Having interest in an online person can
certainly be a frustrating experience at times. It's not unusual to wonder if the person behind the words is real or is indeed
faking it.
While I was unable to uncover any raw data from specific studies about this topic, various academic people
have written guidelines, articles, and books about it. For example, in "Safety Tips for Online Relationships," Dr. Marlene
Maheu includes some interesting material
that may be obvious but items that are always good to be reminded about.
For
example, she writes: "Guard yourself against people whose life stories are too dramatic, fantastic, or xciting. Most people
lead ordinary lives and have regular problems."
http://www.shpm.com/articles/relation/booklet/cdpart8.html
This page refers to a poll in which 60% of those polled admitted to frequently lying about their real identity:
http://www.geekgirls.com/net_online_relationships.htm
This CBS HealthWatch article
also makes a reference to the 60% figure: "Intimate Details, Idealized Impressions"
http://www.whoishe.com/InTheNews/News_CBS_Health_feb2000.htm
An Ohio University sociologist has written a handful of articles about online relations, some of which touch
upon finding out if the person is "real":
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bakera/index.html
(Scroll
down to the ARTICLES BY ANDREA BAKER section.)
There are also several books that you might track down at your local
library or bookstore. While parts of these books deal with how to meet people online (a subject I don't think you were asking
about), they do contain sections on how to "feel out" that online person you've become interested in:
"Online Seductions:
Falling in Love With Strangers on the Internet" - This book is by a psychiatrist and, as noted in Amazon's editorial review,
"does an especially good job of highlighting the danger signs that your correspondent may be a pathological personality."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568362757
"Complete Idiot's Guide to Online
Dating and Relating"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789721694
"Meet Me Online"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/188477878X
"Virtual Foreplay: Making Your Online
Relationship a Real-Life Success"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0897933303
I hope this information is useful. If you would like me to dig a little further, please post a clarification so that
I can better hone in on the exact type of info you are looking for. I hope things work out well between you and the other
person!
Search terms used:
"online relationships" "real person" safety
leep-ga
Clarification
of Answer by leep-ga on 29 Sep 2002 15:12 PDT
One other thing I wanted to mention. I don't know if you are familiar
with the "Kaycee Nicole" situation that was exposed last year, but it's well worth reading about. Basically, it was revealed
that Kaycee, a person who supposedly was dying from cancer and who had made
many many friends online over a lengthy amount
of time, did not actually exist. She was a hoax. Finding out the truth in this situation startled many people in various online
communities. They didn't know if they could believe in any online person anymore. While this certainly is an extreme in "faking
it," learning about Kaycee helps remind us of how easily we can become emotionally attached to words and people that appear
on our little computer screens.
Some things to read:
news article from the Guardian in the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,497422,00.html
short Kaycee FAQ
http://rootnode.org/article.php?sid=26
many links about the
whole Kaycee Nicole Story:
http://www.logboy.com/jr/main.asp
for many more pages on
the Kaycee thing, use this Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22kaycee+nicole%22
steph53-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Thanks Leep-ga- great answer!!! And Macgyvr64-ga and Missy-ga
thank you too. Guess its time to hit the library........Great input from all of you.
Comments Log in to add a
comment
Subject: Re: Internet Relationships
From: macgyvr64-ga on 28 Sep 2002 22:29 PDT
Over a year ago, I
met a female online, and we chatted for long periods of time late into the night...we were immediately comfortable around
each other, so recently I flew out to Montana to visit her. It couldn't have gone better. She was everything I expected and
then some. Thanks to the internet, I've got myself a wonderful, caring
girlfriend.
In your case..."lack of emotional
involvement"? That can't be too good...
Subject: Re: Internet Relationships
From: missy-ga on 29 Sep 2002 00:32
PDT
Hi Steph,
How are you? I handled your first question to Google Answers, and I'm glad to see you back with
us. I had considered posting this as an answer, but changed my mind. I haven't been able to find a definitive study for you,
so all I have to offer you are my personal observations.
The answer to your question is...
You can't, really.
But if it makes you feel any better, you can't know for certain if the fella chatting you up in the grocery store is really
what/who he says he is until you take the time to get to know him, either.
We've all heard the horror stories - nice
girl meets boy at school/in a bar/at church. He's wonderful, he's charming, he says he has a terrific job, a great education.
She falls for him, and they're happy together until he slips up and one after another, his lies begin to unravel. He's not
who he claimed he was. Or maybe she's not who she claimed to be. I supppose, Steph, that there's always the chance for deceit,
whether online or out here in the Real World.
Can I help you ease your mind a little?
In five years of wandering
the Internet daily, I've met some of the most wonderful people imaginable. Usenet is my passion - in particular, a group devoted
to the discussion of a certain author.
