Love in the Age of Broadband

“Oh what a World it seems we live in.”

Armed with a laptop, a camera, and a credit card, there isn’t much you can’t get, on demand, online. You can order food at 1am, you can pay to watch girls get naked – which has always struck me as a more private, but slightly less fun version of a strip-club, – you can sell your unwanted possessions, you can build your own website, you can watch films, you can share your work… or, you can fall in love.

Sitting in front of the TV last night, I saw an advert for eHarmony. I used to really despise internet dating sites; they seemed like the end of love, a clinical, fake way to meet people. I perceived them as the loser’s way to find a mate. But as time has gone by, and I have made friends online, I’ve grown to realise just how brilliant an idea internet dating is. It’s a simple way to filter potential partners and cast your net a little wider. While I don’t think dating friends of friends, or work colleagues, or being picked up in bars is ever going to disappear completely – and thank God! because that is still a lot of fun – I do think internet dating is a growing industry. If anything the World is becoming more cyber-centric, not less.

Which, of course, means that people are not exclusively using internet dating sites to meet potential partners. This trend has become a web-wide phenomenon. Fetlife, twitter, Facebook, Google+, MySpace, all are rife with romantic pick-ups, and other such activity. This, in and of itself, I have no problem with. Hell, I met Hoke on deviantArt. And as for the Canadian? We would be strangers if he hadn’t stumbled across my blog one cold, winter’s day. Nevertheless, when it comes to internet-borne relationships, I do have to raise a few issues.

Long before I believed in internet-borne love, I believed in internet-borne casual sexual encounters. What better way to feed an immediate sexual desire than to wank with someone, over the internet? In all seriousness, provided you’re careful, it’s a fun pastime. And, with the right person, can be very satisfying. I have absolutely no problem, whatsoever, with online sex. It is what the internet was created for. And, again, the networks are rife with it.

But there is another trend (particularly on twitter) which I find slightly unsettling, and which I think is being encouraged each time it happens. More and more, people are getting into online relationships, and letting these encounters leave them heart broken.

And I do not understand why this is happening.

What happened to our ability to keep it casual? Why would we attach ourselves to someone who is (often) hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away? And, more to the point, why would we attach ourselves to someone we have never met?

I have only dipped my toes into the World of online, long distance, emotional commitment, and that was more than enough for me. I found, rescinding control over my emotions in that way made me feel very nervous, very alone, very far away from what I wanted. And in most cases there is really no solution to that kind of pain. The internet has made the World uncomfortably small and unbearably large.

But even more unsettling, to me, is (yet) another trend that is sweeping our social network sites. (Almost) daily I come across friends who have said “I love you” to people they have never met, and who are doing this based on the “great conversations” they’ve had. Whilst I believe there are a great many ways to get to know someone simply by talking to them, it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to think there are people everywhere who are willing to say the “L” word so flippantly. And I don’t believe this has anything to do with feeling uncomfortable with the word – because I’m not; in high school I threw it around a lot, and although I’m more careful with my use of it now, ‘love’ itself is not something I find problematic.

In fact, there are two things that upset me about declaring love online; the first is that I believe loving someone is so integrally connected to a person’s mannerisms and how they relate to the World. It’s how they walk, and how they eat, and how they sleep, and whilst you can gauge a fair amount of how a person expresses him/herself by chatting and talking on camera, you are still limited. To say “I love you” before you’ve had sex, or kissed, or even held hands, feels incredibly premature. I just cannot see how you could possibly be sure of emotions that deep.

When I expressed this to a friend of mine, who is in such a relationship and does claim to be in love with his other half, his first words were, “Are you not in love with the Canadian?” And my immediate answer was “No, I’m not.” With the time difference, and the space, and the months we have been “together” but so far apart, love would have killed us. If he and I were in the first throes of love, we would be too emotional to be rational about how we deal with this distance. Of course, I wouldn’t be in this relationship if I didn’t believe that at some point in the future, I could be in love with him, but right now it seems like an awfully dangerous word.

My friend pressed me and asked, “What do you call what you have with your Canadian… lust, friendship, companionship?”

I call if affection, and lust. But actually most of the time, I don’t feel the need to call it anything. I care for him, and it excites me when I get to talk to him, and I long to feel his body against mine, but I’m not in so deep that a lack of him could break me.

The second thing that upsets me about online declarations of love, is that it displays a lack of emotional intelligence. When you date someone, there are certain things (which have become societal norms) that you do to show your boy/girlfriend that you are sensitive to the way you are supposed to behave. It’s not that I believe everyone ought to live precisely in the boxes that society has draw for us, it’s just that there are certain things people do which show bad judgement; for some that might be sex on a first date, although personally I don’t have a problem with that. But in all honesty, for me, saying “I love you” before you’ve met face to face, is tantamount to inviting someone to meet your parents after a week, or asking them to move in within a month. I’m not shunning the idea that people sometimes want to say and do those things that early on, I just think the emotionally mature ones will hold back, in order to show that they have a good sense of judgement. You wouldn’t ask for a promotion on your first day of work. It’s all part of the dance we do to show a potential partner that we are worthy of their love.

However, no matter what I think, there are still people everywhere claiming to be in love with those they have never met. And how can I possibly say that someone isn’t in love? I certainly don’t have the authority to decide who is in love and who isn’t, but there are a few points I’d still like to lay down here. First of all, I know from firsthand experience how easy it is to imagine the mannerisms of someone you talk to a lot. Before I met Hoke I had a very clear picture of the kind of person he was, and as it turned out, when I met him, I wasn’t far off the truth. So, if you can, quite accurately, conjure that image of someone, I suppose it stands to reason that you can fall in love with that image. But then you are sill only in love with how you think they are. It’s a fine line, but I’m sure there’s a difference between how a person actually holds him/herself, and how you imagine they do.

In the event that I’m wrong – and it has happened before – and you truly can be completely in love with someone, exactly as they are, purely by speaking to them online, I have to raise yet another issue with this sad state of affairs! While I think the lack of control we feel when we’re falling in love is illustrated by the word falling, I don’t believe there is anyone who couldn’t take control of their emotions if they wanted to. I truly, deeply believe that when we fall we let ourselves fall. In some cases that kind of control may be very literal; a lot of my friends find sex very emotional and can’t sleep with someone without falling for them, in which case, their way of taking control is to delay sex. In my case it’s more psychological; I divide my affection and my emotional commitment, and simply care for my other half until I feel ready to commit. And I think this is what a vast majority of the World does. Whatever your path may be, there certainly are ways to take control of your emotions.

But of course, in this case, I am ignoring one very big factor; I’m assuming that no one would want to be in love with someone they have never met. And (unfortunately) I can think of many reasons why people everywhere would want to. The thrill, the drama, the fun, the connection… I could go on.

My friend explained how it was for him, and I have to admit, I didn’t really have an answer. He told me, “I couldn’t be in a [long distance relationship] without a loving and emotional bond.” But he did go on to explain that his situation is slightly different. The woman he is involved with is married, and so their relationship has boundaries. “I think that’s why I can allow myself to love her, as I know we are not going to be together, we can just let rip, whereas you are hoping for the happily ever after at some point.”

It’s a very good point. Personally I would be this guarded with my emotions regardless of the situation – because I hate emotional pain so much – but it’s an interesting issue, and one that I couldn’t really answer, but only ponder.

So, scrolling through my twitter feed, I shall keep my comments to myself and bite my tongue when I see someone mourning a heart broken by an online love, because I know full well that it’s not my place to interfere. And as for myself? Well, I will continue to guard my emotion, control my affection, and reserve my love for someone I can hold in my arms (whilst hoping it will be the Canadian).