Two of the greatest features of the internet are that it’s easily accessible and has incredible reach to the public. The world wide web is hands down one of the best inventions of the century and is usually beneficial to all those who choose to take advantage of it. Overall, the internet is great but it’s a bitter/sweet type of deal. Because of its availability and networking span, it gives people the opportunity to have lives outside of their everyday routines and faces. This is especially true when it comes to online dating or relationships.Using the internet as a tool to discover love is a risky move, full of potential deception but not everyone involved in virtual lives can discern the possible dangers of it.
For those that have trouble in the relationship department, the internet is the perfect place to hide and forget the troubles of your real love life. It literally only takes minutes for a single, dark haired, 40 year old woman who works at an Organ Walgreens, to create a pseudo Facebook profile that’s the complete opposite of herself, in order to get attention or spark a romance. No one’s there to monitor her and there are no rules that say she can’t do it. Now she’s in an online relationship with a Florida guy she’s madly in love with but has never met in person, who thinks she’s a blond, 26 year old social worker who lives two hours away from him.
According to famous psychologist and TV host Dr. Phil, online lovers should look at their relationship from an “objective standpoint” and ask themselves if it makes sense.
As reported by Dr. Phil’s website:
The online environment is the perfect breeding ground for fantasies because it allows us to ascribe all the wonderful qualities we want in a partner to someone we’ve never met. Dr. Phil has said that you shouldn’t get married until your partner has seen you with the flu … so falling in love with someone you’ve never met is basing a relationship on superficial experiences. You really don’t know much about that person other than whatever it is he/she has told you — and you have no proof to back it up. He/she could be very different in person.
Discovering the truth about a virtual romance can go one of two ways: both parties were completely honest and you pick up where you left each other on the computer screen, or it turns out to be hoax, which could be very detrimental to the both of you. Take the new MTV reality show “Catfish” for example. The whole purpose of the show is to document the lives of online lovers and help them make arrangements to meet their virtual significant others in person. Long story short, the majority of the shows have ended badly because one party falsified information leaving the other completely destroyed after investing their emotions into someone who they believed they knew.
Online dating and meeting people online isn’t all bad because it’s a legit and convenient way to interact with people. However, once the initial meeting has taken place online, make arrangements to meet in person and have a face to face connection the old-fashioned way. If it works out, great. If not, keep at it until it does.
-AskDrO Staff
Picture source: http://www.examiner.com/article/trust-is-an-essential-factor-online-relationships