That group is populated by people of every persuasion and educational background,
people who write about their thoughts with such heart and such detail. In a group like that, private correspondence is often
spawned from public discussions - sometimes to nitpick over a point, sometimes to lend a word of encouragement when someone
is having a
rough go of things. Such correspondence has led me to some of the most wonderful friends anyone could ask
for. We regularly visit each other's homes - they've come to stay with me and my family, and have hosted me or my family and
me many times over. We have all become an extended family, and I am grateful for it every day.
I met my very best
friend through that newsgroup - a bright, hilarious, warm hearted young man who never fails to make me smile.
We participated
in newsgroup discussions and private correspondence, began using ICQ to keep in touch, and one evening...he called. And we
talked. And laughed. And laughed some more. Having been involved in the same newsgroup for more than a year, and having had
quite a lot of correspondence and chat time, we were immediately comfortable with each other.
That was in 1998. Since
then, not a day goes by that we don't either talk on the phone, play e-mail tag or while away a little time on ICQ - sometimes
all three in a day. He's come to Ohio to visit with me, I've been to California to visit with him. He and I have spent time
together at newsgroup gatherings, and he recently joined my children
and me on vacation with another friend from the newsgroup
in Chicago.
I can't imagine life without his presence now. I'm glad that on that day four years ago - when he said
my letters sounded really depressed and he wanted to call me to make sure I was OK - I remembered all of our public conversations
and private ones, and all of the silly notes
of encouragement and teasing about some newsgroup post or other, and held
my breath and gave him my phone number.
Just like meeting someone in Real Life, sometimes you just have to give them
the benefit of the doubt.
There are ways to be safe online, to protect yourself from potential scams:
--never
give personally identifying information to someone until you're absolutely comfortable with them. Are they pushing you too
hard or too fast? Making wild claims about what they do or how much money/property/status they have? Bail. Turn around and
run in the other direction. It's the people who push too hard, try to hard to impress, that one should watch out for.
--before
taking things to the phone, correspond for a while. Write letters! Long ones, short ones, it doesn't matter. Talk about everything
with this person - work, hobbies, common interests. Do the responses ring true or do they sound forced? Are you comfortable
corresponding?
--have a few phone conversations. Does the conversation flow freely? Or does it sound scripted or strained?
--if you're comfortable after corresponding and talking on the phone for a while and you decide you really must meet
in person, do it in a public place. Meet for lunch somewhere, and be certain to either bring a friend along or inform her
of your whereabouts. Your new friend wants to keep the meeting secret? Say NO!
A little caution isn't a bad thing,
Steph. Just odn't let it color everything and become too much caution! You can meet new people on the 'Net and get to know
them very well if you just take your time and make sure to be safe. I hope that with a little patience and trust, you'll find
the same kind of wonderful friends online that I have. I wouldn't trade these people for anything.
I wish you all
the best!
--Missy
Subject: Re: Internet Relationships
From: pankyasare-ga on 29 Oct 2002 02:38 PST
I
100% agree with Missy. I have had lots of internet chat friends and now they are my real friends. A girl i met on chat out
of the blue is my wife now and we are indeed grateful to internet.(even our kid is)
YU Cant trust anyone real or virtual,
all depends on how we take on the approach, how careful we are. I mean yu cant just give away ur phone number in the first
week of internet friendship.
Anyway All the best, think postive but take care too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
11-26-05
Don't Use Your Internet Relationships
as a Substitute For Real Life!
Author: Royane Real -
Many people today develop intense relationships with
other people that they have never met, through the Internet. Can the Internet really cure loneliness?
A few years
ago a surprising survey discovered that people who spent a lot of time on the Internet were a lot lonelier than people who
didn't spend much time on the Net. This was an unexpected find because many people view the Internet and e-mail as a great
way to make and keep connections with other people.
So what is the truth? Does spending time on the Internet actually
make people more lonely?
Or did this study simply show that people who are already lonely spend a lot of time on the
Net? As happens so often, the technology itself is neutral; whether it is good or bad depends on how the technology is used.
The day can fly by very quickly when you spend time on the Internet, whether you are looking for information, or visiting
a chat room. Using the Internet, you can easily find people who share the same obscure interests you may have, such as raising
Abyssinian cats, or studying Florentine tapestries.
Through the Internet you can find another person who is struggling
with an illness or problem similar to yours, and who understands exactly what you are going through.
The vastness
and the speed of the Internet means you can hook up instantly with people on the other side of the world and have lengthy
conversations with them about intimate matters you have never discussed with anyone else.
The anonymity of the Internet
can be a double-edged sword. You can feel safe revealing your innermost self to a total stranger because he lives five thousand
miles away and you will probably never meet him.
You might believe you can tell him your innermost thoughts, even
those you can't tell your husband. You may feel encouraged and supported by a person you have met on-line in a way that you
don't believe you are supported by any of the people in your everyday life.
