online to offline relationships

how do we move from online to offline relationships and what are the challenges that affect us in this transition?  Last post I talked about virtual body language & how online communicating can be enhanced to discover whether someone is a good match.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin

In This Virtual Life blog I found a post called Avatars and Body Language which elaborates on this issue:

astute observers of human interaction eventually notice that in any conversation there are two lines (sometimes more!) of communication taking place simultaneously between two peope: that which is said, and that which is implied. For the purposes of this post, sub-text refers to implied speech.
However, like emoticons, body-language (if you can call it that) in Second Life is highly distorted. While one is able to convey more information — it takes a really clever mind and quick hot-keying to make an avatar convey even a fraction of the body language we use in our day-to-day lives. There is also the problem that because of the lack of range for body movement, subtleties are either exaggerated or outright ignored making it difficult to separate the noise from the signal. Where emoticons lack information, it is in my opinion that Second Life can sometimes add too much irrelevant information. Like the fabled, “lol;” not everyone is keeling over with laughter at your joke.
Many people who consider themselves less-than-socially adequate tend to find strong bonds and meaningful relationships in Second Life. This could be because we’re now expanding our ability to communicate online with degrees of (clumsy and limited) sub-text… via proxy. It could also be because that proxy is a projection of our ideal selves, which in turn expands the bubble of lies that protect our true natures in real-world situations.

“We invent the world through language. The world occurs through language.” Mal Pancoast

Omega Point, A blog by Catherine Winters in a post called Emotional Cues in Virtual Spaces states:

While frequently used to great effect in prose, text is a notoriously poor medium for conveying the emotional metadata humans rely on for face-to-face conversation. How do we know exactly how to interpret someone else’s words, stripped of their emotional context? What was intended as a simple request for information may be taken by one reader as a joke, while another may see it as a personal attack.

“If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka.”Dennis Miller

I also found an old Guardian article Virtual relationships: Logging on to love by Henry Singer where he says:

Chat seduces one, however unsuspectingly, to share one’s thoughts immediately with another person. I had experienced this when I first logged on to AOL and started talking with someone called punklove13. (Everyone in chat has a ‘handle’, or nickname.) I found myself effortlessly sharing intimacies with her even though I later learned that she was nearly 20 years younger than me. According to Sue Thomas, director of the trAce Online Writing Community based at the University of Nottingham Trent, the medium creates, quite literally, a meeting of minds.
‘There’s a feeling of connectedness online that’s not just, “Oh, I’m getting on well with this person.” There’s a deeper level, a moment of real intensity. I call it a mind meld.’  Now relationships, and even a form of sex that practitioners find unusually satisfying, are available online. And because those new to chatrooms assume – falsely – that a relationship over a computer is only ‘virtual’ (as if sharing one’s thoughts and feelings is somehow not ‘real’), it is easy to see why so many people are sliding into affairs.

“Whether you meet someone offline or online, email and other forms of online communication now play host to some of the most crucial interactions in the early stages of a relationship.” Amanda Lenhart

The post Reality bytes: When virtual relationships and real life collide by Aimee Heckel

Which also brings up the question of the legitimacy of online relationships. Can you build a connection without the physical component?
Increasingly more people are, as is evidenced by the growing number of geographically separated marriages, according to Cindy H. White, a communications associate professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
White says this reflects a shift in the concept of intimacy. Physical connection is being replaced by cognitive and knowledge-based relationships. Instead of sharing space together, people share thoughts, ideas and feelings — despite research that shows that children need physical touch to develop healthily, and that the majority of communication is non-verbal.
Mikayla thinks online relationships progress faster and get deeper than face-to-face ones, because the Internet wipes away social expectations and barriers.
No doubt, many people have less inhibition online, according to Beth Lonergan, a psychologist at the Mental Health Center of Boulder County. But that can also turn the online community into an electronic “Lord of the Flies,” with no social norms or controls to promote “acceptable” behavior, she says. People don’t have to be consistently accountable for what they do, including only showing selective sides of themselves, Lonergan says.

“The texture of online relationships is totally different,” Nan McCarthy

In a comment by rayne titled Virtual Intimacy some sage advice about assessing online relationships:

Perhaps it’s years of experience with working with people at a degree of removal, either through the telephone or through faxes or through email that I don’t believe one’s closeness is measured any differently. Does this person follow through on their word? is what they say (text, graphic, voice, in the flesh) believable and consistently accurate? Do they treat me with the same courtesy I extend to them? Do I feel comfortable disclosing anything personal to them?

I’d like to leave you with a funny video with Dawn French where she explains the connection between farts and relationships.  Enjoy….

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1. danger of virtual when there is not enough real
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