quote: But, as my dear friend Hobbes put it, long-distance relationships have to become short-distance relationships at some point if they're going to progress.
Hobbes is wise. I somehow missed your quote above but I think that sort of sums up what I was trying to say in the above post.
posted
We were both in our early 20s at the time. I don't think I was any hornier then, than I am now however. I guess I could ask him whether he is or not since I still talk to him ocasionally, and he's used to off the wall questions from me. The internet relationship or non-relationship lasted approximately a year and a half.
The relationship I've had since has lasted four years, though if you'd asked me going in I would never have dreamed it would last so long or work out so well. Since I only talk with him sporadically now, there was one time about a year ago when he kind of asked if I was single, since he's had two or three relationships since that haven't worked out long term. But he's more of a gentleman than I am a lady and since I told him I was still with Steve he's never brought it up again.
AJ
(oh yeah and Steve and I were friends during that year and a half I was corresponding with the other guy, before we started actually seeing each other)
Also farmgirl, why did you want to know about age to begin with?
posted
Strider and I thought we'd add our two cents to the discussion since we have first hand knowledge of both internet dating and long-distance internet dating.
When we started dating i lived (and still do) in southeast Pennsylvania. Strider lived in North Jersey. We were two hours apart. At the very beginning, it didn't seem like that big of a deal, because we didn't know each other that well and of course we had the telephone and internet, especially the internet since that's where we essentially met. Seeing each other for a weekend and then being apart for two weeks wasn't a huge sacrifice or big lonely separation period because we were just starting. It wasn't *fun* leaving each other knowing we wouldn't meet again for awhile, but it was do-able.
As we began to grow closer, though, two hours was like an eternity. A few days would seem like weeks apart and the long-distance thing started to wear. NEVER to the point where we wanted to end it, but it was hard to see each other as often as we would have liked: i.e., a few times a week instead of once a week, or once every two weeks.
Strider decided to leave his job a few months ago and move back to his old college town which is, as luck would have it, a mere 45 minutes from my house. I think we both breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn't be making our marathon commutes anymore.
As for the physical closeness, it's a must. A necessity. I don't know what I would do if I couldn't see him in person, touch him, talk face-to-face with him for an extended period of time. This relationship would not be at the level of intimacy it's at right now if we'd never met. And i mean personal intimacy. You need to see people in real life, in their element or as many elements as you can -- you have to meet their friends, see their home, see how they react to any and all situations. It's so important to have that. Kind of immerse yourself in their reality. And vice versa, obviously.
But the internet is not reality, although it can be real. You can't tell how a guy treats waitpeople on the internet. You can't guess how he holds hands, or kisses. Or what makes him smile or laugh out loud. You NEED that. I can't understand anyone who says they love someone they've never met. You might love all that they've shown you, all that you've garnered from them through their words, but you don't love *them*. THEM is who they are in person. THEM is their behavior, how they react to things, what makes them tick, really. You can't tell those things, in my opinion, through IM conversations.
The internet can be a good starting point, but it has to progress past that. It just has to.
Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have a question for those of you that met on the internet and eventually met in real life etc. Did you know the guy/girl well enough by the time you met them IRL to not be scared to death about what they would think of you when they met you in person?
I'm always one that has been ridiculously insecure about my physical appearance, which is why internet dating has its appeal...and yet the very thought of being interested in someone enough to want to meet them makes me go cold all over just because I am nervous about what they would think of the 'real' me (meaning what I look like and how I am in person). I guess I would have nothing to lose, but this is something that has kept me from letting other people set me up, and it has certainly kept me from letting myself be interested in anyone on the internet. Of course you have the guy that will say "I love you just the way you are" blah blah, but I think I have trouble believing that until I've met them in person. I suppose it's just the meeting that scares me enough to make me shy away from the possibility.
Does that make sense?
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
We forgot Pod and Jaiden. They are a hatrack couple.
I agree that of course you are going to meet that person in real life as soon as you possibly can, when you find someone online that you really care about. I do think you can fall in love with people online. I think how someone treats people who serve them is very indicative of character, yet you can find that out, too, online and in telephone conversations. How they treat their family, and their friends, yes. Those things do tell you a lot about someone.