Your Internet friends may find it easy
to offer you support and encouragement because they will never have to back up their typed words with any real action or commitment.
Talk is cheap, and supportive talk on the Internet may or may not be sincerely offered.
It's true that some relationships
that start off on the Internet will develop into long term on-line friendships that last decades, even if the two correspondents
never meet in person. And in some cases these on-line relationships will also successfully transform into friendships in the
off-line world.
But the kind of interaction you get on the Internet lacks some of the most important aspects of a
friendship--the interaction with a real live human person. You don't get to experience a friend's face light up with a smile
because he is happy to see you. You don't get to take part in shared activities, and develop a history together.
You
don't have someone put their hand on yours as you exchange confidences. You don't even know that your Internet friend is really
who he claims he is! You don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that anything your on-line friend says about himself is true.
Although the Internet is a unique and useful means of communication between people, don't use it as a complete substitute
for live social contact. Balance your on-line activities with activities that involve meeting and interacting with real live
people in your local community.
Don't use the availability and ease of Internet relationships as an excuse to avoid
some of the more difficult, yet ultimately more rewarding work of developing relationships with the people you already have
around you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
11-26-05
Internet Relationships
Hi
Folks:
I have a few interesting letters I would like to share with you all.
I also want to apologize for the
column not being posted last Monday. My computer has crashed and I did not know until a couple of days ago that everything
I sent over the last week or so did not go through.
So, here we go!
QUESTION
Hi Therapist:
I was writing
to a man from the Seniors Singles Column on this web site and I really liked him and he seemed to like me. It is of course
a meeting on the Internet. We have not met in person or even talked on the phone.We had a lot of humor between us and intelligent
conversation. Really was very nice to have him to chat with. We talked of meeting because he travels all over Canada. All
this time I kept putting a lot of my time and myself into this friendship and would feel like he was not giving much of himself.
I shared everything with him that I could think of that would keep our conversations going, tell him who I was, etc. etc.
He seems quite evasive. He would not answer many of my questions. He wrote me very little back compared to my longer e-mails.
I felt I was doing all the work to have this friendship. I would talk to him about it and he had enough excuses and justifications
to write a book and nothing changes. He isn't hearing me. What do I do?
Nellie
BARRIE, Ontario
ANSWER
Hi
Nellie:
I read your letter with much interest as I have received quite a bit of mail on this issue. Interestingly enough
I also received this week, in the mail bag, a letter from someone on the opposite end of this situation you are on. So, let's
go with your letter first. It sounds like you are quite comfortable with the compatibility that is between you and your new
friend other than that he doesn't seem to put as much of himself into the relationship as you do. It sounds like you are interested
in keep this relationship and keeping it alive and growing. From what you tell me it appears that he is comfortable keeping
it where it is at now and does not have any intentions of putting more of himself, his time, and the sharing of his daily
life with you, into this relationship. Could it be that you want more from this than he wants? This is the first question
you could ask yourself. Also, you say you have talked to him about how you feel and he either doesn't respond to you unless
he is giving excuses for his lack of input into this relationship. What does that tell you that you do not want to hear? You
are being direct with him so he knows what he is hearing you say. He is not being direct with you so it makes it rather difficult
for you to know what message he is really trying to get across to you. In such a case you have to start being there for yourself,
without him. No amount of talking on your part is going to change this man. He apparently is not going to tell you with words,
where he stands, but his behaviour would suggest that he is not interested in more than he now gives, of himself, to you.
Do you want to keep getting emotionally deeper involved with someone who is not taking that journey with you? You will then
be totally responsible for how hurt you get. The message that he is giving that is clear, is, he does not care to talk with
you and share with you why he does not give more of himself to this friendship. That is a clear boundary that you can chose
to hear or not to hear. He is not responsible to take care of you in this situation. You are responsible to take care of yourself.
He is not going to be more to you than he is. Who isn't hearing who? Do you feel he is not hearing you because he will not
meet your needs? It does not matter how many compliments he gives you, etc., etc. this is as far as he is going! What are
you going to do with this? Keep trying to change him? It won't work. You will leave yourself emotionally desolate. I am wondering
if you have asked yourself WHY you are pursuing someone who is not responding? Focus on you and your behavior in this, not
his. See what you can do to stop the merry-go-round you seem to be on with this man. I do know how neat it is to meet someone
on the internet and to find you "click" with them but then how disappointing it can be when it seems like you are more interested
in them than they are in you. Try not to take it personally as you don't know if this man is married, is really a man, etc.,
etc. Try to remember these things when you are getting attached to people you meet on the internet. It almost falls into more
of our dream world than our reality world but the emotional ups and downs don't stay in the dream world, they spill over into
our reality world, and this is where we feel lonely, rejection, etc. etc. I trust you will really give all this some thought.
