| Username |
Post |
| SAgirl |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 02:30 AM
i want some comments from u guys about whether online relationship works out or not?
if it has worked out for some of u then let me know how ..........nyone who has distant relationship and has made it work out then let me know toooo.
thanks guys
bye
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| Brit |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 03:08 AM
I had one friend whom I chatted for nearly 8 months. When she came to the U.K. I felt there is no distance between us. We knew each other from chat & it was really nice to get going.
Your well wisher.
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| Nep_Gal |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 06:53 AM
Girl,
You most be crazy ;) I personally don't believe in long distance (online) relationship.
Well, may be for some, but not me.
Good Luck!
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| psychodreamer |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 11:43 AM
you should not be serious about online relationship...thats what i think...i hope there are people around you in real world to make friendship with...
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| its possible |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 11:55 AM
i know a case like one Brit says.
A close friend of mine went into relation with a girl and they knew eachother from chat. But i think the reason why they got into relation is the big admiration and respect both gave to eachother when they started a cyber friendship. After a friendship of 18 months, they met eachother (this was the first time they saw eachother, they never traded pics during their 18 month cyber friendship). they found eachother much more worth than a freindship. now they live together together.
In my opinion the biggest thing that makes people join is the respect they have to eachother. And crazy stuffs like physical appearance and chemistry does not interfere much into cyber friendship.So, i suld say- although very unlikely, we cannot rule out the possibility of good relation via net.
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| psychodreamer |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 12:33 PM
yea that is also case....i agree
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| Bhenda |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 12:35 PM
But you could be talking to a rapist, child molester, drug addict, alcoholic etc etc, just be careful.
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| psychodreamer |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 01:13 PM
i agree to you to bhenda...
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| risk |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 01:29 PM
its not a good idea. You might be fooled by the other side of internet. You may be chatting with the same sex. You can not trust on written contents only. After few months you may come to know that you wasted your time for nothing. You could have used that time to have relation to the person around you.
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| NepaliKeti |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 01:43 PM
I agree with Bhenda as well.
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| Mr . T |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 03:35 PM
it's doen't matter unless both of you are comitted to each other.you'll be more cole to eachother than being together,but if you haven't seen that person before then ,then,then,what?good luck
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| Mr . T |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 03:36 PM
it's doen't matter unless both of you are comitted to each other.you'll be more close to eachother than being together,but if you haven't seen that person before then ,then,then,what?good luck
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| Hehe |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 03:48 PM
Having online relationship is like buliding castle in the sky. You never know when your castle collapses and falls down. Then,reality bites u right there! Online relationship might work if both parties are being honest to each other. When they lie, relationship gets putrid.
Good luck to all supporters!
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| Bijuli |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 05:01 PM
Just wanted to share a paper I wrote for a class:
(I) Introduction
We know from living our own lives that relationships are integral part of our lives. In a way a human life could be defined as the aggregate of relationships. It is because of the existence of relationship that we are called social beings and that is why our actions, to some extent, depend on others but it also determines the actions of the people around us. These actions affect us and shape our lives. In a sense, performing these actions is what living a life is. Moreover, a romantic relationship is an intense relationship that may have passion, intimacy and commitment as its components (Stenberg). These relationships move us emotionally and we spend a great deal of time constructing them.
We know from observation that in the past, relationships were built and sustained solely via face-to-face interactions. This was when the communication mediums were limited. Today, with the technological advancements, we are blessed with much more efficient mediums of communication to facilitate our relationships, most importantly, the Internet.
The present day Internet represents a striking evolution from its barbaric beginnings in the 1960s as a medium to connect academic institutions. It was eventually used by the US defensive facilities in the event of war. It was once understood as a valuable component of US national security. With the advent of sister technologies, the internet has blossomed into an international social microcosm. Now it is possible to create online communities, social networks, conduct business transactions and seek future marital partners on the Internet.
