On-line relationships

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well I might be showing my age (51), but reading about conviction of Michelle Carterof the involuntary manslaughter of her boyfriend Conrad Roy, I learned that their relationship of two years was primarily long distance and consisted of texts and emails, and that they rarely physically saw each other. To me, that’s not a relationship. And it’s a shame that Roy put so much credence in what she said.

Yes, I’ve heard about people meeting online across the country (around the world) getting to know one another online, becoming engaged and then meeting physically for the first time when they get married. I find that extremely strange.

It’s not that long distance relationships can’t work out. My wife and I lived 1,200 miles apart when we dated, but we still were physically in each other’s presence every other weekend.

I just have doubts about primarily online relationships. There are many things that you just don’t learn about someone without physically being with them.

So what are your thoughts, experiences, etc.?

2

My experience was mainly with short-lived romances that lasted only a few months and then sizzled out. I have a number of friends who became very serious but once they met in person it was over within hours, sometimes minutes. I know of a couple that seemed to work out ok.

3

I’ve never had a romance this way, but two of my best friends, posters on this board, became that way through copious amounts of texting. I find it’s easier to develop intimacy this way because you will say things you would not normally admit, or you share the mundane realities of life throughout the day. These relationships are real to me.

4 
My experience happened shortly after I went on line for the first time. I had never experienced such openness before and it sucked me right in. After about 6 months on line I got bored with it.
5

I’ve had two long-distance relationships and neither worked out. In neither case had we known each other while in the same city – IOW both started as LD relationships. In the second one, he moved 5 hours away from where he was living to be in the same city with me.

And that’s when I learned that the OP is absolutely correct – or at least, I’m in 100% agreement. It offers a false sense of intimacy. What I found was that, once in the same locale as the other person, I didn’t really know him at all and would have never dated him otherwise. I’d fallen in love with the version of him that I’d idealized in my head, not with the actual person he was. I gave it a shot but I think we were done before a year was over.

6

I met Mr. H in 2003. We met in person but didn’t really click until we started talking online. Well, I clicked with HIM, but I didn’t even remember who he was! Anyway, since he was in Chicago and I’m in Seattle, we mostly had an online relationship except for once a month or so. He finally moved here in 2005 and we’ve been together ever since.

Even so, I wouldn’t do it again. What a monumental pain in the ass. He was worth it, but if I ever find myself looking again, I won’t be doing it online. It’s a great way to add to a relationship and learning about the other person, but knowing each other in the physical world is a completely different matter. Marrying someone based only on an online relationship is insanity.

7

I don’t think I’d be on board with getting married at the first physical meeting. I think it’s important for most people to have an understanding of what interacting with the other person face-to-face is like. Not just whether there’s an immediate attraction, but whether that’s sustained over some period of time. How you each react to one another’s quirks. Things that are nearly—if not completely—impossible to know without meeting.

That being said, I’m very happy with the 5+ marriage I’m in that started with about a year-and-a-half of dating long distance after meeting online. We saw each other in person roughly every six to eight weeks during that period, but otherwise were either on the phone, emailing or chatting online. There were things going on in both of our lives that made it a workable situation for us. It’s hard to project beyond our specific circumstances, though.

I certainly think it can and sometimes does work for others.

8

I wouldn’t marry someone I’d only known online, for sure, but when it comes to many of my friends, we are scattered all over the country, so there is no alternative. I am still close to my junior high, high school, and college best friends because of Messenger. In fact they’ve been collected into one Messenger group I call ‘‘Besties’’ and we talk most days. Today they helped me pick out a brain tie for my husband, as he is hoping to pass his state licensure exam next Saturday. We also troubleshooted one of my novels, and discussed our preferences with regard to bananas. One of them, recently divorced, sold his wedding ring today. Another grieves. This is a typical day. They live in Wisconsin, Illinois, Connecticut, and Georgia.

ivylass and I first got to know each other through SparkPeople. We’ve met in person only once, but she’s pretty damned important to me.

