Posts tagged blog
Virtual Connect or Disconnect?
Nov 8th
Nowadays almost everything ends in a 2.0, including a Huffington Post blog posting by Dr. Jim Taylor, where he gives mixed reviews on technology’s affect on social relationships.
Dr. Taylor high-fives social networking tools for connecting lost friends as well as being a place of productivity where people can share ideas and work efficiently. He includes a personal anecdote about a previous editorial project he had completed and published entirely with the use of email communication. This guy gets it.
Then he switches gears a little bit to talk about the relationships that are created using these technologies, and he is a little less enthused. Connections made from profiles showing limited information tend to be more surface and lacking essential components of a real relationship, i.e facial expression, touch, etc. He also suggests that these relationships are an escape from an unhappy home life, or a general sense of dissatisfaction with other interpersonal relationships.
Taylor also explores the idea that “virtual relationships” can never give one emotional fulfillment since “they are no substitute for the depth and breadth of real flesh-and-blood relationships.”
In the spirit of Dr Taylor’s closing comment, I invite you all to participate in the poll featured on your right. Can virtual relationships be as fulfilling as traditional ones?
The Prophet Says…
Sep 15th
Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran wrote: “Stand together not too near together/ for the two pillars of the temple stand apart.” This may seem a little heavy for a blog about Online Couples, but it illustrates an interesting point about the importance of independence in relationships.
Think about when a couple first meets, especially if that occurs online. Each is coming form their own respective lives which include jobs, friends, and interests completely unrelated to the person they are sizing up. These independent lives are undoubtedly the reason the two are attracted to each other in the first place, and when the relationship takes form, it is inevitable that these lives will slowly thread together into one. The sentiment is lovely, but it is not entirely healthy to lose aspects of one’s previous lifestyle. It can put pressure on the relationship if one of the parties is unhappy because they compromised certain interests or even friends.
Many people turn to online dating because they want to make a relationship work with their life, and not the other way around. Does this mean that Online Couples are immune from falling into the trap of codependency? Probably not, but there are definitely ways to help prevent it. Check out this article with tips on maintaining a healthy independence. It includes things like challenging yourself physically to hone your coping skills.
A Posting on POST
Sep 15th
Here at OnlineCouples.com, we are big fans of Andrea Baker’s book Double Click: Romance and Commitment Among Online Couples. Baker uses real stories and data from couples who met online to explore what makes these relationships tick from beginning to, unfortunately for some, the end.
In chapter 7 of her book, entitled Factors In Successful and Unsuccessful Onilne Relatinoships, Baker uses the acronym POST to describe the four most important factors to shaping an online relationship:
Place - where they met online and offline
Obstacles – hardships such as jobs and distance
Self-Presentation – the level of honesty they used in their profiles and regarding their appearance
Timing – how long the online relationship was carried out before they met in person
According to her research, Baker found that couples who met in a more specialized online venue, such as a dating site targeting a certain demographic, were more likely to stay together for longer than people who met in a more generalized dating site, online gaming sites included.
Some couples actually met while in an existing marriage or relationship. This obstacle, however, didn’t stop them from pursuing the online relationship. For some, that resulted in dissolving the marriage. One particular couple, baker discusses, was living on two different continents, both in an existing marriage. The woman had already filed for divorce, but the man was seemingly comfortable, “We had two cars, a reasonable kind of life.” After meeting, the obstacles gave way to the chemistry of the relationship and the two ended up married. We’ve also know of cases that ended in a less than graceful manner.
One of the biggest nail-biters in online dating (writing from experience) is completing the profile. People often craft a picture-perfect image of the person they want to be, which inhibits them from truly letting go and representing themselves accurately. Resumes are never fun to write, why should an online dating profile be any different? Baker’s study emphasizes that truthfulness is a key factor in a successful relationship. Duh, you’re probably thinking, but yet people still find it difficult to lay all their cards on the table. One couple in Baker’s study was very up front at the beginning; the man told his online prospect about his recently-begun-divorce, and the woman continued to engage in the online relationship based on a platonic connection. The platonic nature eventually parlayed into a romantic relationship, based on the trust that was built at the beginning. The man is quoted, ” Take it slow, talk talk talk, ask questions and ask more..”
Baker concludes that a majority of her subjects who remained in a lengthy online relationship, waited longer before meeting in person. This is always a debatable factor, since time is almost as illusive as the chemistry present in relationships; there is no way to measure it. However, according to the subjects in this book, those who used it as a cushion, benefited in the long run.
So, what is your experience with POST?
POST your comments… sorry, too easy…
Turn Your Love into Music
Sep 6th
Click to enter the contest!
Love is sweet sweet music to your ears; especially with a $20 iTunes gift certificate. Enter our contest by telling the story of how you met your special someone online. Maybe you chatted online for a while before you met and discovered you lived a block away from each other. Or maybe he/she looked nothing like their profile but you fell in love anyway. Whatever your story may be we want to hear it! Click here to enter.
Online couples: You are on your own!
Sep 2nd
My grandparents, at the ages of 87 and 89, can still dance the tango and make a point to do so every so often. As a kid I loved to watch them, but as an adult I need to watch them. For me, it’s a visual reminder that good relationships don’t have an expiration date. A “model moment” to use a borrowed term from a podcast about relationship role models I listened to recently.
This podcast gently reassures us that relationship role models aren’t restricted to those of our immediate family, they can come from complete strangers, like OnlineCouples.com to name a random example (wink). Allowing online couples to have exposure to couples from all over the world can only increase the number of “model moments” they experience. Since online dating has only coming about in the last decade or so, there aren’t a lot of examples of how the relationships created on the internet are “supposed” to play out.
In 2006 the Wall Street Journal published an article about the first wave of divorces from online couples. The article talks about the possible negative aftermath of successful online relationships, and the unique set of problems that exist in relationships created online. Included in this list are things like a false sense of intimacy by users mis-representing themselves on their profiles, or users rushing into engagements. Dating sites don’t involve themselves with the couple after they have been married, except to encourage them to write in their stories to use in their marketing strategy. According to the article, they make very certain to protect themselves from any blame of failed marriages by including a clause in the waiver the customer must sign. This is understandable, as they are not promising happily ever after, but a different way to get there. This article isn’t discouraging, but rather legitimizes online couples as the next generation of relationships that are as complex as their traditional predecessors.
While grandparents, parents and other relationships can certainly give us “model moments”, online couples will have to pave the way for themselves in order to deal with the specific challenges that come from an online beginning.