I leave you with the question: "What can I do to change this situation for myself. What would I be doing if I was showing
respect for myself and acceptance for myself?" See if answering some of the questions I have asked you might give you some
insight into your part in this internet relationship.
QUESTION
Dear Shar:
I don't often see men writing into
your column so I decided to do so and see how it goes. I put my ad on the internet in a few different places. I write to a
couple of women. They all tell me the same thing. Comments like: "You don't share yourself with me." "Why don't you answer
my questions?" "Why don't you tell me about yourself and your daily life?" "Who are your friends?" "Tell me about your family."
"What sort of things do you do during your day?" "Tell me about your work." And the questions go on and on! What do they want?
I say what I have to say and if it isn't enough why do they keep writing to me. I want someone to accept me just as I am and
no conditions or expectations from me. Is there a woman like that out there. What about you?
Bill
Newmarket, Ontario
ANSWER
Hi There Bill:
Well, your letter certainly came at a great time, as you can see from the previous letter.
First of all I have to remind you that professional ethics do not permit me to answer your question, "What about me?" It has
no bearing what I think, feel, or how I personally view things. This is not personal Bill, it is the ethical guideline I work
under.
Now, on with your letter. O.K., it sounds to me like you are feeling somewhat frustrated by these women you
correspond with, asking you to share yourself, your thoughts and your feelings with them. Is this correct? Are you telling
me that you feel comfortable connecting with these women when you feel like doing so? That you will share with them if you
feel you want to? And that you will connect at all, when you want to? Well, I can see nothing irregular about this except
that you are having these women tell you that they feel you are not sharing with them? Perhaps when you share with others,
just on your timing and inclination to do so, it doesn't feel (for them) like you are responding to them. I don't think you
will find a woman who does not have some conditions and expectations in a relationship. I hear you being very clear with your
conditions and expectations. Are you saying you want a woman who will feel good with you being part of the relationship on
your time, when you want, etc., etc.? And you want someone who has no expectations of you? You seem to have (perhaps) some
stiff expectations here? Relationships are team work just as are our friendships, etc. To go solo in them may be unrealistic?
What do you think? Each of us would do well to know what we want in a relationship with another and if it isn't happening
then it is often best to not continue on in something that isn't working. We often continue on, hoping the other person will
change, if we stick with them long enough and love them deep enough and accept them no matter what. And this does not usually
work at changing our situation. The only thing that usually works in changing a situation is to change ourselves. If women
are telling you that they feel you do not share themselves with you, asking you "why" you do not answer their questions ,
and why don't you share some of your daily comings and goings with them, then perhaps this is something for you ask yourself?
Why don't you? Also, what do you perceive as the fundamentals to forming friendships and keeping friendships growing? I would
suggest you talk to counsellor and start focusing on yourself and not on these women. I think it would be wise to take what
they say and look at it and see if you can identify with why they say these things to you. The question that keeps popping
up in my head as I talk with you is: "what were your growing up years, in your family, like for you?" I believe you could
get in touch with a lot about your behaviour by going back and looking into the dynamics of your family. Often behaviour of
withholding ourselves from others or throwing out too much of ourselves onto others, stems from learned behviour in the family
(growing up) setting. There may be a TRUST issue here. I encourage you to find a therapist with whom you are comfortable and
start to talk about YOU! You are worth it and as we find out more about ourselves it opens us up to have more of a choice
to share ourselves with others.
QUESTION
Hi Mrs. Shar:
I don't know if you are married but I assume you are.
Are you? I just got my girlfriend to move in with me. My wife left me three years ago. I was very lonely and depressed. I
want someone with me all the time. I don't want to be alone or by myself at all. My girlfriend moved in because she can't
afford rent at her place. I want to be sexual with her all the time. I want to spend every moment of the day with her. I don't
want her to go out without me. I can't stand the thought that she could enjoy herself without me. I am scared she is going
to leave me and I don't know what I will do if she does. How can I make sure she won't leave me Mrs. Shar? Can you tell me
what I can do to make her not ever leave me? My wife cheated on me and I never knew it and then she left. I can't trust anyone
anymore. That split me in two. I really loved my wife a lot. I don't want to be left again. My girlfriend tells me I need
to go and get some help so I can deal with my feelings as it is so hard on her to have me always needing reassurance that
she won't leave. She says she can't breathe anymore. She says she really loves me and wants us to buy a house together and
be together always but that nothing she does seems to convince me that she will stay. I know I am going to lose her. I can't
handle all of the up and down emotions of being in such deep love with someone. I have never known anything like this before.
Not even with my wife. What do you suggest I do?
