Virtual romance
In recent years, the World Wide Web has firmly entered our lives, becoming a familiar, everyday and integral part of life. Fast communication programs, web cameras, and online stores are no longer new. Numerous dating sites no longer cause a chuckle of disbelief and sidelong glances, but are perceived rather as clubs of similar interests, light entertaining get-togethers. Light for the time being...
We love the Internet because it keeps up with our busy lives, with the crazy modern pace, when we often don’t have enough time for acquaintances, meetings and long conversations in real life. The network provides a magical opportunity to arrange your personal life “on the job.” And it seems that everything is turning out very smoothly.
People met, say, in a chat or on a forum. A few words: “Oh, you and I are so similar, do you have ICQ or e-mail?” And now these two communicate privately, secluded among an endless number of users. The most beautiful thing in a virtual novel begins: the revelation of souls. It turns out that a surprisingly sincere and trusting person is sitting at another computer. That's exactly who I am. He, just like me, was afraid to open up, but, sensing a kindred spirit, he decided to take this step. And I, I also decided.
A person is overwhelmed by endless surprise: how can it be that the only person on the entire planet, the one who, without a doubt, is your soul mate, found you in this crazy web, in this ocean of those eager to meet their happiness?
And then a new thought is born: “This is fate.” There is a conviction that the lovers have been walking towards each other all their lives, walking for a long time, through gullies of disappointment. Life before the meeting that stirred the soul is revealed from a completely different, significant side, the realization comes that all past negative experience is priceless, because it brought two seekers to the same point. Mysticism, coincidences, premonitions heat up ICQ, Merinda, and messengers, and the seething foam of true love runs rapidly through the veins of the World Wide Web.
Dizziness. Passion. General plans. Vows. The first phone call... and... as a rule, some kind of rollback occurs. It turns out that talking on the phone is scarier and more embarrassing. It turns out that there is an unfamiliar voice on the phone. It turns out that the tongue turns to stone and refuses to obey when it is so necessary to say the word “I love” to an unfamiliar voice.
But it doesn't matter. This can be fixed. How could you not love talking on the phone with the most exceptional, most unique person in the world? And at this moment the person convinces himself. Self-hypnosis “he is the best person in the world,” which used to be easy (except for situations when the “ideal” wrote something wrong... but he didn’t mean it for real, without thinking about it... you might not notice it), now requires conscious self-persuasion. The person convinces himself that he still likes everything about this person. And I don’t just like it, I like it more and more. Perhaps, somewhere deep in his soul, he understands that he was mistaken in elevating this man so recklessly. But I don’t want to admit my mistake. This is akin to admitting stupidity, immaturity. And he continues this game.
“I like everything about the virtual favorite. I like the photos, I like the voice, and when this person becomes old and sick, he will still be the most beloved, and only death will separate us. Yes, I know all these identical stories of Internet dating, but my story is unique, so different from everyone else,” this is how the emotional side argues, trying to drown out the skeptical voice of reason.
And then comes the most difficult test - the meeting. Why is it heavy? Because there are too many expectations, because there are too many ideas, hopes. Because once in childhood, a prince was imagined as a loved one, and everyone who met before that time, as luck would have it, refused to be a prince. They snored, watched TV, disappeared with friends, did not give flowers.
But this one will certainly be the best in the world. Because it can't be otherwise. Because good fairy tales about love always end with a wedding.
True, it should be noted that it rarely comes to a meeting. And those who managed to survive the disappointment of the meeting (or taste its charm, which rarely happens) and come to terms with the imperfections of the chosen one (the chosen one) can form a completely happy couple, have a wedding, raise children and fondly remember their fateful forum - chat - conference. There are many such examples.
But there are still more stories with sad endings. Or they are more noticeable because the same forums and chats are full of sad stories of unhappy love. Psychologists' mailboxes are filled with cries of the soul, new pain, the hopelessness of despair... Prince Charming either disappeared or turned out to be not beautiful, moreover, he turned out to be a scoundrel: he offended, cheated, did not live up to expectations.
Here is a typical story, like two peas in a pod to a string of other similar stories that I, as a practicing psychologist, increasingly have to encounter.
“I’ve always believed that dating via the Internet is frivolous, fake, and that you won’t get real relationships and feelings, and besides, there is an opinion that only unconfident people with many complexes meet in this way. But somehow I decided to go to a dating site, purely out of curiosity, and... I accidentally saw a young man and his profile - it was as if lightning had struck me. I answered him.
He liked my letters, I liked his. He lives in another city, but he said that it’s even a plus that we live in different cities, as it “stimulates”, romance, etc. We exchanged photos. We wrote long letters to each other every day, very detailed, confidential, warm. I truly fell in love with him! I understood with all my being that it was HIM! - my only one, I was ready to give everything for him! (Although we have never met in real life, this is probably a very rash statement of mine, probably due to inexperience, but I feel so.)
