so you have a huge amount in common. you like the same books, tv shows, conversations...you laugh at the same things. You send links, poetry and clips. you write every day but you still only know each other online. you make each other smile and type about the way things might have been, if only....
You never type about sex, never even muse about anything physical. You don't play act or "get out the web cam'" Your relationship is purely an intellectual, non-physical one.
But you look forward to the inbox. You smile when you think of how much you are alike. When your mind wonders during the day it wonders to your online "friend."
when is it "an affair?" When does it "cross the line?" At what point has too much transpired to tell your partner about it? Do you know that line when you see it and cross it?
Does it hurt just as much when it ends?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The online 'literature' on this type of relationship is very pejorative and blame-laden. It tends to be laced in terms of infidelity and the assumption that something sexual MUST have happened. Guilty party had better make reparation etc... "10 steps to ditching your cheating online partner".
ReplyDeleteOne forum/blog I read was quite soul-destroying with the vitriol that people heaped on the woman who had committed the heinous crime of crossing the online 'line', and yet she kept asking them for help...
From personal experience, it's really difficult to know when lines get crossed from 'acquaintance' to 'friend' to 'special friend'... and no I don't think there is a conscious point, just a gradual realisation that there is a time when the difference between 'real-life' and 'online' becomes difficult to explain, and then difficult to express.
I think the word I heard use that best describes the feeling is 'validation' the ability to discuss things, the books, the links, the clips, the poetry, the TV-shows with someone who 'gets it' and isn't immured in your humdrum mundane 'real' life of feeding the pets, washing up, putting the kids to bed etc (even though they are doing exactly the same at the other end of the 'line').
Is it wrong? Does it imply a broken 'moral compass'? Is it worse than spending hours in online combat games 'slaughtering imaginary foes'... who are real people sitting at another keyboard... (I personally don't think so. But maybe my 'moral compass' is bent?)
What are environments such as "Second Life" for if not for escapism? And yet they are used as 21st century tools for educative discourse at University...
I think these are all things that we'll have to deal with from now on, in real life.
And does it hurt when it ends? Yes it does, and it feels stupid... and laden with 'teenage' angst... never having met or physically interacted with the person in question...
but hurt heals and real-life goes on.
Just my 2c worth