The physical is a substrate, a platform, like hardware. Love is in the software. Lots and lots of different hardware platforms can support love equally well. Especially to people who are accustomed themselves to dwelling in a theoretical or mental or spiritual universe. People who read and think a lot, in other words, and understand things in terms of the underlying theory, what is actually happening to the best of human understanding, rather than just the surface appearance.
I've said this before but have never been able to make myself understood. The "real" world that we experience is constructed by the mind from the inputs the brain receives, which are electromagnetic impulses in nerves. Our bodies become part of us because of specific structures and routines in the brain. When pilots experience the phenomenon of their airplanes becoming extensions of their bodies, or when a person who wears inverting glasses suddenly sees the world turn right side up again after stumbling around for a few weeks, or when people who use waldos for extended periods of time begin to feel the grasping elements as parts of their own bodies, this shows that the brain is very plastic in the ability to shape perception to agree with new realities. The degree to which we "inhabit" cyberspace is similarly variable. Some of us take to it in such a way that we are as alive and real in this new space as we were in the old. The two spaces have different features and capabilities, but they are essentially the same, in that they allow beings to interact through the medium of electromagnetic impulses.
I think it's just like Narnia realized. It may be true for some people at some times, or for you, perhaps, at all times, that it is not possible to fall in love online, but that doesn't mean it's true for everyone. It does not mean that love is less real. It's like love in threespace, exactly as real as the people involved consider it to be. It's as real as the effect it has on your life and your choices from there on out. As real as who you are.
[ December 19, 2003, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was worried, but not about the way I looked. Not because I look good (I look like a goober, and I believe that official goober rater Ralphie will back me up here) but because Annie knew what I looked like already from my pictures and I do look slightly better than I do in my pictures (I'm the least photogenic person I know). And it wasn't so much nervousness about anything in particular, just about a big event in general.
I think Annie was a bit worried about her looks but I don't understand why, she's completely gorgeous; and here Narnia (and everyone else at the Portland signing) can back me up.
posted
I guess I'm more interested not in whether people were worried beforehand, but about how it actually turned out. Everyone I know has said about meeting someone in real life for the first time, that after at most the first few minutes, they seemed just exactly the same person as they were online.
I had the reverse happen to me once, that someone I thought I knew well in real life (a guy I had worked with for 2 years) turned out to be a real creep when I got to know him online. Once I knew his online incarnation, then the hints to his real self were there in regular life, too. I just had never seen how key they were to his true self. He felt constrained in real life to be nice, it seemed, because he was so physically unimposing a person. When he got online where there were no constraints, his true self showed a whole lot more. He was extremely not nice online.
I think if anything you can learn more about a person online than in real life.
[ December 16, 2003, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: Did you know the guy/girl well enough by the time you met them IRL to not be scared to death about what they would think of you when they met you in person?
I was extremely nervous, but I guess that is always because I hear that guys put such store by physical looks. I already knew I would like him no matter how he looked (he was gorgeous), but since guys are so "visual", I was afraid of disappointing him. That lasted all of about 30 minutes after we left (long enough to get out of the airport). Then things were just like we were old friends.
AJ -- I guess I didn't really clarify why I asked age. I guess it is just because I don't know that I would recommend on-line romance and dating for younger people, especially inexperienced virgins. Too easy to get taken advantage of.
Since I'm older (42), I'm not ashamed to admit that I like the physical part of a relationship, but also that the physical is very secondary to the trust of a true friend and companion. So I thought perhaps the "physical" side you were talking about might have a varying amount of importance in the relationship in accordance with age.
posted
ana kata, I really, really, really love that analogy of love as software and the physical as hardware.
In fact, I really love everything you said in that last post. I am in complete agreement--I think it IS possible to fall in love online, though that isn't the way it happened for me.
About the meeting IRL--when it happened for me, I was scared silly, mainly from insecurity about my looks. But he turned out to be sweet and kind and liked the way I looked, so it all worked out. (I guess I should say I liked the way he looked, too...Looks just were sort of a non-issue with us, though).
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: The physical is a substrate, a platform, like hardware. Love is in the software. Lots and lots of different hardware platforms can support love equally well. Especially to people who are accustomed themselves to dwelling in a theoretical or mental or spiritual universe. People who read and think a lot, in other words, and understand things from in terms of the underlying theory, what is actually happening to the best of human understanding, rather than just the surface appearance.