Ernie
Nova Scotia
ANSWER
Dear Ernie:
It sounds to
me like you may be in severe depression and I would suggest you go to your Doctor and tell him what you have told me and ask
him to refer you to mental health or if you can afford a private therapist then you could go and connect with one on your
own. I suggest you get an assessment from mental health or a personal counsellor and I believe they will refer you back to
your Doctor for medication while they work with you. You have suffered a loss that seems to have shaken your whole foundation
and scattered you all over the place emotionally in how you deal or don't deal with things, how you feel, etc., etc. Medication
can level out your emotions which would enable you to be able to have some balanced thinking (emotionally) enabling you to
start dealing with the issues you present here. It is difficult to say too much here without an assessment so I suggest you
consider doing this Ernie. It is time to help yourself move on from your grief which seems to have you now stuck in deep depression.
In depression we feel we have no control over how we act or feel. We are convinced that we do not have the control we need
to be able to have in dealing with things. Medication will balance out the chemicals in your brain, during this time of severe
stress, you are experiencing and walking through personally. I strongly suggest you go to your Doctor and take this letter
with you and tell him just what you told me or take the letter you wrote me here, with you. Let me know how this goes for
you. To live in the depths of despair debilitates the very core of our every day ability to function.
And, remember,
if you treat others the way you would like to be treated, EVERYONE WILL CHANGE. Cheerio!
Shar
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
11-26-05
Are "Virtual" Friends "Real"
Friends?
An examination of e-mail relationships
In August 1999 an American radio news anchor stumbled across my
recently completed personal Website. She sent me a short e-mail saying she was intrigued by it, the picture was nice and the
topics were deep. Oh, and she loved my name (for reasons which still escape me!) and she concluded by wishing me luck.
Three
years and several million words later we are still corresponding. During this period we have often wondered what kind of relationship
we have here.
I am an English male, she is an American female.
Separated by an ocean, the only other boundaries
that can dictate what form this kind of "e-relationship" takes on are those set by one's own imagination.
Internet
relationships provide a classic opportunity for unbridled flirting, not to mention "lies, damned lies, and (personal) statistics".
They could go horribly wrong, and I suspect that a lot of such relationships do go wrong, or just fizzle out, or lead
to marriage break-ups.
She recently said that the nature of e-mail relationships would make a fascinating book, and
she has posed some key questions, such as ...
* How do they start?
* Do they sizzle or fizzle?
* What are
the drawbacks?
* What are the rewards?
* The ebb and the flow - what do they satisfy in us?
* What are the frustrations?
* What are the common problems and complaints?
* Are there common problems and complaints?
* How long do they
usually last?
* Are e-mail friendships real friendships or are they false friendships?
* How are they different from
real life relationships?
* How much can you really learn about someone's "authentic self" without seeing them?
* Without
"experiencing them." Or without being able to talk to someone else about them?
* How honest are people in their emails?
* What kinds of whopper lies do people tell? - and why?
* Do we write to other people because we're interested in
other people...or is it some kind of ego trip we take because we like telling others about ourselves?
My "virtual"
friend was in a card shop the other day, and the women behind the counter were laughing and carrying on because one of them
liked to make a habit of writing to men on the Internet and getting them to sort of "fall" for her. She was telling the others
she was about to "break it off with another one." They were laughing uproariously. My friend asks, "Were these just the manipulations
of one single, shameless bitch, or is she one of many?"
I don't believe she is one single, shameless bitch. I think
she is probably one of many, though having said that I must immediately stress that this is not a female thing; men are at
it as well (and are probably more dangerous).
We all know how easy it is to manipulate relationships over the Internet,
and we've all heard the horror stories like the one about the Englishman who went to America to wed his "virtual" new Love,
only to find that she had the ex-husband stored in the freezer. Then there is the unbelievable evil of those who "groom" children
in Internet Chat Rooms (posing as anyone likely to bring about the necessary trust) in order to bring about a meeting specifically
for the purpose of sexual abuse.
Of course I can speak authoritatively on internet friendships only from the point
of view of my own experience. On the positive side I can cite my own internet relationship (not just with this person, but
with several others since - American and British) in which we have proved that a mature relationship can exist between a man
and a woman in a way that poses no threat whatsoever to their respective marriages. Right from "Day One" I never tried to
conceal from my wife this regular exchange of e-mails. And my "friend" (note that I have decided now to drop the "virtual")
has been equally open with her husband. In short, there were two happily married couples at the start of this thing, and three
years later there are still two happily married couples (and no - we haven't swapped partners!) We even exchange gift parcels,
and one or two phone conversations have been tentatively attempted.
One is tempted to say, perhaps, that an e-mail
relationship is an efficient way of testing a good marriage. If such a relationship leads to jealousy, suspicion, or resentment,
then there is already something wrong with that marriage.
I have other internet relationships, forged nearer to home,
i.e., in my own country, and these have also been highly rewarding, leading to (so far) two actual meetings with one lady
and her husband, and I have lived to tell the tale!
So, how would I answer some of the questions my American friend
has posed?
How do they start?
