Cyber Relationships vs. Face to Face

While cyber relationships are convenient, nothing beats face-to-face dialogue. We’ll discuss both.

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I got an e‑mail note from a loy­al read­er. She wrote that was thank­ful for the con­tent, and also men­tioned how much she was enjoy­ing my books. “I Imag­ine I’m hear­ing your voice as I read.”

Which led me to reflect on writing.

The writ­ing process is intense­ly per­son­al. It’s all about sort­ing through my life expe­ri­ences and under­stand­ings and then shar­ing them in a use­ful way. 

Some­times the process works, some­times it doesn’t. 

Even­tu­al­ly, words come togeth­er, and they’re dropped into the blog cal­en­dar sec­tion, a “pub­lish” date is set, and a lot of the time, that’s it. Off the thing goes, into the ether.

Much like with ther­a­py clients, you sel­dom learn the result. Which is why I ask for feed­back, and was glad to get this note.

She also asked me to comment on cyber relationships vs. face-to-face ones.

Remind­ed me of a client.

Once, she men­tioned a guy at work she found “inter­est­ing.” They’d talk, they’d e‑mail. She didn’t know what to do next. 

I sug­gest­ed a dialogue.

She said,

“I get it. I’ll invite him over. I’ll tell him that my back door leaks and needs weath­er strip­ping, and if he comes over and offers a ‘male view­point’ on weath­er strip­ping, I’ll pro­vide the wine.”

Not exact­ly what I meant, but if it gets them talking… 

Because real, deep, and inti­mate rela­tion­ships take much effort, and much direct communication.

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We’ll loop back. First, let’s look at cyber relationships.

One of the great­est prob­lems with cyber rela­tion­ships is the amount of time that gets devot­ed to “char­gy” inter­ac­tions. There is an almost addic­tive qual­i­ty to their chat line or e‑mail experience. 

Yet, in a sense, they are talk­ing into a void.

This is because of the verac­i­ty fac­tor. Sure, there is (or … it could be an AI, but I digress …) an actu­al per­son at the oth­er end of the con­ver­sa­tion, but until the con­tact shifts to meet­ing the oth­er per­son, you can’t be sure of their sex, their mar­i­tal sta­tus, their age, whether they are already in a relationship—let alone how “real” the person’s writ­ten “per­cep­tion of self” is.

I did a con­sult­ing job for a cor­po­ra­tion, and my con­tact sent the mate­r­i­al via a high-rank­ing HR person. 

As she was head­ing to a meet­ing near­by, I sug­gest­ed she stop at my home office for cof­fee after it wrapped up. The sup­posed “brief meet­ing” last­ed two plus hours; we talked about the project, then our­selves, then life in general.

That con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued by e‑mail.

How­ev­er, in gen­er­al, I notice that when I use e‑mail, I am more like­ly to be sar­cas­tic / iron­ic, than in face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion. I cre­ate an arti­fi­cial inti­ma­cy to make up for the off-putting nature of the media.

Point being, I got a bet­ter “sense” of the woman from our two-hour cof­fee meet­ing that I ever got through our e‑mails, (although the e‑mail con­tin­ued our con­tact and there­fore deep­ened our relationship.)

It’s a paradox.

As to my client, I asked her to tell me, again, about her plan for invit­ing the guy at work to look at her back door. She said she found him inter­est­ing and dif­fer­ent, and she want­ed to get to know him better. 

I then asked her what that had to do with weath­er stripping. 

She laughed, and blushed, and said, 

“What do you want me to do? Tell him I find him interesting?”

I said that this was pre­cise­ly what I would do, but I was­n’t sure what she should do.

I said that I’d say,

“I find our con­ver­sa­tions inter­est­ing, and I’d like to know more about you. How about get­ting cof­fee at Timmie’s and spend­ing some time get­ting to know each oth­er?” (Timmie’s is a Cana­di­an­ism for Tim Horton’s, a major cof­fee / donut chain.)

She said,

“But my way, we can sort of just fall into a con­ver­sa­tion.
Your way, he could say no.”

I replied that my approach is both direct and honest—the way I said it meant that I was eager to learn more about the per­son through face-to-face conversation.

Her way, on the oth­er hand—weather strip­ping and wine at her house—has the poten­tial for a much wider set of interpretations—sort of Mae West, “How’d you like to come upstairs and realign my weath­er strip­ping” kind of thing.

What I’m getting at is this: relationships are difficult enough without making them more difficult.

It is essen­tial that peo­ple meet eye­ball to eye­ball, knee to knee, in dia­logue. If you real­ly want the rela­tion­ship to go some­where, you need a Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Mod­el, and you need to “do com­mu­ni­cat­ing” all the time.

And this kind of dia­logue, to be valu­able, needs to be stripped of pre­tense and game play­ing, so that what is said is accu­rate, hon­est, open and descrip­tive of what is going on for each par­tic­i­pant.

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Cyber relationships, even ones that include phone calls, are hidden behind a protective layer of technology.

There is a cer­tain safe­ty in the once-removed-ness of the tech­nol­o­gy. When I was about 10, I lis­tened to my babysit­ter break up with her boyfriend over the phone. I thought that was cool, so I called up my “girl­friend” (at 10, that means we liked each oth­er and talked) and broke up with her like my babysit­ter did. 

I felt pumped—hav­ing said things I’d nev­er have said in person.

That Sun­day, her dad came up to me at church and reamed me out, and deserved­ly so. Because I could­n’t see her through the tele­phone line, I had no idea what the effects of my words was on her, until he told me a bit of it.

Lat­er, when I was 18, she and I talked about it, and she still was able to feel the pain that I had been total­ly unaware of. Had I said those words to her face (of course, I wouldn’t have—that’s my point), I’d have seen her very deep, neg­a­tive response.

So, all of you in cyber relationships, cool. So far as it goes. Don’t, however, confuse them with real relationships. No matter how badly you want to.

And for all of you con­tem­plat­ing face-to-face rela­tion­ships, try being hon­est, instead of play­ing games. 

Ask some­one out for cof­fee and conversation. 

Be straight with people—“I’m inter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing this con­ver­sa­tion and being your friend, but for me, this is not about romance,” for example. 

(see Inti­mate Rela­tion­ships for more ideas—near the bot­tom of the article.)

Some people won’t like it or won’t want to play by the “honesty and openness rules” you want to use. OK. Move on. Seek those who are willing to open up, or who are at least willing to explore opening up.

Hint: you’re nev­er going to find a rela­tion­ship with­out dra­ma and con­flict. The only way through such con­flict is dai­ly dia­logue. Not talk­ing, hold­ing grudges, play­ing games, yelling, try­ing to be “clever”—all lead to more conflict. 

Face-to-face dia­logue is key—and you must com­mit to doing it, even when you don’t want to.

The depth of our being is deter­mined by how well we are open and honest—in this moment. This requires being phys­i­cal­ly present with our part­ner, and the will­ing­ness to com­mu­ni­cate with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It requires obser­va­tion, and the shar­ing of feel­ings. Any­thing that gets in the way, whether it is tech­nol­o­gy or weath­er strip­ping, means “liv­ing life once removed.”

And life, sim­ply, is too short for that.

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