I've said this before but have never been able to make myself understood. The "real" world that we experience is constructed by the mind from the inputs the brain receives, which are electromagnetic impulses in nerves. Our bodies become part of us because of specific structures and routines in the brain. When pilots experience the phenomenon of their airplanes becoming extensions of their bodies, or when a person who wears inverting glasses suddenly sees the world turn right side up again after stumbling around for a few weeks, or when people who use waldos for extended periods of time begin to feel the grasping elements as parts of their own bodies, this shows that the brain is very plastic in the ability to shape perception to agree with new realities. The degree to which we "inhabit" cyberspace is similarly variable. Some of us take to it in such a way that we are as alive and real in this new space as we were in the old. The two spaces have different features and capabilities, but they are essentially the same, in that they allow beings to interact through the medium of electromagnetic impulses.
I know we've talked about this before ak. As I've said before, you can have an intellectual romance in a way. To use the old Greek words that would be phileo love "brotherly love" as it were. I can concieve of feeling like that for quite a few people on Hatrack now, you included. However I don't think it is a truly romantic or eros type love unless physical interaction body to body is included. Now once we can jack in to a neural network, like sci-fi predicts I will take that objection back.
The examples you gave, the plane, the glasses and the waldo (which I assume is some sort of mechanical arm and not a sex toy that I'm unfamilar with ) are all of people physically interacting with their senses with the peice of equipment. THey are still getting direct sensory information back to their nerves. If you are just reading or words on a screen, there is an extra mental processing step of converting to words and then back to ideas that doesn't occur in the other examples and causes a sensory disconnect.
In a plane a pilot feels the push and pull of gravity on his rear in the seat if nothing else. That pull can be deciving at times, and they have to overcome the sensory while flying on instruments alone.
In a romance, at some point, I surely want to feel someone else's touch on my skin itself as well as other unmentionable places. There is a distinct difference in the way electromagnetic impulses go from my skin to my brain than the way they go from words on the computer screen to my brain.
quote: Did you know the guy/girl well enough by the time you met them IRL to not be scared to death about what they would think of you when they met you in person?
I can't answer this, not like Annie/Hobbes can and others, because Strider and I met before we knew we liked each other a whole bunch. But I don't think I would've been so gung-ho about getting to know him better, IMing him until all hours of the night, if I hadn't met him in person first. And I *had* talked to him online before meeting him...it was meeting him in person that let me see how great he was. His easy-going manner, the way he carried himself, how you could tell he was confident but not cocky in the slightest...I was drawn to him.
I have had plenty of conversations online with people whom I've liked better in real-life than their personas online. I don't think there's ever a guarantee that you're going to meet someone online, then meet them in person, and feel exactly the same way about them. People are just different in both places. Maybe sometimes, rarely, it happens...but I've never seen it. My one good friend, best friend, is a talker. a jabberer. But online, she types in short choppy sentences that don't convey her personality or intelligence level in the slightest. She uses those trendy abbreviations like there's no tomorrow, and she's about as un-trendy as they come.
I just don't think that a person's entire personality can be shown over the internet. Posts: 3516 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote: I don't think there's ever a guarantee that you're going to meet someone online, then meet them in person, and feel exactly the same way about them.
This is what I find incredibly scary about online dating. I guess I'm just too insecure for it.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
The extent of my online relationship with my wife has been a handful of AIM messages within a period of one day several years ago, before I banished AIM from my computer for being so annoying. We still send each other the occasional email, although our dial-up connection at home makes it easier to just call. However, we first started dating before either of us really knew what email (or the Internet, for that matter) was all about. We just didn't form those habits.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just to make an observation, it's going to be a little sucky if hatrack romance turns into hatrack what was I thinking? Maybe that's just me projecting my own glorious leave no survivors behind style of dating onto others, though I can't help thinking of the whole Maui Babe debacle of a few months back. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Just to make an observation, it's going to be a little sucky if hatrack romance turns into hatrack what was I thinking
Did you mean: "Just to make an observation, it's going to be a little sucky if hatrack romance turns hatrack into what was I thinking"? If not I'm confused.
posted
Turns into Hatrack what-was-I-thinking?(regarding the person you met on Hatrack, who is still posting there, but you now dislike intensely.) Clear now? No? Oh, well.