We both had really serious intentions. He called me several times, thinking of coming to me for the weekend, meeting, so to speak, in life, looking into each other’s eyes. At this last conversation, the connection with him was severed. He hasn’t written to me for two weeks now, hasn’t called me, there’s no news. I am very worried. And so... I couldn’t restrain myself, I was the first to write to him (as if to remind me of myself, which makes me a little uncomfortable, because a man, not a woman, should seek love), and asked if everything was fine with him. He justified himself in his response letter by saying that he had a lot of work, crunch after crunch, not a free minute.
He didn't write anything else to me. Complete silence. No letters, silence on the phone. I decided that he didn't need me. I decided to overcome my feminine pride and once again write him a letter, which, as I now understand, is not entirely peaceful: I put him before a choice - whether he sees us together or not, or whether he doesn’t need all this. After this letter, for three days (which is an eternity for me) there was no answer or greeting.
But then another day later I receive a short letter from him, where he says that he is very pleased to receive letters from me. He wrote that he “broke,” he couldn’t do without a woman for six months and “traded the pursuit of a dream (i.e., me) for something earthly, everyday,” something that’s nearby, because we can’t meet yet, we live in different cities "
Broken hearts, confused girls, disappointments, fear of new relationships. It turns out that virtual love is often a chain of successive disappointments, alas.
The main group at risk of becoming victims of such relationships are girls who were raised without a father and were subject to maternal suggestion: “A man must be ideal,” which stemmed from the private: “Your father was a pilot and carried us in his arms,” or the opposite: “ All men are bastards." Such attitudes push the girl to reject suitors without white horses.
Their main problem is that they are not ready to accept an ordinary, earthly man into their lives. In the stories we are considering, the “truth” learned from childhood plays cruel jokes on such girls. During Internet correspondence, we unwittingly fantasize a lot. They write a phrase to us, and we subconsciously play with it - with the intonation, facial expressions with which it should sound. Thus, unconsciously, the person who sits at another computer becomes the very ideal that we were looking for.
In real life, we receive 80% of information non-verbally (that is, through facial expressions, gestures and pantomime), and only 20% through words. Do you understand what's happening? To 20% of what was heard from that young man, the girl in love had completed 80% of the ideas about her ideal. The conclusion is that she loves someone other than who she thinks she loves. She loves the phantom. Her whole problem is not that he is moving away from her. Your problem is that her chosen one does not exist. She cannot get out of her head not the person, but the one whom she herself invented.
Similar stories can happen not only in virtual relationships, but still the percentage of idealization doomed to failure is higher in situations where it is not possible to immediately form a general opinion about a person - by facial expressions, demeanor, or tone and timbre of voice. In the end, a certain spark must jump between people, which is only possible through personal, live communication with each other.
What happens? That a girl who received a certain upbringing in a single-parent family is doomed to such failures? Not at all. This is precisely why there is work on oneself, personal growth, and introspection.
A girl prone to idealizing the object of affection needs to learn to put up with the shortcomings and imperfections of people. And you need to start this acceptance with yourself, recognizing both your merits and your shortcomings and imperfections. Then she will be able to objectively evaluate a person, will be able to fall in love with an ordinary, earthly man and be happy next to him.
In order for there to be fewer such sad stories, mothers who were forced to raise their daughters alone should be especially correct. You always want your child to grow up happy, so that he doesn’t have to worry about his father leaving the family, and this desire often pushes the mother to tell stories about the “legendary father.” But the child has the right to the truth. He will not be happy if he is avoided from reality.
The other extreme, typical of single women, is that, wanting to warn their daughter about possible mistakes, mothers paint terrible pictures of the characters of the majority of men, often doing this using the example of their father, reinforcing in their daughter the desire to meet the most ideal man and shun the rest, “ordinary” representatives of the stronger sex.
No matter what happens in the family, the child must know the truth about what the father was like. It can be difficult for a mother to abstract herself from resentment, but she must give an objective portrait. Tell what was good about him and what was not so good, emphasizing that every person makes mistakes and stumbles. It is not necessary to initiate the child into the horrors that prompted the breakup, or to talk about the unpleasant things that caused the mother’s offense. It is enough to simply describe the warm, positive (but not ideal) appearance of the father before his offense, simply noting that circumstances changed their family, that their life together did not work out, and there is nothing terrible or tragic about it. There are many happy days and prospects ahead for both mother and daughter.
Knowing about her father’s merits, the girl, of course, will regret that life turned out this way and not otherwise. But she will not perceive this painfully, she will not experience hatred and disgust towards him, some of which she will transfer to men. Knowing about his shortcomings, she will not idealize him and will not separate her idea of her future husband from reality. Such a girl will be more tolerant and lenient towards the imperfections of people, and without this lenience it is very difficult to adequately assess reality, and the easiest way to cope with this is to immerse yourself in the magical world of fantasies and dreams, so that, having given your heart to a beautiful virtual stranger, you will painfully fall into the pool pain, breaking rose-colored glasses.
Mature, emotionally stable people are unlikely to find themselves in such a situation. No matter how they meet, they have a realistic enough view of people to understand from the very beginning that they are not communicating with a deity, not with someone super unusual. They know that they are communicating with a person who cannot like everything he has. And if they accept it, then they immediately accept its shortcomings. But such a connection really can turn out to be a life-long fairy tale.
Yurgina Nadezhda,