With the emergence of Internet websites, newsgroups, bulletin boards, chat rooms, and freely downloadable messaging software, there are now a multitude of platforms in which an individual can explore and express information, whether that be sharing a tasteful recipe or expressing different aspects of sexuality. We may know this from our own experiences. And all these pretty much without the fear of embarrassment or rejection. This freedom of expression of different aspects of sexuality has given the web surfers a step ahead of the mundane relationships where free expression of sexuality is still difficult. Now they can envision an intense romantic cruse just by surfing the seemingly inanimate and impersonal global matrix of computers. And this may be the reason for the increasing number of browsers on the Internet everyday. A recent survey by Internet demographers Nielsen Media/ Commerce Net found that number of web surfers over the age of 16 in the US and Canada is 78.6 million as compared to the global surfing by 120.5 million people and growing. Nua Internet Surveys did a study in 2001 concluding that there will be one billion users of the Internet by 2005. Another recent study by Ziff-Davis Market Intelligence reports that 61% of all American homes that have a personal computer are also currently connected to the Internet, a dramatic 30% increase from their January 1998 market study (Niccolai, 1998). Analyzing this escalating hip of virtual space and cyber-relationships, it is absolutely clear that interpersonal relationships have metamorphosed over time. In the past, relationships were built and sustained solely via face-to-face interaction but now it has come a long way to be complemented by this “social technology” that is creating a new genre of interpersonal relationships. But are these relationships safe, how are these online involvements going to affect our offline self, should we not know more about these relationships before we knit one up for ourselves?
CONTD...
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| Bijuli |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 05:02 PM
CONTD...
(II) Literature Review
Many researches have been done in the recent years to satisfy the quest of the social scientists in understanding the nature of Internet based relationships, popularly referred to as the Online Relationship (OR). The concept of OR and moreover finding sex partners over the Internet first came to the attention of public health officials after a syphilis outbreak in San Francisco. It was surprisingly traced back to an America Online discussion forum (chat room) used predominantly by men who have sex with men or simply MSM (Klausner, Wolf, Fischer-Ponce, & Zolt, 2000; San Francisco Department of Public Health, 1999).
Shaw (1997) says that individuals initially meeting online will eventually meet then in person, about 75% and some of them engage in sexual activity as well. His findings were further supported by the research done by Eric G Benotsch, Seth Kalichman and Maggi Cage. Their study done on Men who have met sex partners via the Internet wanted to see the prevalence of Internet use as a means of meeting sexual partners. Their subjects were 609 men attending a gay pride festival in Atlanta, GA. They were recruited to complete self-administered surveys. They were asked their age, years of education, income, ethnicity, home zip code, whether they self-identified as gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. Participants were asked to indicate how often they visited the gay-oriented computer services/Internet bulletin boards. Their response choices ranged from 1 (never) to 4 (often). They were also asked to answer yes or no to whether they ever had sex with someone they met over the Internet.
Four hundred and thirty men (73%) said that they visited gay-oriented web sites on the Internet and of them two hundred and one (34%) reported that they have had sex with someone they initially met over the Internet. In their study it was also noted that men meeting sexual partners over the Internet were having sex with more male partners in the previous 6 months (M = 8.38, SD = 19.39) as compared with men not meeting sexual partners through the cyberspace medium (M = 3.13, SD = 4.99), Z = 6.65 (Mann-Whitney test), p < 0.001.
An article by Robin-Marie Shepherd and Robert J. Edelmann talks about the cyclical relationship between internet dependence and social phobia. They state several aspects of this relationship. According to them
•Virtual interactions are easier or less threatening than real interaction and thus social phobics are attracted to the internet.
•This benefit puts social phobics at greater risk of excessive use/dependence.
•This excessive use/dependence increases social isolation and damages real-world relationships.
They see more serious long term costs for social phobics associated with the Internet dependency, as compared to the few short term benefits.
