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Do You Believe In Online Relationships?

Hachi's input/theory...

How I see it, is that I am divided into two selves: my real self, and my online self. My theory, therefore, is that it's the duty of a user on the internet to keep the two- alter-ego's separated, and not make them one. If you have the alter-egos, the Internet identity, and the real identity, become united and interchangeable, you may end up in a bit of a cyberquandary, to say the least.

But if you know the person well, inside and out, and that person knows you, and you meet face to face and have a fondness for each other in reality, then that is a viable, acceptable exception to my theory.
 
MeiWAkU said:
hi...er...just wondering if anyone here believes in online relationships...(not that i do, just curious,) so please respond. thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)

Yes, of course. There are too many success stories to dismiss this method of dating. Yes, there are bad stories too (but there are bad stories for in-person relationships too).
 
Well, I usually use internet to stay in touch with my friends/ But I have to say that I made a few great friends online. And still keep in touch with them...

Besides, I found my love over the net... :D We met on forum... :D [another one XD]. sometimes it's really hard to lie, net is a small community sometimes. When you are a manga fan f.ex. living in a country when it's not a big industry, like in Poland. Especially the yaoi/yuri [gay/les anime] fans know each other. "Ah! So you are this... !!" :giggle: or rpg fans... XD If you are not a fresh newbie, there are for sure people who know you! everybody knows everybody... :giggle:
 
ON-LINE relationships are great...........so i've heard; i've never been in one but would like to. how bout everyone else?
 
i say on-line relationships should be kept at "friend" level atleast until you meet in person.. that way is fantastic.

also, i love hachiko's sig.. cuz it's azumanga... and that's just the best anime ever made... YEAH! FANTASTIC! GO!
 
It's perfectly safe. You just need an amount of character judgement and common sense. If you use that, you're safer than you are IRL, because they can't hurt you on the net.

Unfortunately, many people have a lack of both, especially the 14 year old girls who meet some pervert and have their stories plastered over the paper, labelling the internet as some kind of Satanic breeding ground of pervertion, when in fact things like that rarely happen.

I met a girlfriend online, we met after 2 months, and were together almost 2 years. We shared a lot of holidays and meetups too.
 
I repost my post in here, cause I think this is the right place for my post

Online!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's rain again, the first rain of the year make me remember the day when i met him. That day, I met him when the rain was starting, and i just know the computer, internet...

With all the online conversations, the relationship between me and him so close.
Every morning, when I open my eyes, the first thing to do is connect to the internet, wake him up by Ctrl+G, Buzz him and let him wake up "Wake up, there are a lot of sunrise". He was smile, reply by Ctrl+G "Ok, I am wake up".

Day after day, everytime when I offline with him, I always buzz him to his rib "you offline look nice than online...". The online, offline between I and him frequency but I always buzz him every morning. Whenever I saw his name in my online list, I feel so good窶ヲ

Three year ago since I met him, he move to new city for working. I am not see his name in online list at the mornhing, but i am buzz him too. When he come back to see me, he buzz to my forehead "You make overflow my offline message list..."

One day, his family announce that he never can online again, he was gone. I am never believe, never accept that true. So, I am try to not online in the morning, I am try to hide my self窶ヲ

In the morning, to remember my first date with him, I am online, I am going to buzz him, but suddenly, his name was appear "Honey, I can not online to you, but I want to say, honey, wake up". Then he buzz me, the small line of text "schedule alert service" was display.
But I don't remember, I was cried, I am cry for me, for him and for all the morning when we online together...
 
well, well, well!!!

It's not the matter of either you believe it in or not.
It's the matter of if you can love the person virtually connected.
 
I've had online realtionships...although we also spoke on the phone...I really loved this guy...he was my best friends for a few months befoerhand, but it didn't work out...he ended up realizing he didn't care for me as much and left me for somone else...who happens to live farther away..oh well..I can't expect things to turn out the way I want them to, but I'm still gonna meet the dude in March of next year...maybe it is better to stay as friends..cuz talking to him will never be the same...I basically lost my best friend...I'm not saying online relationships don't work, but they're probably the best idea...
 
