Is Cyber Love a Degraded Form of Real Life Love - Essay Example

Is 'Cyber Love' a Degraded Form of 'Real Life' Love? Cyber love can be known as the online relationships. It is the digital dating which happens in the digital world. Cyber love is a relationship that is built through online contacts, i.e. through MSN, Friendster, Facebook, Yahoo! and other social networking sites. Cyber dating is a fresh term in today’s world as it has been invented in the last decade. Cyber love can be identified as when a boy and a girl meet in a chatting room, and after a few interactions they find out that they have so much in common. After chatting for several days, they realise that both of them cannot sleep tight without talking to their cyber friend or without saying good night to each other. The feeling of love develops when people are attracted towards each other or when the interest and hobbies match. When love happens online, it can then be tagged as cyber love. Cyber love results when couples chat with each other for months [Hoo09]. There are various perceptions that people hold about cyber love. Most of them think that cyber love is unreal as people are not exactly aware of the identity of the person they are chatting with. Especially parents get scared for their children involved in online relationship. They are aware of the fact that cyber is a virtual world; therefore, one cannot trust people for their identity. Now the question arises if cyber love is a “degraded form” of real love. Before evaluating the phrase “cyber love”, there is a need to look at it through several perspectives. Lately, there is an increasing trend in singles who are involved in cyber dating. Talk shows are a mean of creating hype for the cyber chatting. The movie You’ve Got Mail also contributed toward increasing the trend of cyber dating. Cyber love is, however, very different from real relationship. The cyber environment is quite restricted in comparison to the natural one. For a new cyber user, online chatting environment may be daunting [Cin13]. For new internet users, communicating through a cyber chat room is an obstacle at first. There are certain protocols which are followed online, for example, to avoid offending people and to in case of chatting with someone who recurs to the help of sarcasm. There is no non-verbal communication involved in chatting; typed words are the only mean through which a person may communicate and express his or her feeling for others. A newbie, before starting their chatting experience, observes other users interacting with each other. In this way, the newbie observes the internet chatting culture before they feel comfortable while interacting with others. To some degree, every internet user is mesmerised by the fantasy that it provides. The internet users must realise the fact that there is a certain level of sensitivity which is required to interact with others. There is a huge difference between interacting with people online and interacting with them in person. When two people continuously interact with one another through online chat room, they often fantasise that they have fallen in love. The chat room partners often plan to meet each on a specific day at a specific place. This is where reality meets fantasy. Several experiences have been shared by people where they have reported that their chat room partner was totally different from the one whose picture was displayed on the chat profile of their partner. After going through a period of disillusionment, people have understood how to use the internet wisely and safely. Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor, studied the relationship that people share with computers, in his book Life on the Screen. He also defined the aspects of how people today relate themselves to the internet culture. According to professor Turkle, an individual builds one individual image of him/herself by cycling through several images. This is a completely new psychoanalytical phenomenon, where the individual adapts several different aspects that define his or her personality, at one point of time. The chat room users often experiment with their own identity. There are several risks and complications attached to this identity experimentation. This personality exploration can be a healthy phenomenon for the individual, but it can also be damaging for the society. There are several phenomena explained by Turkle where people on the internet feel more comfortable in their altered self while they often lose confidence in their original self. Self-esteem serves as a factor which tells an individual in the beginning of the experimentation whether the experimentation with his/her own personality will be successful. A person who is suffering from depression will develop a negative impact on his/her personality, at the beginning of the experiment [She95]. This personality experimentation is the cause of problems in the internet dating arena. One must keep in mind that all the personality experimentation is not intentional. One internet user who was involved in online dating defined his experience by saying that he becomes a completely different person when he is with her (online). He also added that he is confident and happy when he talks to his girlfriend, online. This feeling is usually described as a relationship success, but actually this is a phenomenon of personality exploration through which the individual is going. Once the online couple decides to continue with their relationship offline, they are not able to create that same illusion as they created online. This is the major difference between real relationship and self-exploration through online dating. Turkle defines two phases of the internet relationship. In the first phase the player is excited because of the rapidly deepening online relationship. They feel that the time is speeding up. In the second phase of internet relationship, the player wants to transfer their relationship from the virtual world to the real one. At this phase of internet relationship, the person is usually disappointed because they are not able to maintain the illusion which was created by the internet. Transference, which is classical psychoanalytical behaviour, is encouraged by the internet. Transference can be defined as the projection of the feeling and wishes of the client on the analysts. The analyst may take the form of what the client imagines. The communication through the internet is only limited to words. Tone, emotions, appearance, voice and context help the individual in better understanding of the situation, which is missing in communication through the internet. While chatting in chat room, an individual projects the image of a perfect partner onto the interlocutor, which is nothing but an illusion which has been constructed by the internet. Transference through internet communication cannot be avoided to a certain degree. Every human is conditioned to rely on the sense of interpreting the situation in their own way. Another complication of the internet dating is that people use the internet as an escape. Internet is usually an unreal and fascinating world. Online we are the person who we are able to depict for a little time; therefore, people use it as a means to escape from their personal life. This adds several complications to the phenomenon of dating through the internet as people reveal only those aspects of their personality that they wish to display. The five stages of dating have been explained by John Gary in his book Mars and Venus on a Date. These