Online and offline relationships

Within Lister page 170 a study by Andrea Barker is outlined. She asked couples who met online questions about their relationship finding that often their relationship was every bit as strong as “normal” and couples who had initially met in real life. She also reported similarities in the patterns of early relationship formation. For example, they cited perceiving someone as having a good sense of humour as one of the initial attractions to them as well as perceiving them to have lots in common with them. However, there were also specifically online traits which played a role in attraction, for example the style in which they wrote their responses and the time they took to reply.

Whilst this study indicates that there are few differences between online and offline relationships, I would argue that fundamentally there are subtle differences which can be significant in the end. Particularly in romantic relationships, there are intangible things which can make two people work or not, and these are impossible to gauge online, let alone through the time it takes them to respond to a message. I would agree that initially meeting on a forum about a common interest would result in you having something in common, the things which you really need to form a longer relationship, let alone a marriage as in Andrea’s study, are impossible to gauge via exclusively online communication. Ultimately I would say that online relationships should be handled with caution given the numerous stories of people meeting online and then being taken from their families, as with the case of the Cleethorpes schoolgirl who was taken to France by someone whom she met on the Internet. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/7843907.stm)