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Can you fall in love online?

I think it is an illusion until you meet face to face and spent time together in person. Can you fall in love with someone you met online sure...but thinking you are inlove with someone with out ever meeting them in person...it is an illusion. IMHO.
 
poor choice of words on my part.

That without the soul and subtlety of a physical tangible presence, it isn't true love for the person, but love for something in one's own imagination.

To call the feelings of an internet relationship "love" is sad because it is lacking these important parts of love. It's a expression used by a person who either doesn't really know what love is, or who craves the idea of being in love so much, that this approximation they choose to believe is equal in merit and credibility to true love.


It is not by any means a complete part, but I think you are getting to know the most important part. The contents of that person's mind.

Although my GF is inordinately fond of telling me all of the things that could have been wrong with me when we finally met that would have turned her off to me.:brickwall:
 
That without the soul and subtlety of a physical tangible presence, it isn't true love for the person, but love for something in one's own imagination.

To call the feelings of an internet relationship "love" is sad because it is lacking these important parts of love. It's a expression used by a person who either doesn't really know what love is, or who craves the idea of being in love so much, that this approximation they choose to believe is equal in merit and credibility to true love.
I agree with you. Almost five years ago when I was doing my bachelors degree I was a member of a website which had various different groups on it, and my main group on that site had about 15-20 regular posters who didn't talk about anything serious and focused on joking and nonsense. But one day two of the regulars, people I considered friends, revealed that they had been communicating through email for weeks and had developed some sort of connection, and even though they hadn't met they were in love and were committed to one another.

On the face of things I congratulated them and had no problems with their decision so long as they were happy, but secretly I was thinking how dumb they were being because what they were feeling wasn't real love and when they met they would probably have no chemistry. And they weren't even going to meet up for a long time because she lived in Israel and he lived on the west coast of America, and neither one of them had enough money for the trip. I thought they were fools.

But if there's one thing in this universe that possibly suggests the presence of god it is the pervasion of irony in every facet of existence. Six months later I received an email from a female friend from that same group which triggered something in me. I knew her from that website for two years, we talked through email but never anything serious, we only ever joked and discussed our interests; I didn't know what she looked like, what her voice sounded like, I only knew her real name because it was on the header of the emails. In two years I had learned almost nothing factual about her, but I knew almost everything about who she was inside. And though I tried to deny it to myself for weeks, I had somehow fallen in love with her.

The story is complicated by the fact that she had started seeing someone, but long story short is that over the following three months I confessed to how I felt, turns out she felt the same way, we met, and even though she wasn't exactly the same on the surface the core of her being was almost a perfect match. We were in a relationship for almost two years, and though we're not together now that's got to do with a series of stupid mistakes that couples in their early 20s are prone to making.

As for that other couple, I don't keep in contact with them anymore but the status updates on the gmail accounts suggest that they're still going after almost five years.

So I agree with you, claiming to be in love with someone you never actually met is sad, until it happens to you and you realise that it's not so impossible at all. Then it's sad because you're stuck halfway around the world from the most important person in your life. Now that's sad.

Bah, I need a humbug!
 
I met my wife online. Neither of us was looking to hook up, we just started talking in a Star Trek chat room and it grew into a friendship, then love. I loved her long before I was ever able to meet her in person.

We've been married now for 9 years and have a six year old son. Since at first all we had was chatting, we got to know each other from the inside out.

I have heard some horror stories though. We were lucky that we were both honest.
 
I met my wife online. Neither of us was looking to hook up, we just started talking in a Star Trek chat room and it grew into a friendship, then love. I loved her long before I was ever able to meet her in person.

We've been married now for 9 years and have a six year old son. Since at first all we had was chatting, we got to know each other from the inside out.

I have heard some horror stories though. We were lucky that we were both honest.

So does that mean your avatar can say he literally owes his life to Star Trek?:lol:
 
I met my current girlfriend on line, but we chatted strictly as friends for a few months before meeting in person, and even then were simply friends for a few more months until one fateful night when we... well... for lack of a better description ended up randomly having sex.

It just sort of happened all at once and the relationship progressed from there.
 
Love is one of those words that is hard to define, and people use it to describe an array of different warm feelings. Coupled with the fact that those feelings will often have deceptive or imaginative layers, I feel it makes discussions about love quite difficult.

What I would hope to discourage is allowing the difficulty of the definition to erode the truth of what love is. And not see people settling for something approximating love, but still happy to call it love.

And there's a saying that you only know true love when you have found it, and when you do it makes all feelings before it pale in comparison, even if you called those love at the time. And not everybody will find love.

Which all in all is vague enough for the word to retain a pervasive element of mystery, that allows each of us to personalise it.

But the flip side to this is that for better or worse, almost any warm feeling gets to be called love. And we each define love as whatever the warmest feeling is we have ever felt, whether that occurs while reading text on a computer screen, or something more tangible.