I suppose the most obvious route for someone who deliberately sets out to find a
new relationship on the internet is to go to an online dating agency, or perhaps, join a number of so-called "Chat Rooms"
to find people with a common interest. There are Websites set up specifically for circles of pen friends. My own Website has
a Pen Friends Page for anyone who wants to use it. If you create a personal Website that arouses the interest of any "web
surfers" who stumble across it, they may well contact you to discuss something that appears on your site. This is what has
happened to me. Part of my site deals with the unbelievably awful experience of losing a child. This has encouraged others
who have had this awful experience to exchange information and advice.
Do they sizzle?Do they sizzle or fizzle?Do
they fizzle?
In my own experience they do both. Those that sizzle are wonderful, and they sizzle sometimes because we
make each other laugh, sometimes because we engage in arguments about politics and religion, or sometimes just simply because
we are flirting. I'm prepared to flirt with the best of them, and I don't have to be online to do it. Flirting is a highly
enjoyable human activity, but the art is knowing where to draw the line between flirting and the opening of hormonal floodgates
to drown in a seriously full-blown "Affair".
Those that fizzle (and I have had many of these) cause disappointment
and puzzlement, because it is often unclear why the person with whom you have been regularly corresponding just one day disappears
off the radar screen. Some of mine fizzle because I get lazy, or run out of available time, to keep up with the correspondence.
In other words, it's my fault.
Rejoice in the sizzlers. Accept the fizzlers with as much good grace as you can muster.
What are the drawbacks?
An obvious drawback is the fact that with some people you might never be sure if they
are genuine. Are they who they claim to be? Is that photograph attached to the last e-mail really the person you are writing
to? If you and your "friend" are separated by thousands of miles of ocean, the chances of you really finding out are remote.
Of course it is possible in some cases to establish someone's provenance by finding out if some things are talking about are
real, for example, places of employment and so on.
Another is the old enemy - time. The internet has facilitated so
much ready contact with other people that if you are not careful you have before long accumulated so many friends and contacts
that you cannot possibly keep up with the exchange of mail (not to mention all the pressures of work-based e-mails). I don't
think I am able to sustain more than about half a dozen serious relationships without everything collapsing into superficial
three-liners.
What are the rewards?
Amongst the many rewards are widened horizons and increased knowledge of other
countries and cultures, sharing the laughter and tears in your respective lives, advice with personal problems, emotional
support, and the well-researched phenomenon of being able to unburden your innermost thoughts and secrets to someone you have
never met. (Why does e-friendship make this so easy?) Need I also mention the joys of the aforementioned flirting? Interesting,
isn't it, how the interchange of electronic bits and bytes can still get the "chemistry" working?
The biggest reward
of all for me is where someone has written to me to share a problem, perhaps prompted by something I've written on the Website,
and then my response elicits thanks for providing some genuine help and support, and making a difference. We all know it's
good to help people (or at least we ought to know that!) and if the Internet allows us to spread some kind of help around,
over great distances and at great speed, then that can only be a force for good.
The ebb and the flow - what do
they satisfy in us?
We are all searching for approval. We all want to be liked - loved even. Some of us like (or need)
our ego to be inflated. The fact that someone is prepared to keep on writing to you and apparently get some glimmer of pleasure
from it is highly therapeutic. And if we are honest enough to admit that we like getting this treatment, we must also be thoughtful
enough to give it back in equal measure.
What are the frustrations?
Winston Churchill once said that Great Britain
and America were two nations separated by a common language. The fact that two English-speaking peoples can misunderstand
each other by using words or phrases in unfamiliar contexts serves to emphasise how much greater must be the problem between
two people who do not have each other's language as their first language. These frustrations can be compounded by very different
cultural differences.
There appear to be some things that you just can't talk about with some people. I seem to have
discovered by accident the easiest and quickest way to cut short any e-mail relationship with anyone from India. I take an
interest in international politics and I am fascinated by what causes conflict between the peoples of different countries.
So many countries have their "hot-spots". The UK has Northern Ireland. Spain has the Basque region. Turkey has the Kurdish
region. China has Tibet. Then what about the Balkans? And the biggest hot spot of them all - Israel and the Palestinians.
India has Kashmir, which brings me back to the case in point. Every single Indian I have ever asked for a personal opinion
on this has responded with a deafening silence. I have, in effect, pulled the plug on the relationship. I've thrown the switch.
Kaput. Isn't that weird?
What are the common problems and complaints?
It has been suggested by some researchers
that there is such a thing as "Internet Addiction" and certain categories of people develop some kind of obsession with it.
It is a difficult thing to quantify because how do you measure it? Length of time spent on the Internet is not sufficient
in itself as an indicator, because many people have perfectly normal and valid reasons to be spending time surfing the web,
e-mailing contacts, and so on.