stages are as follows: Attraction: in this stage an initial attraction is experienced by the people towards their potential partner. The challenge at this particular stage is to express the feeling for the potential partner and take an initial step towards further communication. Uncertainty: the feeling of attraction at this stage is shifted to the feeling of curiosity of knowing if our partner is right for us or not. Men often do not understand this stage, and they often drift from one partner to the other. Exclusivity: at this stage a certain desire starts prevailing in an individual which forces them to date their partner exclusively. At this stage an individual shares his or her feelings more to make the partner feel special. Intimacy: at this stage an individual experiences the real intimacy towards the partner. An individual shares feelings more with his or her partner at this stage than at the previous stages. Engagement: at this stage we are certain about the fact that we are with the person we will marry in the end; we get engaged to our partner. At this stage we get the opportunity of celebrating our love [Joh97]. According to John Gary, to have a complete and fulfilling relationship, both the partners must have realisation of all these stages. One can easily apply Gary’s stage of relationship and examine the problems in online relationships. In online relationship, the tendency of moving from the initial stage of attraction to the intimacy stage occurs rapidly as compared to an offline relationship. The stage of exclusivity and uncertainty is usually skipped in online relationships. Most of the online users say that they instantly connect with their partner. They feel as if they know each other from a long time. The base of online relationship is usually intimacy. They are often scared by the fact that the pace of relationship may ruin their illusion. These relationships usually do not last long and end when one of the partners gets disappointed. Cyber love cannot be regarded as complete love as there are several complications attached to it. People have the desire of meeting their potential mates online, but they must also be ready to meet them in real life as well. After all, what matters is the real world – the internet is virtual. One cannot experience the entirety of another person through the screen of a computer. Online chatting is also another means of providing people with cyber sex [Jes07]. One of the inconveniences that is caused to the female chatters is that a lot of chatters show interest in interacting with them. This portrays the image of chat room being dirty and creates a negative perception of the chat rooms in the mind of women; hence, they often refrain from interacting with people online (The Times of India, 2011). However, there are several instances of success of online relationships. Many of us are aware about couples who meet through internet chat rooms and are married now. The relationships to work that way needs dedication, time and courage to accept the person in reality. There are several suggestions available through which an individual may have a safe cyber chatting experience. A person should not readily make available his/her name, address, phone number and other personal information. One should be aware of the fact that not everyone on the internet is decent. One must be cautious about making public own personal data. For some of the internet users, cyber love is just a game. One must remain anonymous online unless a bond of trust is developed between you and your chat partner. One must not be dishonest regarding any aspect of one’s life, especially your marital status. There are several characteristics of a person, and not all of them can be exposed through online chatting; therefore, one must not fall in love with someone easily. One must not believe in “love at first type” but take one’s time to try to understand the person more before considering going for a relationship. Through the internet, an individual meets many people who might not be right for them, but they easily get attracted towards them. The internet is a great means of making friends. If an individual is attracted towards his or her chat partner, he or she should try to get indulged in real life relationship, arrange offline meeting and keep all the rest open. When you have arranged your first meeting with your online partner, remember that you are about to meet a stranger, try to arrange your meeting in a public place, and it will be better if you bring a friend along with you. There are chances that cyber love relationship may turn into addiction. People get addictive to their chat partners, and they usually chat for hours. Internet chatting creates a use-and-crash cycle which ends an online relationship abruptly. This can be depressing for many people. Cyber relationship may be more painful and emotional than the real ones [Bre091]. Internet has become a path through which people seek the cure for their loneliness. A simple hello may turn into a long conversation in online chat rooms. People fall in love online just like they do in the real world. There is pain, emotions just as there are in the real world, but the level of complications is much higher than in real life [SMF13]. There are various romance scams which occur in this virtual world of chat rooms and which hurt the feeling of individuals and often make them depressed. People do not want to expose the drawbacks of their personality while interacting with their chat partners. They only expose the best of themselves and influence people to judge them on the basis of that. This often leads to development of misconception about a person; therefore, when they meet in real life, online couples are often disappointed [Cyb13] Cyber love can be considered as a degraded form of real love as the majority of the people who have been involved in online relationship have been disappointed. If an individual is serious about carrying on with the internet relationship, then it is better for him or her to try and evaluate the chat partner objectively before making any rigid decisions; otherwise, the outcome might be disappointing and depressing. References Cyber Love’s Illusions. (2013). There Is Help and Hope for the Romance Scam Victim. You Do Not Have to Go It Alone! Retrieved May 8, 2013, from Cyber Love Illusion: http://cyberlovesillusions.com/Healing_Journey/index.html The Times of India. (2011, February 27). Can cyber love last forever? Retrieved May 8, 2013, from Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/debate/debateshow/3149108.cms Fletcher, S. M. (2013). The Cyber Love Connection. Bloomington, US: AuthorHouse. Grant, C. (2013). Cyber Love: What is Real & What is Virtual. Retrieved May 8, 2013, from Creative hat: http://creativehat.com/cyber_love.htm Gray, J. (1997). Mars and Venus on a Date: A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship. NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Jones, J. D. (2007). The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims. New York: Pocket Books. Schaeffe, B. (2009). Is It Love or Is It Addiction, 3rd ed. US: Hazelden. Theng, H. (2009). What is cyber love ? Retrieved May 8, 2013, from http://superdupergals.blogspot.com/2009/08/cyber-love.html Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Hoo09: , (Theng, 2009), Cin13: , (Grant, 2013), She95: , (Turkle, 1995), Joh97: , (Gray, 1997), Jes07: , (Jones, 2007), Bre091: , (Schaeffe, 2009), SMF13: , (Fletcher, 2013), Cyb13: , (Cyber Love Illusion, 2013), Read More