An inherent Internet temptation: Long-distance relationships

 A lot of people are meeting up online with people who live very far away. I’m not a fan of long distance relationships because they are more fantasy than reality. In a long-distance relationship, you spend so much more time anticipating being together than you actually spend being together. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up only having sex when you’re together rather than actually slowly, carefully, and organically getting to know each other, which will result in increased longing for one another when you’re apart, resulting in sexual liaisons when you’re together, on and on and on.

You need two computers in your life 

 

Instant messaging 

Instant messaging has become part of the Internet scene, enabling you to get in touch with somebody immediately and talk in real time to them in a completely artificial while seemingly urgent way. Instant messaging discourages self-censoring, voice clues, or reality-based feedback loop. If you’re angry with one another (or even if you’re not), you may end up typing something that you might not have said if you had a little longer to think it through. Although you do get an instant response, it’s not the same as a conversation, so things like tone, sense of humor, and irony really do get lost in typing. No matter how you cut it, communicating through the Internet really is simply typing. 

Chat rooms 

Chat rooms are another part of the fantasy world of the Internet. They’ve been known to be very disruptive to relationships even when they’re not suggestive or pornographic, and when they are, Nelly bar the door! And for those of you who view Internet porn as harmless or private, beware! Because Internet porn is so instantly available (it doesn’t even come in a wrapper anymore), it’s right there in front of your keyboard. Women tend to be grievously offended by it, and men tend to think, what’s the big deal? If Internet porn is part of your life and you’re dating, you need to think through what you’re really doing here, what your intent is, and what happens if you get caught. Remember that very few things are private anymore.

Cell phones 

To say cell phones have become ubiquitous doesn’t begin to explain how common they are. My daughter visited Thailand and was astonished to discover that in a country where the average income is $700, everybody had a cell phone! With regard to dating, the first thing that you should know about a cell phone is that unless you’re late for a date or lost and trying to get in touch with your date by cell phone, turn it off! A date is not the time to show how popular you are by letting your date know how many people call you. That’s why voice mail was invented. The worst-case scenario I’ve ever seen was a couple walking down the street and holding hands, while both of them were talking on their cell phones, so you know they weren’t talking to each other. This kind of behavior really makes no sense. Cell phone addiction is evidence of that need for speed and urgency thing, always having to be in touch and feeling like you might be missing something if you’re not connected. I actually once did a story about countries where a person having sex is more likely to answer his or her cell phone. If this is you, stop! Get up from the couch, go look in the mirror, and ask yourself, “What are my priorities? When did I become so addicted to being that in touch?”  

• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.benelux/c/TSOq3lK8qbg
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.culture.esperanto/c/To-pqyFwqWA
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.australia+nz/c/M5zT9tvyMUA
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.history.early-modern/c/Hu8jS8rrrbg
• https://groups.google.com/g/uk.politics.misc/c/LVdthl4-gS8
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.culture.french/c/UI7KiO3VSzo
• https://groups.google.com/g/alt.home.repair/c/NRXTI7uxyH4
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.women/c/DMdEGExqVDc
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.culture.asian.american/c/I0xehHPCiZw
• https://groups.google.com/g/misc.news.internet.discuss/c/dbxB8SuDffE
• https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/c/YeKS2Qf1wkI
• https://groups.google.com/g/alt.romance/c/pWA1z1pIxO0

Dating is a social activity, while work is about competence. Please don’t use your computer at work to instant message, visit chat rooms, view pornography, or check to see whether the dating site has gotten much action. You need to have at least two computers in your life: one at work and one at home. If you don’t, you may find that you’ll only have the one at home because you’re going to get fired from the one at work. 

Keeping a Dating Notebook 

Throughout this book, I include exercises you can do to find out more about yourself and what you want, as well as suggestions for noting your feelings and impressions. Treat this as both an opportunity and a project to find out more about yourself. Buy yourself a spiral notebook and a pen and write down specifics. (Be sure to write in ink because it’s useful to go back and see what you were saying as opposed to erasing it, if you didn’t like it, because your musings can be a work in progress, a reflection of who you were and who you’re becoming.) Instead of writing in this text (I still haven’t recovered from the fact that my second grade teacher would never let me so much as underline in my book), I want you to provide your own notebook, but keep it with Dating For Dummies, but make sure no one else can casually pick it up and be privy to thoughts you might want to keep a bit more private. When you write something down, include information that will help you remember who you were at the time of notation, your feelings, your job, your wishes and dreams as well as the date, the time of day, who you were dating at the time, how old you were, and where you were living. This info can really be an ongoing log (sort of like Captain Kirk StarDate log as if your dating is entering a strange, new world, encountering exotic new species!). (In spite of my teacher, if you bought this book, underline as you see fit unless you checked Dating For Dummies out of the library. Hey, splurge and buy your own copy and keep it around for reference.)