This study is somewhat contradicted by the research done by McKenna and Bargh (1998). They carried out a study with the participants of the Internet user groups devoted to stigmatized aspects of identity. These included the potentially embarrassing aspects of the self as homosexuality, bondage, fringe political groups and therefore kept secret even from close family members and cronies. They state that the anonymity of Internet interactions facilitate these individuals to seek others sharing the same stigmatized aspect of themselves. This would have been quite difficult in non-anonymous real life. McKenna and Bargh found that the more Internet group members participated in the group by posting messages in the forums, the more they incorporated the previously taboo aspect of identity into their self-concept. This resulted in these individuals reporting greater feelings of self-acceptance of the stigmatized aspect. They also had more probability to convey closer friends and family members about this previously hidden self-aspect.
In another study by Bargh, McKenna, and Fitzsimons (2002) they concluded that individuals tend to express more aspects of their true selves when they interact with others on the Internet than when they interact in person. For this they did a laboratory study comparing stranger dyads who communicated either face to face or in an online chat room. The results of this study indicated that with online interactions individuals were better able to present important genuine self qualities than were those who interacted face to face.
In another study done by Katelyn Y A McKenna, Amie S Green and Pamela K Smith, sixty-two female and 42 male respondents were surveyed on their online sexual activities, what initially motivated them to engage in cybersex, and why they continued, as well as about the role that their online erotic activities played in their lives and how they felt such activity may have affected them. As concurrent with their predictions, the major reason the respondents gave for seeking the Internet to express one’s sexuality were the offline relationship’s safety concerns (reported by 31% of the survey respondents), and the desire for frequent and convenient sexual outlets (24%). The unexpected third reason as reported by 12% of the respondents was the desire to expand their sexual knowledge and repertoire (often for the sake of improving or enlivening an offline sexual relationship).
CONTD...
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| Bijuli |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 05:03 PM
CONTD...
(III) Statement of the Problem
Online relationships do help forming better offline relationships.
(IV) Results
It is quite hard to be conclusive about whether or not online relationships help individuals with their offline relationships. We know from observation that individuals have complex and multiple self-schemas and salient identities, as well as numerous possible selves that can be situationally activated. An individual may indeed feel that the self is better (more openly and comfortably) expressed on the Internet. However, when this online self becomes important to an individual’s identity, the process of identity transformation may not really extend to the offline self. On the other hand, as some research shows, especially that of McKenna and Bargh, online relationships could be a good way of accepting the self by knowing that there are others with the same perspectives and interests who are ready to share it with the world and this may help them to no longer feel apprehended sharing it with closer friends and family, thereby transforming the offline relationships. So to some extent it seems that online relationships do help out the real life relationships.
(V) Analysis and Conclusion
I think the comparison between the online relationship and the offline relationship can be based on various factors, primarily,
•How relationships begin and end
•How the self is presented
•How the conflict is managed
According to classic motivational theorists, such as Lewin and Atkinson, all behavior is motivated in some way. In that sense we all seek those relationships which reward us. And we prefer the relationships we associate with rewards. Myers in 1993 reported that the idea of psychological reward as a determinant for positive outcomes in a relationship can be further dissected into two different concepts, the concept of minimax and equity. These two concepts address the extent of finding the relationships fulfilling, bearing the emotional taxing. The concept of minimax suggests that the relationships that give us more than they take persist. Equity implies that people prefer relationships with the output proportional to the input. So whether it is online or offline relationship both begins with the same set of basic quest. Thus, it is very likely that understanding the online needs of a relationship will aid to understand the needs of an offline relationship as well.