SacredBlue said:
I find being with a girl in person is much funner, but to each his own;)

Definitely!! It makes you feel so good to be around the person you are in love with. Talking with them as well is really good as well.

We are not saying your stupid. You asked for peoples opinions and thats what you got lol.

I don't really believe in online relationships myself. It is very rare that they work out in the end because most of the time you never see the other person, and physical contact/ seeing the person in real life are really important for a relationship.
 
I'd say that meeting up with someone in a crowded, ill-lit bar or dance club is also pretty dangerous - due to the internet having arisen from a combination of military and educational institutions that created the technology, most of the people on it initially had links to higher education and/or government (and the army) - so even when there were only a few hundred users, I don't think the population of psychotics or stalkers or pedophiles was necessarily disproportionately high compared to the general populus.

In any case, I've been married over four years now to someone I met on the internet (albeit not via a dating site; it was intp.org). It had to be an online relationship for much of the time due to the long distance (transatlantic) involved, but of course the only way to confirm that neither of us were deceiving the other in any way came from a cautious meeting in person, in public.

Caution should be exercised even if you really think you know the other person. There's a practical checklist (that I don't agree with 100% but anyway) here that is interesting to think about ("The Final Checklist"):

http://www.loveadvice.com/ARTICLES/QUALIFY.HTM
 
Online relationships are perfectly fine, as long as you have the means to communicate in more ways than just instant messaging. The talk and video options in most messengers today are great. Two of the four "serious" relationships I've had in my life were online, and one of those was definitely the girl I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with. It's been a year, and I'm still trying to get her back (the breakup was my fault, not due to online dating).

Online friends, on the other hand, are great to have regardless of the type of communication. My best friend in the world is an online friend (HI STEF!!). We plan on meeting at Otakon 2005. And while it's cool to talk to and meet good online friends, there's nothing wrong with having a purely IM buddy, either.

Conclusion? It's each individual's decision. But someone shouldn't be deemed "geek" or "desperate" just because they date someone over the internet, or have an online friend.
 
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Confessions of an Old School Online Romeo/Uber Geek:

Every girlfriend I've had since 1991, I met online. Hell, since then every girl I went out with I met online. I ran off to Wisconsin (from Mississippi) to be with a girl I met online (big mistake) and I met my wife online (turned out great). All this was back in the pre-WWW days of telnet bbs's. If I was single again, the only way I would try to meet women would be online.

Be careful. Open yourself to failure (risk is the only way to succeed) and do as your heart demands. Especially if you're young. The internet is far superior to bars and clubs for introverts. In fact, it's made introverts almost obsolete - at least in cyberspace. Nowadays, the internet is a hell of a lot better than it was back in the early 90's. Back then the net was probably 90-95% male.
 
I have a problem, i've met a cute Italian penpal and he's very nice! Now i think i may have fallen in love with him but i'm not sure if we can proceed from a friend to more than friend. It's because we may not met face to face until year 2006 the earliest. So how can i know if there's anything i can do to make a progress with him? Phone calls are expensive and i don't know what he thinks about me too!
 
Ultimately, I think you can meet very nice people online but, I don't think an online relationship ship really works. There is just no physical substitute, no matter how much you talk to a person, chat, phone, whatever. Well, maybe I just don't know, but still to me having the person beside me is very important.
 
Utsuki said:
I have a problem, i've met a cute Italian penpal and he's very nice! Now i think i may have fallen in love with him but i'm not sure if we can proceed from a friend to more than friend. It's because we may not met face to face until year 2006 the earliest. So how can i know if there's anything i can do to make a progress with him? Phone calls are expensive and i don't know what he thinks about me too!

Hmm, I'm not really good when it comes to this kind of things(since i failed horribly in every relationship I got into(love-online or RL, friends, siblings, parents-son, etc etc) but i can't leave my fellow Malaysian alone right :) .
Well, the only way to know what he thinks about you is to ask him directly,(confess to him? 😌), but there's probably other way too. But I've to agree with Duo in this matter. And everything have been said in earlier posts. Whatever you chooses to do, I'll be rooting for you and *points at your sig* 😌 Ganbare

Rio
-Sorry for the bad grammar and spellings
 
well, I have NO experience with online relationships apart from chatfriends and penpals...

