is it possible to fall in love or become obsessed chatting in online dating?

[manyworlds]

I have been messaging back and forth every day with someone I met on OKCupid. Long intimate messages. I find that I am thinking about her all the time, even becoming infatuated. Also becoming possessive and anxious about her being online with others. Oh, I should mention, she lives hundreds of miles away and we haven't even met yet! Has this ever happened to anyone else?

[misssmithviii]

I was obsessive over a man I met online who lived about 200 miles away from me for months...

 

I think the problem was I was putting too much weight on the messages, the phone calls and WORDS and forgetting that I don't actually know this person yet. You have to remember that there's only so much about someone you can learn over the internet and we tend to fill in the blanks of what we don't know or aren't sure of, with our ideal mate. It fans the addictive flame of infatuation.

 

I personally don't think one can ever truly fall in love with somebody over the internet alone. I believe there's a forgotten element of fantasy there.

[Dybbuk]

I don't think it's possible to truly fall in love with anyone online, simply because you can never know who a person truly is without meeting them face to face. It's easy to disguise who you are online, it's easy to craft responses that show yourself in the best light when you have time to think about what you're saying behind a computer screen; but probably most dangerous of all is it's really easy to read too much into written words on a screen. I could type the words "I've been thinking about you." and someone could read it in a very romantic context, a sexual context, or a negative context that perhaps I've been thinking about breaking up with them. Basically you don't know what a person is saying, or the sincerity of their words just based on impersonal communication such as emails or text messaging. This is harsh, but sometimes women just like chatting with men and having long intimate messages because it makes them feel good and desired by someone. It's self serving, nothing more.

 

The only way to truly know someone is to spend time with them in person. You get the whole picture... body language, tone of voice, and when you talk to someone they don't have time to craft a response, they answer then and there and you'll get the full picture of their likes, dislikes, values and beliefs.

 

Sounds to me that you've forged a fantasy of who this woman is and what she could have been to you. However, what you are imagining in your head is not real. It's not love, it's infatuation. Coupled with the fact she lives far away, I have no doubt in my mind she is talking to other men who are in her vicinity. I'd suggest you do the same and reel yourself back into reality, and meet other women in your area that you can truly get to know. Best of luck!

[SooSad33]

I agree.. you can't fall in love, totally. You've never met so you're viewing them from a distance and ONLY from what they're showing you....

 

I had one years ago, Went for over 2 yrs. When we met, he wasn't all i expected.

That relation trailed off pretty soon after that.

[manyworlds]

Thanks for the feedback.

 

So, what would anyone suggest is my best course of action?

[manyworlds]

I should add, I've been talking with other people too, but it doesn't mean anything, and I don't like doing it. We have agreed that if we were nearby, we would see each other immediately. She will be in my vicinity but quite a ways in the future. I have not been bold enough to invite myself to go see her. Perhaps that is what I should do, or am I just setting myself up for disappointment? I am new to the online dating world, it seems very cold.

[manyworlds]

So, misss, what happened with this man you obsessed with online for months?

[misssmithviii]

So, misss, what happened with this man you obsessed with online for months?

 

He was always too busy to meet up, or it was too inconvenient somehow and I just got tired of it. Especially when he stood me up one night and I was sitting on a curb crying in my best heels and dress. That was my last straw >

[manyworlds]

SooSad -- why did you wait for over 2 years to meet?

[manyworlds]

misss, thanks. That is so sad. I am much older than you. I am not like that, my faults lie elsewhere. Any advice on what I should do?

[No1]

He was always too busy to meet up, or it was too inconvenient somehow and I just got tired of it. Especially when he stood me up one night and I was sitting on a curb crying in my best heels and dress. That was my last straw >

 

Oh, it was his loss for being 'too busy' I think he had someone else if he was always too busy to meet you.

[misssmithviii]

misss, thanks. That is so sad. I am much older than you. I am not like that, my faults lie elsewhere. Any advice on what I should do?

 

I think you should try and view this for what it is, just words on a screen. The connection that's "there" really isn't tangible and the sooner you remember that, the sooner you see that - the less pain this will cause you when it erupts... because if you're already becoming anxious of her giving attention to others on that site then you're far too obsessed with someone you don't even know to have a healthy relationship. Living hundreds of miles away from each other is also another factor that makes this inviable.

[misssmithviii]

Oh, it was his loss for being 'too busy' I think he had someone else if he was always too busy to meet you.

 

I think he did too, but that, to me, was besides the point. Only when I began to value my time and myself did I realize that was just too ridiculous of me to go through

[manyworlds]

if you're already becoming anxious of her giving attention to others on that site then you're far too obsessed with someone you don't even know to have a healthy relationship.

 

So, do you this applied to your own experience? Wby did you keep at it for so long? Were you obsessive too?

[misssmithviii]

I did, I definitely realized I was way too obsessive over somebody I didn't truly know. Of course during the "relationship" I was blind to it, I thought that my feelings couldn't possibly be misplaced. But once I put my foot down and got out of it, it really hit me.

 

I kept at it because I was, honestly, quite easily swayed by his proclamations of love.

[manyworlds]

once I put my foot down and got out of it, it really hit me.

 

The guy you were with sounds like a skunk. I don't think she is like that. But then is it possible to know what her motives are? Is she aware of what she is doing with my mind? Surely she cannot be completely oblivious. Can she?

[misssmithviii]

The guy you were with sounds like a skunk. I don't think she is like that. But then is it possible to know what her motives are? Is she aware of what she is doing with my mind? Surely she cannot be completely oblivious. Can she?