From our observation we know that as a face-to-face romantic relationship develops, the partners are geographically intimate and in this sense physical attractiveness and attitudinal similarity become the primarily important factors determining if that initial interaction continues to a growing relationship. It is evident that physical attractiveness is often gives the push to the initial interest in wanting to continue the initial interaction. These continued interactions enable partners to establish a sense of rapport and look for similarities between themselves. So initial attractiveness, building a rapport, finding common attitudes, and then revealing intimate self-details leads to forming a successful face to face relationship. Likewise, Internet romantic relationships also have the same set of developmental factors, the sequence of it being a little different. First the two potential partners come to know one another through capricious discussion on online chats or discussion forums. This is the initial interaction. Now if the chat partners find one another interesting, the topics of discussion can turn toward personal and intimate matters. This will help create a powerful rapport between the users. Then the users may meet and reveal their physical self to each other. But this may not be a crucial relationship determinant as the ability to know someone through intense mutual self-disclosure and intimate sharing of private worldviews becomes much more important. Online relationships are based on stronger/more prominent factors like accepting each other as they are through intense mutual self-disclosure. Even though the factors to form the relationship are identical, the sequence and the weight that they carry are different. So I think online relating will give a proper foundation for building an offline relationship.
CONTD...
|
| Bijuli |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 05:04 PM
CONTD...
Bibliography
•Yitzchak M Binik. “Sexuality and the Internet: Lots of hypotheses--only a little data.” The Journal of Sex Research. Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 8
•Katelyn Y A McKenna; Amie S Green; Pamela K Smith. “Demarginalizing the sexual shelf.” The Journal of Sex Research. Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 27
•Mary McFarlane. “Examining Behavior in Cyberspace.” The Journal of Sex Research. Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 16
•Brian S Mustanski. “Getting wired: Exploiting the Internet for the collection of valid sexuality data.” The Journal of Sex Research Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 26
•Mark Griffiths. “Sex on the Internet: Observations and implications for Internet sex addiction.” The Journal of Sex Research. Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 26
•Eric G Benotsch, Seth Kalichman, Maggi Cage. “Men who have met sex partners via the Internet: Prevalence, predictors, and implications for HIV prevention.” Archives of Sexual Behavior. Volume 31, issue 2 (April 2002) : 12
•Robin-Marie Shepherd; Robert J Edelmann. “Caught in the Web” Psychologist Volume 14, issue 10 (October 2001) : 6
•William A Fisher, Azy Barak. “Internet pornography: A social psychological perspective on Internet sexuality” The Journal of Sex Research Volume 38, issue 4 (November 2001) : 29
•Keith J Anderson. “Internet use among college students: An exploratory study” Journal of American College Health Volume 50, issue 1 (July 2001) : 29
•John Marshall Townsend. “Physical Attractiveness and the Theory of Sexual Selection” Archives of Sexual Behavior Volume 30, issue 5 (October 2001) : 3
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| Bijuli |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 05:04 PM
CONTD...
This is supported by the research done by Katelyn Y A. McKenna, Amie S Green and Pamela K Smith. When asked what initially motivated the subjects to engage in cybersex, and why they continued, as well as about the role that their online erotic activities played in their lives and how they felt such activity may have affected them, 12% of the respondents said that they had the desire to expand their sexual knowledge and repertoire (often for the sake of improving or enlivening an offline sexual relationship). So even if online relationships do not transform into offline ones, I think it may still help the individuals understand their current offline relationship better. In this study, the average age of the subjects was 34 years so it is likely that they may not be seeking fresh online relationships to be transformed to an offline relationship. 20% of these respondents noted that their cybersex experiences had helped them to feel less bad or dirty about their sexual needs and desires. This shows that people seek online relationships because it compliments their offline relationships.
As we talked earlier, it is known that a relationship is likely to dissolve when the costs of the relationship outweigh the rewards. I think it also dependent on whether there are desirable substitutes of that relationship, like the possibility of another relationship. It is known that a relationship dissolute when it does not match one’s ideal and very little has been invested in that relationship. It makes it even easier when there are few barriers to breaking up. So in online relationships surfers have ready access to more desirable alternatives via their Internet connections. So if one relationship doesn’t work, one can quickly switch to another without the barriers are faced in offline relationships. Breaking up can be as simple as logging off or not replying to electronic messages. This facilitates the possibility of knowing a wide range of people via the Internet, very quickly and easily, and deciding who appeals the most. This takes away the residue and guilt of breaking up as in offline relationships but it still keeps the learning process going.