Anyway, my opinion, I believe that you can build very good friendships online, but to develop a relationship based on love I believe that you need to meet the person physically.
I would never fall in love with someone "online" without meeting him first "for real."

One of my collegues met her boyfriend online, but it only developed into a proper relationship AFTER meeting one another first - before that, it was merely a good friendship.
 
NO! You might be able to meet someone online, but you have to spend time with them if you're going to have true feelings for them. Otherwise it's just a fantasy.
 
Brooker said:
NO! You might be able to meet someone online, but you have to spend time with them if you're going to have true feelings for them. Otherwise it's just a fantasy.

I'm not trying to be an ***, but it reeeaaally annoys me that there's no "in my opinion" or "I think" in your post, because it's far from fact. Love is different for each and every person, and while you may never be able to "love" someone unless you can physically touch them, there's plenty of people who can. I met the love of my life over the internet, and my feelings were (and still are) genuine. It's not your place to say whether my love (or anyone else's) is fantasy or reality.

Granted, I will say that once you meet the person, your relationship will undoubtedly grow, but it's very possible to love someone over the internet.
 
Japanimaniac said:
I'm not trying to be an ***, but it reeeaaally annoys me that there's no "in my opinion" or "I think" in your post

I'm sure you'll be able to get over it. The question was, "Do YOU believe in online Relationships," and my answer is NO!. I'm not going to preface everything I say with "in my opinion" or "I think" because, if I'm saying it, it's pretty obvious that it's what I think and my opinion. I stand by what I said and I don't think I stepped out of line.

It's not your place to say whether my love (or anyone else's) is fantasy or reality.

Did I say anything about YOUR love? But if you haven't met the person, you might as well be falling in love with some 50 year old truck driver who claims to be a cute 20 year old Asian girl, a Final Fantasy character, or Santa Claus. But, hey, feel free to fall in love with whomever or whatever you like. That's your business. But this thread was asking my thoughts on the subject, so I gave them. Don't get too bent out of shape that some guy you'll never meet (me) has a view that differs from yours.
 
Brooker said:
But if you haven't met the person, you might as well be falling in love with some 50 year old truck driver who claims to be a cute 20 year old Asian girl, a Final Fantasy character, or Santa Claus.

There's so much stuff in instant messengers today, namely video and audio, that allows you to be as close to that person as possible. They're basically phones now. It is possible to develope feelings for someone by instant messaging alone, but my point is that if both parties are serious, then it's not that big of a problem to find out whether you're talking to a freak or not.

And oftentimes it's also possible to develope a relationship that is much deeper and more meaningful if you are not initially physically together. Not sure how to explain it without sounding sappy...but it's kind of like, the anticipation of being with that person. It's exciting, in a way. And excitement is one of the major ways to keep a relationship alive.

Oh, I wanted to say that I hadn't meant to attack your post. I know it sounded that way, and I appologize. Caught up in the moment and all that, I guess. I fully respect your opinion, and had no intention to pass it off as inferior. We simply have two conflicting opinions.
 
Even 10 years ago when there weren't instant messengers with video and audio, I got close enough to someone for us to meet, hit it off, and have him move across the country. We were together for a long time and the only reason it failed was because I did something really stupid. :eek:

You can either take advantage of the internet, hide behind it, and lie about who you are or you can use it to let it all hang out and be yourself because there's no awkwardness that sometimes comes with talking with someone in person.

Anyway, every person is different, every relationship is different. One thing with internet relationships, is that you have to have a very good judge of character and that's one thing I have, I think. I've met several people in real life that I first talked with online, and none of them turned out to be freaks(in the bad sense, anyway).

It's just like choosing your mate based on nationality only. To me, it's just limiting yourself. Leave yourself open. Cautiously open, but open.
 
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