From CyberPsychology and Behavior, Vol. 3, #2, April, 2000, pp. 237-242.

Two By Two in Cyberspace: Getting Together and Connecting Online

by Andrea Baker

Abstract:  From qualitative research of the last 2 years on 40 couples who met online between 1992 and 1999, I have selected two for further study: a couple in their 40s who split up after courting online for 4 months and meeting once offline at a southwestern resort town and a married couple in their 30s from different countries who managed to communicate, visit, and commit to each other, though each was married to another person at the time they met online. Data was collected from E-mail questionnaires asking about the progress of the relationship and, for the first case, from ongoing letters and a follow-up telephone interview with each party. By examining the case histories, some factors of success in developing online relationships may begin to emerge. Processes of communication and situational circumstances are compared between the two couples and to others in the research on online couples.

INTRODUCTION

In a project collecting data on over 40 couples who met in cyberspace, I have chosen two cases of partners who made the transfer from the written to the spoken word, and then from acquaintances to friends to lovers. Both met f2f and corresponded afterward, yet one couple is now married and one still remains apart.

Their ages range from late thirties to late forties, and they come from Iowa, England, Florida, and California. Using pseudonyms for names and nicknames, I call them Mike and Claire and Blake and Neva. All have college degrees or more, and have worked in business and education.

The question for this paper is how could one couple commit to live together and carry that out and the other, who seemed to want the same, did not? In attempting to answer, I will discuss the following areas after describing the research methodology and the couples in more detail: (1) How They Met Online, (2) How They Communicated, (3) How They Met Offline, and (4) Analysis of Outcomes and Conclusions.

METHODOLOGY AND BACKGROUND ON THE TWO COUPLES

With the intent of exploring how people meet online and then offline to form intimate relationships (Parks and Floyd, l996; Rheingold, l993), I found couples who met that criteria and asked if both parties would agree to filling out an open-ended questionnaire by email. Between the summer of 1997 and today, I collected data from 43 couples, a few of whom also provided me with a selection of their email correspondence. I spoke to a small subset of those by phone for follow-up interviews, including the four people chosen for this case study.

The two couples chosen for the case study comparison are first, Mike and Claire, Couple A, and second, Blake and Neva, Couple B. All were previously married and each person lived a great distance away from their prospective partners. They have each attained a college education and are currently employed in fields ranging from publishing to sales. I chose them for comparison to analyze possible reasons for the different outcomes, thus far, of their relationships: the individuals in Couple A are now married, whereas the partners in Couple B are still apart. The research question is: Why was one couple able to progress from online communication to meeting offline to marriage, yet the other couple with seemingly similar beginnings is not together now, though they now talk of joining up one day?

HOW THEY MET ONLINE: BEGINNING THEIR RELATIONSHIP

This section discusses how and where each couple met, and initiated more personal communication with each other.

Couple A

Blake and Neva met on an online forum, an asynchronous discussion group with separate conferences on such topics as relationships, travel, society, philosophy, food, and games. Ages 44 (Blake) and 47 (Neva) when they encountered each other online, they lived on opposite sides of the U.S, Blake in California and Neva in Florida. In a sequence common to online couples, they progressed from communication in a public or group site to email and then to phone calls, an exchange of photographs, and finally to a f2f meeting.

What happened to prompt Neva to go beyond the forum to a more personal mode of contact was that Blake expressed romantic interest in another woman he had met online. Impressed by his contributions in a range of topics, she sent the first email, telling him that he seemed unusually giddy in his latest postings, perhaps a sign that he was becoming infatuated too quickly. Flattered by her interest, Blake accepted the suggestion and continued to communicate by email, his curiosity piqued.

Blake had become rather vocal in places he posted, and had caught the attention of more than one woman who noticed he was single and available. Participants were able to check member profiles to learn more about the characteristics each chooses to share. At this forum, no mandatory categories existed, so each person could describe whatever features of self he/she considered important, such as marital status, age, hobbies, personal goals or life style.

Blake and Neva became more open about their courtship as their relationship grew. They handled a problem of jealousy when Neva privately objected to written interactions between Blake and another woman which occurred in a sexually-oriented topic. He had emailed at least one other woman before this series of postings to say that he had become seriously involved with Neva and so unable to continue with exploring a relationship with anyone else IRL. As the couple prepared to meet IRL, they openly announced their anticipation, the location and date of the f2f.