 

He turned out to be, but then again I'll never know what his intentions were.

 

She's not doing anything to your mind. You're allowing her to. Remember that. You sound like you've lost control of yourself and you need to regain that before you can even expect to have something HEALTHY.

 

I do believe love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. I have Passion tattooed on my right forearm and Obsession on my left forearm - trust me I believe in it wholeheartedly. But you're not in love. You can't possibly be at this point as others have agreed.

 

 

 

 

"Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without."

 

- Anthony Hopkins as Bill Parrish in Meet Joe Black

[manyworlds]

 

She's not doing anything to your mind. You're allowing her to. Remember that. You sound like you've lost control of yourself and you need to regain that before you can even expect to have something HEALTHY.

 

I do believe love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. I have Passion tattooed on my right forearm and Obsession on my left forearm - trust me I believe in it wholeheartedly. But you're not in love. You can't possibly be at this point as others have agreed.

 

But then I wonder why is she doing this -- she has written quite as much to me as I to her. It is not all one way.

 

I have been in love more than once for real and I know that this is different -- but online did not exist back in the day, this is all so strange for me!

 

I quite intend to get out of this, by cutting the whole communication off if need be, or going on to something real -- it is the idea of continuing this way for months that is driving me crazy.

 

Funny, there is someone else who messaged me from a shorter distance but still several hundred miles, who wants me to come visit her -- maybe that is the one I should pay attention to!

 

I'm in a situation of not having been in these seas for a long, long time. I find myself as tempest-tossed as I was in my teens and twenties!

[Tinydance]

Just in my own personal opinion, it's definitely possible but often not "real". It's a fantasy, projection and illusion. Thinking this person is perfect because you don't actually even know them and have seen no bad side of them at all.

[quirky]

How long have you been messaging and how far away does she live, how many hours on an airplane?

[Tinydance]

Have you talked on Skype? I think in the very least this can give you a little bit of an idea about her mannerisms and facial expressions. I have a friend from Mexico who met her husband online and had a cyber relationship for quite some time, then she moved to Australia for him and they got married. So it is possible but unfortunately I've also heard the bad side of this type of story where someone went to another country for someone else after carrying on an online relationship and it was completely not the same in real life at all. I probably wouldn't drag it out too long before meeting in person if you can help it. And if you can't actually meet in person in future, then what do you think is the point of just writing E-mails online?

[quirky]

I had a cybersrash on someone actually on this site. We had helped each other through our breakups, became friends.. just that, friends. We had lots in common in music we liked, how we viewed love and the world. During a very difficult time for me we started chatting more frequently. I didn't realise he was developing deeper feelings for me. I was looking forward to chatting to him because he felt safe and lovely. We chatted on Skype too. I wasn't sure I was attracted to him, he was also quite a bit older than me and I tend to go for guys my age or a bit younger. Nevertheless there was something there. He came from the US to the UK to meet. He had high expectations and deeper feelings than I was aware of and I was in a really bad and confusing place inside. I didn't feel an attraction. Maybe I would now, I don't know..I am in a different place now and I look for different guys. Maybe I still wouldn't be attracted. But at least I would approach it diffrently. The sad part is that it finished our friendship. But at least we put it to reality rather than fantasy. From the sounds of it if there had been an attraction he seemed open to even moving, he was at a fluid place in his life, open to changes. So you never know. On another note maybe if he lived here we would have had a better chance in getting to know each other properly and slowly. Sometimes you have to make that extra step for something to be resolved eitherway.

[manyworlds]

quirky, your story resonates a bit with me.

 

So, I broke it off with her. She lives an obnoxious but manageable distance by air. I tried to see if she wanted me to visit her, but she was kind of hedgy on that. She wanted to wait until a certain time a fair bit in the future when she would be traveling near where I live. The situation was driving me crazy and I decided it just wasn't worth it. If she had been serious about wanting to really get to know me, I would have made the extra effort, but only under certain conditions (that she wasn't stringing along someone else over the internet, that she really was interested, and that we would start a real relationship if we clicked). I would guess that she has other guys out on the line somewhere out there in cyberspace. I think she also tries to cultivate them IRL until she finds someone she really likes, except I suspect that day will never arrive. Why waste my time with that? (And what was she getting out of it? I don't know, that is her problem).

 

Lesson learned: I should curb my very strong tendencies toward imagination and infatuation, even over the internet. (It can be made enough IRL, I know very well.) I've learned that there are others, women, who have gone completely off the deep end on this, for years, even for "men" who did not exist at all.

 

Avoid LDR on the internet, meet up as soon as you can if you get involved in it, only deal with people where everything seems on the up and up. Whatever was going on with this, on the up and up it wasn't.

[Tinydance]

Also I'd like to ask how, and why did OP and the other people posting here get into online relationships? I've never been in one or had feelings for anyone I only knew online, so I'm just wondering...I suppose it can just happen if you start chatting to someone online but surely it's not something one would actually seek out?

[manyworlds]

It just happened with me, a couple of times. Where the other person was far away -- in another state, or in Europe. On OKCupid, where with the "questions" you answer, you can learn quite a bit about the other person. Exchanging long, perhaps intimate messages frequently -- it can become rather intense as well as intimate. The imagination can start to flow and then overflow. There are cases in history where people have done this just by writing letters (and sending them not snail mail, but by carriage!) I'm sure perhaps most people are not susceptible to this, but some are.