I'm just being a little pessimistic and bitter, Hobbes, as is my want. I really do very badly, have done very badly, with most women that I've dated. My break-ups are always very emotional and, except in the case of one person, never result in any kind of friendship, but rather a kind of low level warfare. Kind of hard to explain if you're not a manic lover. High highs, low lows and all that. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
I think that's one of the biggest things you have to "look out for" with anyone online. Sometimes the differences are subtle or small, sometimes they're significant. Most major differences are pretty much avoidable if you make a point of being honest. ::shrugs a little:: The way my mother puts it: In an online or non-IRL relationship you can know everything about someone and still know really nothing at all at the same time.
And Anne Kate's got it: Foxy and I will have been together for a year now (as of this Saturday!!! ) but we haven't met in person yet because of his deployment and being stuck on base beforehand and my inability to get to Kentucky and back home in time to not get into any trouble with school. He'll be spending at least a week or so with me when he returns so we'll see what happens. For now I just love him to pieces and am praying that he still loves me in person too. (In other words: Heck yeah, I'm nervous, but I wouldn't change it for the world. )
Posts: 1548 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
heh most other languages have a form of "y'all" (second person plural, as a singluar word). I wouldn't JUST say it's the South to blame...
And I'm pretty neutral on internet relationships. Then again, I pretty much surrendered before I even gave any sort of long-distance relationship a try.
Posts: 1000 | Registered: Dec 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I could have sworn we were all 'bots and the only real person here was Hobbes. Possibly Annie, though she might be a bot too.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
By the way, I hearilty endorse Feyd for getting his "y'all" right. "y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural. I learned that in Sunday school so I know it to be true.
posted
bump, for ak. We were talking about this more last night on IM. She had some interesting thoughts on the matter, that I hadn't particularly thought about.
For those of you in internet relationships, do you actually write out actions you would do if you were there? not necessecarily in a smutty sense but something like
*brushes hair out of your face and tucks it behind your ear* (that was an example from ak)
posted
Ditto Leo's post. It just helps to keep things a bit more realistic since, let's face it, a lot of a relationship or just plain communicaiton in general isn't so much words as it is actions.
Posts: 1548 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maybe it is just me then. Before hatrack I would have never dreamed of giving an e-wedgie or *thump* Mack has been a bad influence. I also only really chatted on IM and ICQ with people I already knew IRL. I had this huge mental disconnect between the two mediums.
posted
I was just reading the dating after marriage thread, and I wonder if internet dating after marriage would work. We do have two computers hooked up now. We could sit back to back and steam up the parachat. What d'ya think?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
LOL. With Steve and I we often IM each other even though our computers are about 3 feet away from each other. We both get so engrossed in whatever we are doing on the computer that we don't actually hear when someone is talking to us. So if I'm not just babbling and care whether he hears me or not I generally IM him.
posted
Yeah, I wonder if the people who can't imagine possibly falling for someone online are correlated with those who don't do actions in instant messaging. Though it's not strictly necessary, it does seem to be a part of most online couples' friendship, that they hold hands or sit side by side or have cyber pillow fights or tickle fights or throw water balloons or whatever. And, yes, I had a friend who used to often tuck stray strands of my hair behind my ears for me. I remember someone thwacking me once with a cyber-pillow way back in the old mirc days before instant messaging really took off. Saudade and I made ourselves dragon bodies back in 1998 or some time and flew all around the solar system. A dragon body has lots of advantages, mainly that it doesn't use oxygen for fuel, and of course is much more tolerant of extremes in atmospheric pressure. The parachat room has all sorts of cool futuristic virtual reality games and things in it, of course, as well as endless room upon room down recursive corridors like the Doctor's tardis. I wonder if actually inhabiting cyberspace, with full decor and props and everything makes any sort of difference to the ease with which a person can fall in love there? It's true that not everyone moves in and takes over and feels so comfortable there. I forgot about that. I bet that does make a real difference.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) are all of people physically interacting with their senses with the peice of equipment. THey are still getting direct sensory information back to their nerves. If you are just reading or words on a screen, there is an extra mental processing step of converting to words and then back to ideas that doesn't occur in the other examples and causes a sensory disconnect. ![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
![[Cry]](graemlins/cry.gif)