Asimovian helped me survive my miscarriage in 2014. I didn’t meet him in person until (I think) last year at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with the lovely jsgoddess, and we had a freakin’ blast.

Of course, hanging out with someone occasionally in person is a different kettle of fish than living with someone. My best friend, who I first met when we were ten years old, is the sort of person I could never live with and we both know it. But I wouldn’t necessarily know that if our relationship were exclusively online.

While I first met my husband in person, our love story played out almost exclusively on email and messenger. First, because he was home for the summer while I remained on campus. And then he decided to study abroad in Spain. The falling in love, the confession of love, all of it was over the internet. On our engagement day four years later, he presented me with two thick binders full of the emails we sent, from the first time he messaged me as an acquaintance to the stuff we sent each other when we were well established.

I know a lot of close romantic relationships that started online. I don’t think it provides the whole picture, but it can provide a lot more of the picture than you might think.

9

I will let you know how it turns out.

I had a ten year old profile on a dating site, which I mostly ignored for years at a time, and maybe corresponded with a dozen women, and took one to lunch. I have rethought my future life, completely rewrote my profile, and brought it to the attention two weeks ago of 63 prospective seekers, got nice replies the first day from ten and not-nice replies from none. Within three days of text chat, one of them rose to the top of the leaderboard. Next month, I will be on a plane to her loving arms, and I am not coming back. I will marry her at the first opportunity upon arriving in her tropical paradise…, We’ve been skyping 4 hours a day, and lengthy candid phone calls with two of her sisters, and I have no doubt that this is the real thing.

I believe the secret of my (so far) success is to be brutally honest in laying out what you are looking for, and scrupulously committed to fulfilling every promise you offer in return, that you know in your heart that you can fulfill.

Watch this space.

10

IME, many people use the term “online relationship” to mean a relationship that exists only online and never even has any in-person interaction. I’ve been mystified by this idea myself. People will even fall head-over-heels in love with somebody, based exclusively on what that somebody composes to them on a computer screen. And it’s by no means limited to social outcasts and desperate loners, superficially attractive people who would have a wide choice to pick from IRL will eschew this in favor of electronic/cyber relations. It may be the ability of the internet to provide both intimacy and a means to micromanage every aspect of what you communicate to others that has created the dynamic for this heretofore unexpressed mental ‘quirk’. People have always been this way, they just lacked both the stimulus and connectivity of the internet to bring it out of latency.

11

You’ve known her online for less than a month and you’re talking about marrying her? That is *highly *unrealistic.

12

I’ve done lots of highly unrealistic things in my life, most with surprisingly favorable results. Or, rather, unsurprisingly, as I analyze and plan things well, and not leave them to the probability of success that other people have had.

13

AALMT, let me tell you something about unrealistic. It might be what I did three years ago. After essentially becoming an urban hermit in my late 60s, to age and slowly watch my eyes self-destruct beyond what was already legal blindness, I discovered at 75 how liberating a white cane can be, and I thought “I can do anything”. I went online and bought an air ticket to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I got off the plane at 3 am, not knowing anybody, no reservations. I had the time of my life and came home a new man, and flew around the world twice since then. Who would have told me that was unrealistic?

I’ve had two wives before, both lasted over 15 years, and both to women whom I knew I would marry within an hour of meeting them. Who would have told me that would be unrealistic? Just marry people who have integrity , instead of, for example, big tits – a quality just as easy to recognize, if you filter for it… If you learn to trust the right people, you will seldom go wrong, even if your plan is “unrealistic”.

14

What kind of women wanted to date a ten year old?:eek:

15

Obviously, everyone’s tastes and experiences differ. But I feel like long distance, online relationships or commuting (LDORC) can give a false sense of intimacy. Because they consist of targeted communications and scheduled visits, they tend to filter out the sort of things that might cause stress and tension in a co-located relationship. For example, you can Skype with your LDORC girlfriend for an hour before you head out with your buddies to go clubbing until 4am every night. If you actually lived near each other, she would take her out on dates, take her with you or even just stop by for a 4am booty call. Your LDORC might get annoyed that you spend all afternoon playing videogames or basketball or whatever.