Couple B

Looking for pen pals with common interests, Mark responded to a Claire’s personal profile because of her background in law and her interest in music. She had worked as a musician and a paralegal, whereas he had studied law along with psychology in college and now managed a music section of a bookstore. They each had an attraction for the other’s culture, she for the British and he for the American. Their emails progressed quite quickly in frequency to daily or more emails and to deeper intellectual subjects than the everyday happenings at work. Claire was "thrilled" with the content of Mike’s letters and the timeliness of his responses.

Complications arose from their current marriages to other people. Mark had engaged in two RL affairs and met one woman from the online site in person twice. He and his wife of twenty years had a "comfortable" if "routine" life with "no love", and he hadn’t explicitly sought to replace her, although they had separated once, in 1986 after his wife became aware of one of the affairs. Recently, after the other online romance ended badly, he vowed not to let his emotions get too entangled again. He presented himself to women online as married, with children, as he had two teenagers at the time. Claire, on the other hand, began to figure out how to extricate herself from her own marriage before she even met Mark online. She planned a trip to meet Mark in England when her husband went to Boston for business. Surprised at the the suddenness of her request, Mark nonetheless offered his house near London to Claire for accommodations.

HOW THEY COMMUNICATED: MOVING TOWARD F2F

In this section, online nicknames, modes and content of communication, and timing and presentation of the photo are discussed for each couple.

Couple A

One feature of online communication in public spaces is the use of nicknames or "nicks" or ‘handles". Usually people select their own nicks, subject only to restrictions against duplicating those used by others in the online setting. Blake had chosen a whimsical nick, related to an avocational hobby of his. Neva’s nick represented a certain spiritual tradition, with a specific mood. She had worried over Blake’s nick as it gave the impression of immaturity. Neva noted that it sounded "like a guy with a Peter Pan syndrome, terminally adolescent".

Tactics used by Blake and Neva to communicate thoughts and feelings included emailing original poetry, either written alone or collaboratively, with one adding another verse to the first one presented by the other. The method evolved spontaneously, often including the metaphor of the river. The flowing water represented how each felt in pursuing the relationship and how to navigate through rough spots in their journey together. Neva had admired Blake’s "Zen approach" to life, and drew on his greater faith when she doubted the reality of their bonding. She called it "surrealistic" and Blake her "phantom lover" before they met.

Once they began to talk on the phone, they became accustomed to speaking almost every night. Their communication progressed to intimate exchanges, "erotic conversations" (Neva) or "phone sex" (Blake ). Blake had shown his picture to Neva quite soon after meeting, one from an ad with an online dating service. He also sent a more informal photo snapped in a jungle, which Neva preferred to the first one. Neva at first sent Blake a twenty-year old shot of herself in a bikini on vacation in a tropical location and then a more recent one.

Couple B

Claire came to know Mark first by his real name and then by another nickname. Like Neva, she was rather put-off by the nickname which implied an unrefined type of character. Mark had used it as a pun, a play on words, thinking it humorous, employing the name in chat rooms.

Mark’s usual tactic of sending erotic fantasy pieces to women he wanted to get to know did not work well with Claire. At first they only emailed, rather than chatting synchronously online, and she "wasn’t interested in the sexual fantasy things I wrote". After a few weeks, Mark introduced Claire to Instant Messaging so they could talk in real time. Later, only after meeting f2f did the two engage in both cybersex and phone sex, also writing fantasies to each other in email.

Unlike Blake and Neva who stressed the early exchange of photos, Mark thought they were unimportant. To him, the whole point of developing a relationship online is to get to know the person’s mind rather than their appearance. Mark would send a photo when asked by other women but considered the request evidence of their "shallowness". One potential pen pal refused to become his pen pal after seeing his picture, apparently because Mark is overweight and thus, did not meet her standards for good looks. He had sent Claire a photo and she finally sent him one so he would know "who to look for’ when he picked her up. Claire’s reaction to Mark’s picture was that she had met him before. Amazingly, she claims to have met him when she visited the bookshop where he worked a few months earlier when her husband’s business took him overseas. She remembers how "those blue eyes" triggered the shock of recognition of the man in the photograph, adding that he had volunteered to help her, unlike most of the other service workers in the UK. Mark still half-questions, kiddingly, whether Claire and he had actually met.

