Do you tell total strangers your most intimate secrets and desires? Do you share details about yourself that you wouldn’t even tell your spouse when you know nothing about the person you are telling those details to? Would you have phone sex with someone whose number was carved on the wall of a subway restroom?
You might ask “who would do things?” and wonder how I could ask such silly questions. But, if you’ve ever entered into an online relationship, you may have done all of that and more.
The virtual world can be a very dangerous place. It is the only place I know that anyone, anywhere, can be anyone they want to be. Who’s to know if “Mr Perfect” is a truly sensitive guy or if he’s on death row and having fun with trusting strangers?
Betrayal is devastating when it happens in real life, when our husband or wife does the unthinkable. Regaining trust after a spouse betrays us can take years, if ever. And, yet, we think nothing of trusting someone we “meet” online, exposing our deepest secrets, and becoming emotionally involved even before we’ve met them in real life.
In real life, we’re able to put a face and personality together, and, while we certainly don’t know everything we may need to know to form a friendship or relationship, we have quite a bit. In a first meeting we can tell whether or not there’s a “spark” that might grow to a flame or more.
In the virtual world, we use our imagination to “flesh out” the other person, giving him or her all the characteristics that we “need” him or her to have. A skillful manipulator is able to use just the right words to draw us into an emotional and/or sexual relationship, all without stepping away from his or her computer.
Photo exchanges are no guarantee of who you’re sending email to, IMing or chatting with. It’s very easy for someone to “lift” a photo of another person from any number of sources online and pass it off as their own.
Not every online encounter is going to be dangerous or deceptive but do you know which ones are honest and which aren’t? When you’re in a support group sharing details of your marriage, don’t assume that everyone in the group is there for the same reason.
Do you have an online friend with whom you feel comfortable talking about everything including very intimate personal issues even though you’ve never met in real life? Do you feel that honesty is an integral part of this relationship? Do you feel that this person may be or is your soul mate?
Here’s how one woman described an online relationship: “We talked about everything and he was so honest about how he felt and he offered me the support none of my family — and certainly not my husband — had ever offered. He didn’t push for anything more than what I was willing to give; he was the ultimate gentleman. He even said he understood when I told him I was emailing other men, and he didn’t object. He said there was no rush, that he’d take a cue from my needs. There was no pressure like the other guys I’d met in chat.
I was emotionally hooked by the time we arranged a meeting and I really thought it went well, no awkward pauses, and we seemed to ‘click’ in a physical way although I didn’t go back to his room with him. He was only in town for one day and when we parted he said he missed me already and promised to call as soon as he got home.
I expected to get an email the next day but there was nothing and he wasn’t in chat and he didn’t log onto IM. I waited until the second day to send an email which he never responded to. By the end of a week I felt emotionally raw. I’ve never heard from him again. What did I do wrong?”
She, as so many others before her, trusted the written words of a virtual stranger. With those words, she created a “real” person, one who filled all of her needs. She “fleshed out” his words to create her soul mate.
Never underestimate the power of the imagination. When he says he has dark hair, you imagine he looks like your favorite movie star. You give him a sexy voice, a beautiful smile, a winning personality. He becomes the perfect man, the man with all the right words at all the right times.
He becomes the one person who can brighten your day just by emailing “Hello, beautiful!” or IMing a smile. He’s the first person you think about when you wake up in the morning, the last person you think of as you fall asleep at night. He fills in the emotional blanks within your life. The two of you grow closer. You become dependent upon him and distance yourself from your real life relationships.
Would he be as wonderful, as comforting, as perfect, in real life? We’ll never know how many women have pushed for an off-line meeting only to have their cyber soul mate disappear forever. Other women meet their dream man to find that he isn’t single or separated but married and looking only for a lover. Words are easy, reality isn’t.