If you want a self-test on internet addiction (http://www.netaddiction.com/resources/internet_addiction_test.htm)
CLICK HERE. I have just taken this test.
The result was ...
"You are an average on-line user. You may surf
the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage."
Big sigh of relief! OK - let's get back on
the web.
Are e-mail friendships real friendships or are they false friendships?
I started this discourse by referring
to my "virtual" friend. Later I decided to drop the "virtual" because I have concluded that she is a "real" friend. And so
are many of the others. The very fact that using the internet encourages more interchange of information of a personal and
confidential nature tends to bring you closer than (or at least as close to) those people you have spent your life referring
to as "friends".
It is worth remembering that many of the people you encounter physically, and get to know, and maybe
become "friends", are just as likely to turn out in the long run to be "false" friends as any of those people you get to know
through the medium of e-mail.
When all is said and done, an e-mail relationship is similar to an old fashioned Pen
Friend relationship. The only difference is that with e-mail you don't have to wait several weeks to get a response. So one
might well ask, "Are pen friends real friends?"
Well, an old work colleague of mine started an exchange of letters
with an American girl when they were both still at school. The letters went back and forth across the Atlantic ocean throughout
their growing up years and their respective marriage and family years. My colleague retired a few years ago, and soon after
that his wife died. Of course, the American pen friend eventually came to hear about her English pen friend's tragic loss,
and decided to travel to England to see him and comfort him. They fell in love and now they are married. They are both living
happily in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. This romantic tale got them into the local newspapers and on national TV. That "snail-mail"
friendship certainly wasn't "false". So why should e-mail friendships be so?
· How are they different from real life
relationships?
Well, for starters, you can't see them, feel them, touch them, hear them. Mind you, this is changing rapidly,
because of the increasing use of web cams and services like Instant Messenger which allows voice contact. If you are prepared
to make the effort you can find out if your fantasy lover and all-round sex toy has a voice like Kermit the Frog and a face
like Miss Piggy.
How much can you really learn about someone's "authentic self" without seeing them?
Again I fall
back on the phenomenon of no-holds-barred exchange of really personal and sensitive information that we all seem able to give
vent to in an e-mail relationship. Surely - provided we have established the honesty of our "virtual" partner - this must
give quite an astonishing insight into "authentic selves". Of course if you happen to have landed yourself with a pathological
liar and fantasist for a correspondent then you are in big trouble. But the same thing can happen with people you actually
meet.
How honest are you?How honest are people in their emails?
This a very good question, and all I can do is
place on record that I always try to be scrupulously honest about everything in my emails. I am guessing that normally honest
people will continue to be honest in their e-mails and people who have a habit of getting the concepts of truth and falsehood
somewhat confused in their every day life will continue to display that trait online.
It's all about me!Do we write
to other people because we're interested in other people...or is it some kind of ego trip we take because we like telling
others about ourselves?
That we like telling other people about ourselves is beyond doubt. That might not be the reason,
however, why we write e-mails to each other for pleasure. My Website started out as an ego trip. I hold my hands up - I confess.
Here was a new opportunity for me to say, "Hey, everybody, this is me. How can you possibly get through any more of your life
without knowing all about me?!" I'm not much of conversationalist, but I've been told that I can string a few meaningful words
together if I am writing or tapping the keyboard, so here also is an opportunity for me to impose my opinions and views upon
an unsuspecting world. People can take it or leave it, but I've had my say. I think the Web is a positive influence for good
in that respect. Now as soon as I have written that I can see that it is patent nonsense. How can it be for the general good,
when its very freedom and accessibility also makes it the vehicle for racism, religious intolerance, unbridled nationalism,
fanaticism of all kinds, sexual deviancy, and a tool for the exchange of information on terrorist plots, plans for civil disorder,
and so on? But I am digressing. This is not about the Web as such, but the practice of exchanging e-mails between friends.
Even if we start out by writing to someone just to tell them all about ourselves, if the friendship develops there
comes a point when you've said it all, and you are going to continue because you do find the other person interesting, not
only in what they say about themselves, but what kind of lives they lead and in what kind of society.
The e-mail relationship
that survives beyond a few months is likely to be based on true feelings of friendship and love.
"Virtual" friends
can be "Real" friends.