It is known from experience that offline relationships demand letting go of anxiety and apprehension of losing the affection or approval of close friends or family to disclose one’s true desires and sexuality. McKenna and Bargh (1998) presented a scenario of how a face to face relationship might fail because of the powerful nature of this apprehension. They further state that online disclosure of one’s true self with similar others on the Internet may boost their self-acceptance and view their desires as more naturally occurring than a taboo. This will definitely aid those individuals to deal their aspects of sexuality more appropriately helping them build more comfortable offline relationships.
Marital and family therapist David Schnarch (1997) suggests that people turn to online relationships for two basic reasons that offline relationships cannot proffer. The first is the safety, physical, social and emotional safety. Online users have the choice to reveal themselves only when they feel safe and comfortable thus avoiding all possible risks. The other reason is the convenience of selection and conflict management. Online users may hop from one online user to the other to seek the person they want without having to deal with the conflicts as in offline relationships. When they find the suitable person, they may rendezvous and further their relationship.
The researches may suggest otherwise or more researches may need to be conducted but it is well known that online relationships are not quite safe. We may invest a lot of time to construct one and the person on the other side may simply be lying. The fact that anyone can interact with anyone anonymously on the Internet makes it a vulnerable port. Using anonymous screen names, individuals can exploit other online loggers. The magic wand of anonymity can give chatters a personality as glamorous as their imagination can make them. The Oprah Winfrey show presented a program showing real life incidents of how teenager girls were exploited by older men on the Internet. The program featured on online predator managing to take a teenage girl all the way from her home in the US to Europe and keeping her as a sex slave for months. According to Oprah, this predator knew exactly what to tell a teenager to win her trust and admiration. The teenager fell for the predator not for who he was but for who he told he was and for his pseudo-online personality.
An interesting study by Keith J Anderson (2001) shows a case study of a 19-year-old sophomore. Admitted in an engineering school he made good academic progress in the year and half of school. However, he began to have difficulty beginning the second semester of his sophomore year. He had symptoms of a slightly depressed mood and his sleep-work schedule changed. He was also frequently absent in his classes and exhibited poor academic performance. When questioned, the sophomore admitted of spending about 2,000 hours in an online Multi User Dungeon (MUD). He described his experience in the MUD as extremely addicting and he had difficulty withdrawing from it, even at the cost of his academic obligations. Interestingly, he said that he did not know his next-door neighbors on the residence hall floor where he had lived for the entire academic year but he had made a 1,900 trip to Tennessee to meet a woman he met on the MUD.
From this we can conclude that it is not healthy to rely solely on online relationships but use it as a medium to learn more about oneself and learn different aspects of relationships. This way offline relationships and offline responsibilities are complimented by it and not hampered. The risks lies not only in online relationships but also in offline ones. I think it is with caution we should proceed with them to procure a good experience.
CONTD...
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| Mr.T |
Posted
on 23-Jul-02 11:25 PM
guys not so big comment please, instead of reading that it's better to jerk off.
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| Diva_Starz |
Posted
on 24-Jul-02 04:23 AM
Guys,
Online or offline, if the relationship is based on truth and mutual understanding, it works....but, if you're faking something, you can't help yourself feeling like running into the woods screaming once you are revealed.....
So, sticking to truth becoes power in any relationship...
And, Bijuli...your paper based research on this matter, is interesting.I Loved going through the analytical section...As I have heaps of online friends,it helped me to understand where i stand ;)
Peace yo!
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| :) |
Posted
on 24-Jul-02 06:55 AM
Guys,
Those who stay online 24/7 in front of their computer and believe that online relationship works are all lifeless nerds !
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