Furthermore, it’s been my experience and observation that an LDORC can prevent you from actually developing your own life locally. It can be easier to “have someone” you see once a month than to actually be single and alone, but actively looking for someone new.

16

I think a main appeal of online relationships is the fact that you are able to construct the personality, etc. of the other person to fit your desires, without the pesky interference of reality. As the poster above mentioned, it gives a false sense of intimacy. I think these feelings seem very real to the people experiencing them.

17

It seems it would be much easier for someone to be scammed or deceived in this way. At least when you’re face to face with someone you’ve got all those subtle nonverbal clues that you’re being jerked around. It’s a lot harder when you don’t actually know what the other person is even doing on a day to day basis. You just have to take their word for it.

Reminds me of the Reply All podcast that covered a woman who fell in love long-distance with a scammer. He had gotten out of it because it made him feel scuzzy, but during the interview, he was explaining that being a good scammer means knowing how to be a good boyfriend. He was exhibiting all these genuine positive qualities and seemed sympathetic to these women in the moment, even if he was doing it for all the wrong reasons.

18

I’ve had three relationships that would qualify:

(1) Met on IRC. Lots of talking, some phone calls, letter writing (this was in the 90s when people still wrote letters). Met up and had a good weekend but she was going into college and it just didn’t seem like it was going to work or be fair to expect her to lock herself down with a long distance relationship. Ended amicably. If not for the length of the run-up before meeting, it might have been considered more of a fling.

(2) Met on IRC, once again with the calls and stuff but most of our conversation was on IRC. Met up and had an okay time but afterward she was very jealous and picky. Later, she turned out to be pregnant (oops) and that was a whole fiasco for another thread. Still, I was going to do the right thing and we made a go of it, moving in together. She had little interest in motherhood or working or being a partner, mainly living on her computer. After a couple years, we split and I sued for custody and received it. She barely has contact with her son which is her loss (he turned 18 this past March and graduated high school; off for college). In another timeline, we would have split up soon after meeting but that’s without the pregnancy.

(3) Rather than meeting via IRC, we both posted to the same message board for years. She was engaged to someone else on the board (she started posting because he was a regular). So we had no “personal” contact although we read each other’s stuff and responded publicly to posts. She was apparently impressed by my tales of single fatherhood. After a couple years, her engagement broke off for reasons completely external to the board but she stayed posting. A while later, a music suggestion turned into a personal message which turned into a conversation. Even then, neither of us were looking for a relationship. It wasn’t until months later when I was joking about an online dating profile that she realized that she was interested and better make a move. PMs turned into nightly phone calls turned into fairly regular visits. She found a job out here and moved out which meant moving in with me and my son. After two years of living together, we were married and will be on our tenth wedding anniversary this year with a six year old son.

So I guess it’s possible for it to work with the right people and the right foundation. I think in my current case, we had a good idea of who the other person was first and had ample communication outside the sphere of a relationship. Plus I was just generally older and more mature by that time.

19

I gotta ask; how did those two marriages end? Divorce or widowed?
I know it’s not the exact same thing, but if you work in IT in this country, chances are you work with a bunch of people from India. They still do arranged marriages in their culture. I worked with one girl; she was lucky in that she actually got to meet (one date) her future husband on a trip back home. Her next trip home, a little under a year later was for the engagement party & wedding. Six months after the wedding, he still didn’t have a visa so he was still in India & she was here. Surprisingly, divorce rates are much lower there than they are in the US.

20

I’ve seen a lot of people who get deeply entwined in an online relationship, and convince themselves it’s absolutely wonderful when it’s really not - and that’s without the other person trying to be deceptive. You really don’t have the basic chemistry going on, and you have to fill in a lot of gaps in your own head.

I do think that the idea that long-distance, low-contact relationships absolutely cannot work and are just a new, dumb thing is pretty silly. Arranged marriages and relationships carried on by letters have been around since the dawn of civilization, it’s not something new or something that can’t work.