HOW THEY MET OFFLINE: OVERCOMING DISTANCE

Where they first encountered each other, their first impressions, differences from expectations, and outcomes and future plans are described in this section for each couple.

Couple A

Blake believed that a romantic setting could start a new relationship off well. He selected a place to meet located between their home residences which combined desired seclusion with scenic landscapes, outdoor places to explore together. Cost was a factor in the trip which was planned for June, l998. Neva had enough frequent flyer miles to fly to the southwestern town. Blake would meet Neva at the airport, and had reserved two rooms in case Neva wanted to stay apart from him.

After the initial shock of seeing each other at the gate, they kissed twice on the way to the hotel. The interactions went very well, and the couple became intimate within hours of meeting. Later, they were both swooning about the f2f meeting, and Blake reiterated his intent to find a job in Neva’s location. Because of her job and children in the area, she had decided not to relocate.

Positive expectations were fulfilled with a few reservations on appearance and one area of conflict. Blake voiced concern in the phone interview that while Neva was certainly attractive, he thought her weight verged on the borderline of heaviness acceptable to him. Likewise, Neva found Blake not as bulky, less hefty in body weight than she imagined, and so was a bit disappointed.

Talking for hours, the couple conflicted in one arena, that of politics. Neva represented the flower child of the sixties, liberal point of view on most subjects, whereas Black criticized that slant on things, arguing with more conservative ideas.

Couple B

When Claire met Mark in the bookstore, he helped her downstairs to store her suitcase until the end of the workday when his wife picked them up to take them home. When asked about her perception of Mark’s wife, Claire said she was the type of woman right out of a Monty Python movie and that she was not pleased with how Mark’s wife treated him. On the second night, she spent some time talking with him in the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed and something happened to trigger thoughts of connection. On the way upstairs he accidentally brushed her arm and she felt a spark, the "lightening". She saw his eyes change, saw "fire in his eyes". The next day they went off exploring together and she knew she was in love with him. She told him of her feelings for him the last night of her visit. He responded, not in kind but with some interest, as he "was very attracted to her, mentally and physically."

After she returned the calls, letters and chats got more intense, more intimate in a sexual sense, and Claire began to plan the next visit. By this time she had initiated divorce proceedings and the couple snuck off to Scotland six or seven months after the first visit, boarded by Mark’s friend for a day or two at first. On this second visit they did become sexually involved and cemented their bond, although Mark still had reservations about leaving his family, not wanting to cause hurt. After the third visit, Claire suggested that she come live there on a trial basis for six months while Mark pondered his future. At that point Mark knew how deeply he cared for Claire and that he would eventually come to break with his wife. Claire took a large risk, however in that she moved while Mark lived with his spouse.

ANALYSIS OF OUTCOMES: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

After outlining the final happenings with the two couples, I will compare and contrast their situations to begin to assess how the outcomes varied so much. The differences may shed light on why one couple made the transition from online acquaintances to live-in partners.

Final outcomes were that Blake and Neva as of this date are reconsidering getting together again, with Neva moving out to Blake’s area rather than him relocating to hers, as they had planned at first. In the interim after the first and only f2f meeting of June, l998, both have dated others, with Neva seeing one man on a serious basis for a while. The couple formally split up last February, but according to recent communication from Blake are talking of reuniting if Blake’s occupational and financial stability improves.

After Claire came to live in England, Mark broke up with his wife, getting the courage from Claire’s "support". He remarks that in due course his wife may come to acknowledge the benefits of the divorce, and that his two children have come to accept his new wife. He and Claire married in April, l999, one year and eight months after meeting online. They predict a long and happy future either in the UK or in the States, where they may move to lower their cost of living and allow Mark to attend a graduate school in his area of psychology.

A list of similarities and differences may show that on the surface the couples look very much alike. Underneath, perhaps, a few differences emerge to at least partially explain the different outcomes thus far, of "success" and "failure" to connect more permanently in physical space.

Similarities of Two Couples

--Age: All people had lived past their twenties, in their late thirties to their early forties.

--Marital Status: All had been married to others, or were at the time of meeting, and all had at least one child.

