Holy shit! All of a sudden I’m 25 and have never been on a date!
I guess on a philosophical level I should respect two peoples feelings for each other. If two people say they have genuine feelings for each other despite having never met IRL; well OK, if you say so.
I don’t get it. I find it dubious to say the least. And honestly I don’t see it as a healthy or grown up relationship. And I certainly don’t see it as one that is on par with a tactile relationship.
I’m sure a hundred years from now internet lovers will be fighting for their rights much in the same way gays are doing so now. We’ll all go down in history as a bunch of prejudice assholes that wouldn’t treat these internet lovers with the respect they deserve.
But fuck it! That’s a hundred years from now. It’s weired and it’s wrong. I put “No way in hell!”
Will there be entire marriages which exist only online between people who never actually physically meet?
I think we may be getting there. Someday, everybody will be riding around in those Wall-E rigs with the built in computer monitors, and all interactions, including sex, happening only online.
You can go ahead and kill me when that happens.
I voted no, but I’m ambivalent.
I’ve known gamers who act very much like real life couples, despite never having met in person and despite living thousands of miles from each other. Certainly to such people, it’s dating, but I just can’t wrap my head around having a satisfying couples type relationship with someone I’ve never met.
Certainly it’s possible in an online setting to have an intimate relationship with someone with whom you’ve never interacted in person. That doesn’t make it “dating” though.
I’ll probably have a different answer if you ask me again in 20 years.
Actually, this dovetails in to another interesting subject. If one considers online-only interaction to be dating - can you date someone who doesn’t really exist?
No, we lived across the country from each other. Looking back, on one hand it seems like we could have thrown caution to the wind and hustled a little more to meet in person sooner, but then again, we were younger then and the finances loomed large at that time in our lives.
You can have very good friends you’ve never met. You can flirt with people and never meet them. But you cannot have a true relationship (in the non-platonic sense) with someone you’ve never met. And I say this as somebody who’s (TMI alert) had a hot-hot-kinky phone sex relationship with one of those good online friends. Would we be dating if we weren’t on opposite sides of the country? Probably. But as long as the distance is still there, it’s not dating.
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I think there have been, though I’m not sure they were legal marriages. I remember some news stories about it, maybe 10 years ago? There were a lot of articles at the time about how the rise of the world wide web was changing society. The online-only marriages were pretty obviously used as an illustration of how lame people who spent a lot of time online were.
I voted no. The feelings can be genuine, but it’s not dating.
Del–if you had met in person finally, and discovered that you had no actual physical attraction to him and decided not to see or interact with him anymore, do you think you’d look back on it 10 years later and call it “dating?” (not picking on you, just curious.)
I don’t actually use the word “dating” in my own head, or out loud, to describe any activity I have participated in or expect to participate in. Could be an artifact of the era and immediate environment I grew up in, but “dating” was something previous, more uptight generations did. Like having a debutante season or “going steady” or something. We were just people who spent time with each other, sexuality is part of being human, things might or might not happen, etc.
(Of course we also didn’t do dancing that had any remnant of structure or steps; one got out on the dance floor and “did one’s own thing”; make of that what you will)
So the whole “dating” thing, being a somewhat foreign / borrowed concept, just doesn’t have for me any intrinsic real meaning. If you define it as “in person only” then obviously no, online romancing doesn’t meet that definition.
But whether you call it dating, courting, romancing, or ishmakabibbling, the process of interacting with people via writing, whether it be internet-based emails and IMs or phone texting or handwritten letters sent via the postal carrier, are definitely an entirely real way of getting to know someone intimately.
With the right person, talking with each other in person can result in that taking place, but when you do not know the person yet at all, really, text is (IMO) a much better way to get there than meeting up in person.
I am very uncertain about “dating” if you are online-only, but I certainly think you can have online-only relationships (hi, all y’all on the other side of the monitor!). What is the difference between having a good online friend and having an online boyfriend?
Um…sex with an actual other person?
I answered no. I need my face-to-face interaction.
For those of you who have had more than friendly conversations with another person be it through dirty letters, texts or phone and cyber-sex. Wouldn’t those require a certain level of comfort and intimacy with that other person? Or do the parties involved just view it as harmless fun among friends?
It can be just as intimate and/or rewarding, but it’s not dating. Neither, for that matter, is in-person contact without any physical element whatsoever.
Oh, Hell yes, online interactions are dating, and can be the core of a relationship.
On a related note, Skald, I love you. I’ve been wanting to tell you this for SO long, but I’ve been shy, but my feelings have been blossoming so, and I see that you started this thread to explore your feelings for me, and my feelings for you, without the risk of rejection.
Oh, funny Skald, as though I would ever reject you.
[back in reality, no, online isn’t dating, it’s flirting. And Skald, I’m kidding, you don’t have to rename yourself again or anything]
It is whatever the participants say it is.
My ex and I were together for over 5 years, three of which were online and long-distance. Early on, we agreed we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and that’s how we treated each other and the relationship. (Neither of us had been in an online relationship before, but we were not new to dating, so we knew exactly the meaning of the terms we were using.) When he moved in with me, it was like picking up where our last conversation left off. Other than the maddening desire to be together, we had no problems associated with having started online.
You can call the type of interaction we had “just flirting”, but when it goes on for literally years, at some point you’re just dancing around using the term “dating.”
I’m in a relationship now that started in person, and although it’s a very welcome and refreshing change to feel initial, immediate physical attraction and be able to act on it, I can’t say this relationship and my online one feel very different. With both guys, I still had to get to know them over a period of months, and slowly develop trust and love. Had either of them showed signs of instability or gave inconsistent information, I’d have reacted with the same caution. It’s really not so different.
I don’t think it is. I was talking pretty seriously to a couple of guys in college over the internet and by phone, they both lived out of state. I was REALLY into both of them and made plans to meet in person, although it never ended up happening. Now, looking back on it, as into them as I was we were never really “dating.” I wouldn’t have felt comforatable referring to someone I’d never met in person as my boyfriend. At to me, that’s the test.
falls off bike
I honestly can’t say … there are some guys I dated in the real world that I definitely try to distance myself from in my memories “oh him? Uh, he’s some guy I used to know.”
But let’s say things had ended as amicably as possible. I think I would probably look back on it the same way I look back on other men I dated with overall positive experiences. Like if someone says to me “wow, I didn’t know you followed rugby” and I will say “yeah, I used to date this guy who was really into it, and it got me interested.” I could definitely imagine talking about similar things that resulted from the online relationship in the same way.
I’m going to side with the camp that believes it’s about the perception of the participants. I’m not sure how anyone else can define that for them.
For me, personally, “dating” means people interacting with one another where both (or as many people as are involved, I suppose) have mutual romantic intention. An oversimplified definition, perhaps, but that’s just my view. Granted, in my world, if I’m sharing a relationship with someone where there is romantic intention, I’m going to try to spend time with them in person because physical affection is a big part of that for me. But that need not be true for everyone.