Can you really fall in love online?

Question:
I have been talking to this very sweet guy online lately and even though I have never met him (he is in Las Vegas and I am in West Virginia). I feel I am falling in love with him. I do not understand why this is can you give me some reasons why this happens?

Answer:
The online environment is the perfect breeding ground for fantasies. Because falling in love is based upon projections and assumptions of perfection, of rightness, of goodness, of happiness and because we WANT to feel all those things about our partner, we ascribe all of those wonderful traits to someone we’ve never met, never touched, never dated, never argued with, never gotten sick around, never seen in a bad mood, and really don’t know that much about (other than whatever it is they’ve told us and we believe with absolutely no proof to back it up).

That is why you are feeling that you are falling in love. But it’s not real.

Too often these feelings last up until the moment the two people involved meet in person and they find there is no chemistry and the “love” they felt goes up in a puff of smoke.

Sometimes we find that the photo they sent of themselves was actually of someone else. Or we find that the person that was so romantic, so communicative, so willing to share his feelings over a computer is, in the REAL world, basically a boring lump. They have nothing much to say and would prefer to watch sitcoms on television than to speak to you in the romantic words he did via email and instant chat.

When that happens, I’m always suspicious that the romantic things he typed or emailed to you, he copied straight out of a book.

I go into a lot more detail about love, dating smart, and handling yourself both online and offline in my book Sucka Free Love! Find out more information by clicking the link.

MsHeartBeat

Relationship and dating advice columnist of Ask HeartBeat! Has enjoyed dishing out insightful yet hilariously funny advice, tersely worded reality checks and "let me slap you upside the head" wake up calls to men and women around the globe since 1991.