--Education: All achieved bachelor’s degrees, with some postgraduate training.

--Dates of Meeting Online and Offline: Both couples met in 1997 online, meeting offline from four to seven months later.

--Distance: Members of both couples lived thousands of miles away from their partners.

--Prior Online Relationships: Females had none, whereas males had experience with one or two attempts at RL interactions with women they met online.

Differences Between Two Couples

--Number of f2f Meetings: One couple (A) met only once offline, whereas the other couple (B) met three times before woman relocated.

--Cybersex: Couple A had cybersex and phone sex before meeting IRL, whereas Couple B did not, until after that point.

--Jealousy: Couple A had recurring incidents of problems with online and offline interactions of friends and dates. Woman in Couple B became reconciled to man’s continuing friendship with woman who was his previous online/offline relationship.

--Jobs/Finances: Man of first couple was unemployed during most of the early relationship whereas man of second couple was working continuously.

Woman of Couple A worked, and woman of Couple B was not working for part of the time, after the first f2f meeting.

CONCLUSIONS: FROM ROMANCE TO REALITY

Along with the differences between the couples, I conclude that the two themes of first, relative importance of physical appearance and common values, and secondly, commitment (Gwinnell, 1998), risk, and resources may illuminate why one couple stayed together and the other did not.

In the online world, one advantage to relationships is the ability to get to know someone, in Neva’s words, "from the inside out" or as Mark says about himself: "I’m not an oil painting" and so does not expect extremely good looks from others (Baker, l998). Mark did mention that if Claire had been hugely overweight or seriously disabled, he is not sure that their relationship would have grown, but affirmed how he would hardly engage someone online who needed to have a picture soon after meeting. His partner Claire was glad to get it and said it "can be a big help" in filling in the blanks (Suler, 1997). Blake specifically stated that seeing a picture before meeting irl was ‘very important" and Neva agreed that it was "crucial" in that you might spot something "you absolutely can’t tolerate".

On the question of values, Mark and Claire point to their "spiritual differences", but Claire laughs it off by saying she always has such differences as she seems to be attracted to atheists. Mark clarifies that Claire has experienced many different religions, is open to new possibilities, and does not try to convince him away from his nonbelief. In contrast, an ideational conflict bothering Neva had led to "coldness" between herself and Blacke on one evening of their f2f meeting when an old friend from a commune got into a heated debate with Blake. Perhaps the depth of difference as well as the way each handles it first online and then offline can make or break a couple’s attachment.

Neither couple possessed the wealth to travel at will or leave jobs without consequences. Nevertheless, Claire did have some "financial flexibility" after her divorce. Her temporary job and cooperation from her boss allowed for her first trip to England. After she met Mark, she "spent most of every day trying to figure out how to conquer the distance". She now describes the transition as going from "rich and miserable to poor and happy" with Mark. Searching for jobs in Neva’s area, Blake was more than willing to move. However, after not finding anything within a few months, and after hearing of Neva’s new love interest, he took a job within his home area. Now, two years after meeting Blake, Claire is thinking of going to his geographical area.

Much more research is needed to examine the dynamics of relationships which begin online (Chenault, l998). Early In-depth sharing of important dimensions of each person’s values and life styles and resolution of identified conflicts may offset minor problems encountered later IRL. Recognition of practicalities such as financial resources combined with willingness to sacrifice current comforts and near-by ties may also help people bridge large geographical distances.

REFERENCES

Baker, Andrea. "Cyberspace Couples Finding Romance Online Then Meeting for the First Time in Real Life". CMC Magazine. July, l998.

http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/jul/baker.html

Chenault, Brittney. "Developing Personal and Emotional Relationships Via Computer-Mediated Communication". CMC Magazine. May, l998.

http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/may/chenault.html

Gwinnell, Esther. Online Seductions. Kodansha International, New York, 1998.

Parks, Malcolm. and K. Floyd. "Making Friends in Cyberspace". Journal of Communication (Winter: 46: 1996), 80-97.

Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community.HarperPerennial, New York, 1993.

Suler, John. The Psychology of Cyberspace.

http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/psycyber.html

Requests for Reprints to:

Dr, Andrea Baker
Ohio University-Lancaster
Lancaster, OH 43130