I guess what we are seeing in this thread is just that.



edited to clarify: While I don't accept falling in love online, I don't deny that the internet is a valid way of finding people who you may be compatible with, who may at some point meet in real life, and who may eventually fall in love.
 
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I met my wife online. Neither of us was looking to hook up, we just started talking in a Star Trek chat room and it grew into a friendship, then love. I loved her long before I was ever able to meet her in person.

We've been married now for 9 years and have a six year old son. Since at first all we had was chatting, we got to know each other from the inside out.

I have heard some horror stories though. We were lucky that we were both honest.

So does that mean your avatar can say he literally owes his life to Star Trek?:lol:

Seeking out new life forms taken a whole new way :p

I believe that you can find a person you could end up loving over the internet. As to actually falling in love online before meeting in person is a lot more iffy, but then again I do have a friend who had been chatting with a girl he had met online for many months, first online, then phone calls (he nearly started wallpapering his room with international call cards) and then he's moved over there to be with her. How it'll go in the long run, I don't know, but it looks positive at least.
 
Love is one of those words that is hard to define, and people use it to describe an array of different warm feelings. Coupled with the fact that those feelings will often have deceptive or imaginative layers, I feel it makes discussions about love quite difficult.

What I would hope to discourage is allowing the difficulty of the definition to erode the truth of what love is. And not see people settling for something approximating love, but still happy to call it love.

And there's a saying that you only know true love when you have found it, and when you do it makes all feelings before it pale in comparison, even if you called those love at the time. And not everybody will find love.

Which all in all is vague enough for the word to retain a pervasive element of mystery, that allows each of us to personalise it.

But the flip side to this is that for better or worse, almost any warm feeling gets to be called love. And we each define love as whatever the warmest feeling is we have ever felt, whether that occurs while reading text on a computer screen, or something more tangible.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Love exists in even the smallest gesture. It's in the person's thought patterns embodied into text, or in a picture of themselves, or the sound of their voice on the telephone, or the gestures they make to a friend or acquaintance.... or to any or all of these at once.

The warmth and good feeling they associate to them, and the personal connection they make with that feeling, all leads to an association with an emotional label called "love." Those feelings, although one might see them as inferior to Love™ as defined by any other one person, are nevertheless no less valid. And it's the fact that people are willing to consider them as less important or valid compared to the standards of love they set themselves, that leads to much perceived hurt by the original person. That, combined with the perceived barrier to communication that some may think the Internet has compared to other forms of communication (some don't see it that way - see previous posts), that makes the whole process even more difficult.

Love is a two way thing. You give as much as you take, but some people seem to give more, and others seem to demand more. People experience what they feel is "love" via whatever medium or channel or outlet (see above) but sometimes it is incompatible with the object of their desire's feeling of what Love™ is, leading to feelings that either one's love is unrequited, or inappropriate, or insufficient. And that, ultimately, leads to feelings of defeat, sadness, and regret.

Really, I don't know if I have much more to say about that, my knowledge and experience of love being so limited and all.


While I don't accept falling in love online, I don't deny that the internet is a valid way of finding people who you may be compatible with, who may at some point meet in real life, and who may eventually fall in love.
I'll accept that finding a connection online is but the first step. From reading the other posts in this thread, is something that can work. But it looks like it requires a lot of patience and work, and it seems an awful lot of luck.
 
For someone whose knowledge and experience of love is limited, you are eloquent and insightful on the subject. :bolian:
 
Jadzia is right about one thing, though. Some people may never find love, but this may be either the level, kind and character of love that others want to experience, or even the definitions of love that they themselves want to feel is true love.

Yes, it is a skewed world view, but it is how I see things.
 
I met my wife in a poetry chat channel on IRC. We knew more about each other's poetry than we did about each others' lives, until Valentine's Day came along. This year will be our 14th Valentine's Day.

I think my love for her is so deep explicitly because of the internet. Because we are writers who came to know each other first through language, the internet was the perfect medium.

But remember, love changes everything. There's no Ctrl+Z. make sure you are willing to move to Europe, or stop toying with the lady.

p.s. I hope she's in your age group.
 
^^^ That's a really sweet story, and I agree with everything else you said. I'm glad you found someone who shares one of your passions! :)
 
These posts are fascinating to read and argue both sides of an issue I've been throwing around in my own mind since I first posted this thread.

To clarify: I am not in love with the woman I've been chatting with. I was merely posing a question to stimulate discussion. That said I did experience strong feelings that motivated me to explore the situation further. Yet there was part of me that was guarded because I began to wonder about the woman's sincerity or her maturity. Some of the things she said seemed a little too familiar a little too quickly. I still felt a strong emotional response yet a part of me remained wary.

On the hand I've been emailing with someone else and I somehow feel better about my interaction with her primarily because I'm not hearing certain sentiments expressed insincerely and too quickly. It seems more honest and genuine. And yet here, too, I find myself experiencing an emotional response.

Wow! I can't recall ever being caught between two women before! :lol:
 
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