©Lionel Beck
November 2002
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11-26-05
Internet Relationships and Their Impact on Primary Relationships
The number of personal relationships occurring via the Internet is increasing as more people gain access to it. Many of
these relationships are romantic in nature, and evidence is accumulating that they have the potential to have an adverse effect
on existing face-to-face relationships. This study explored the formation of romantic relationships on their Internet, their
nature, and their possible impact on existing marital or de facto relationships in a sample of 75 adults (mean age 42 years,
SD = 11.1 years) who responded to an online survey of individuals involved in extradyadic relationships on the Internet. Respondents
reported a variety of means of contacting their online partner. More females than males communicated with them daily. Most
respondents knew what their partner looked like, most had contacted them by telephone, and a third had met them. Most reported
more satisfaction with their online relationship than with their face-to-face one, though few said that it was more important
to them than their primary relationship. Although only a quarter of the sample admitted that their online relationship had
affected their primary one, those participants reported concealing the truth about the time or nature of their activities,
that everyday tasks did not get done, and that levels of sexual intimacy with their primary partner had dropped. The nature
of these and other problems suggests that therapists should be aware of the potential for Internet relationships to seriously
affect face-to-face relationships.
http://tinyurl.com/7bda4
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11-26-05
Long Distance and Online
Relationships? Is that Even Possible?
By Kathleen Lieu
Joe and Mary are together. They see each other daily and
kisses are shared between them. Lisa is in a long distance relationship with her boyfriend she found on the net. There is
just so much stigma with internet relationships that she sometimes think she's really single. Actually, other people think
she's alone because she is always by herself. What is Lisa to do? She can't gloat about her boyfriend and she is rather ashamed
she couldn't find a boyfriend in real life instead of on the net.
Still, she knows that this love is real. Even though
she can touch and feel her boyfriend, Jack, she knows they share something tangible, something wonderful. She often cries
and wishes she could be with him more but there is just so much distance between them.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Internet relationships are on the rise. Slowly, it may seem more like a joke at first, but almost everything will be done
online. Have you noticed a decrease in phone calls for teens? Instant messaging is in and so convenient. Teens type at an
insane level and that is impressive even when they type gibberish like lmao and bbl. Legal forms can be obtained online. And
contrary to popular belief, people actually go online to buy stuff, not just to search for information.
The older
generations are embracing the online life.
So why is there still so much taboo and stigma regarding internet relationships,
especially of the long distance kind?
For one, these relationships can be more stressful than all others. For one,
physical intimacy is nonexistent when the couple is separated. It is not for everyone.
Also, it requires a lot of
trust and time. You will have to trust your judgment about this person you are falling in love with. Is he or she really who
he or she clames to be? Without a phone, words are the only thing that keeps you two together. (Of course, by now, everyone
should have learned about the wonderful program Skype.)
Still, there are so many beautiful aspects about this type
of relationship. The feelings can be so genuine and your partner will understand you like no other, if he/she reads and commit
your words to heart. There is so much communication between you and your partner will be your best friend as well as your
significant other, as long as the relationship lasts.
And when you are finally together, there will be a lot of spark.
Granted that you know how this person looks like, know his/her voice, and know him/her from your conversations, you will not
be intimidated when you meet him/her.
Soulmates... Can you really find your soulmate online?
Some have succeeded,
some haven't.
All in all, use your own discretion and remember the wise words of someone whose name I can not remember.
"A stranger is only a friend you've yet to make..."
I do not encourage however for the younger generation
to fall in love and meet every other person they've met online.
Love is so powerful, wonderful, and beautiful. Please
do not take it for granted, treat it as something superficial or abuse it.
In summary, I do believe long distance
internet relationships can work. Make sure that your partner knows everyday that you love him/her. With every relationship,
please don't play with hearts.
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11-26-05
Cyberlove affects 'real'
relationships
Internet romances are considered just as significant to people as their 'real' relationships, according
to psychology doctoral student Heather Underwood.
A lack of extensive research on the subject and people's personal
experiences prompted Heather to conduct her own research survey into the topic, which is being administered via the internet
as part of her thesis.
'Some people are becoming concerned that their internet relationship is affecting their primary
relationship with a partner. Balancing the demands of both relationships can prove to be complicated', she explained.
Preliminary
results indicate that 74 per cent of people who have romantic internet relationships are employed full-time and 61 per cent
are tertiary educated. Two-thirds of participants are male, mostly married with children and in a primary relationship between
one and seven years.
Survey results strongly suggest that internet relationships quickly become very intimate, with
participants engaging in high levels of self-disclosure about their problems and discussion of sexual preferences.
Other
key findings suggest that 70 per cent concealed the extent of their online activities from their 'real life' partners. While
50 per cent of respondents agreed that their activities had significantly damaged their primary relationships, 34 per cent
reported that the internet liaison had improved their relationships.
Heather said internet relationships weren't just
fantasies, with over a third of survey respondents having met their internet partner in person.
'So far I've received
210 responses from as far as Pakistan, Singapore, Egypt and the United Kingdom. However, the next step is to get more Australians
involved.
'I hope the survey sheds more light on the subject and assists counsellors to help people who are balancing
an internet relationship and a "real" relationship.'
Participants should be over 18 years of age, married or in a
de facto relationship, and currently involved in a romantic internet relationship. To participate, email Heather or visit
the web site.
Contact
Heather Underwood
Telephone: 0409 411 331
Email: hjocat@hotmail.com
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