11: from online to a new house

A relationship which first formed online and then moved to face to face interactions is my distant cousin and his wife. It all happened on match.com. My cousin at the time was already in a marriage, and he was sneaking this “online affair” on the side. Once he realized that he had fallen in love with this new woman, and out of love with his current wife, he asked for a divorce, and went to meet up with the new love. Our family was shocked and appalled that anyone we knew would do such a cruel thing to another human being, let alone a partner in which they had had two children together. From what I can tell, my cousin and his new wife are very, very happy. They have a great life together and seem to enjoy each other’s company immensely. This shows that moving the relationship from computer mediated communication to face to face interaction allowed the relationship to move to the next level. Clearly intimacy and social interaction online were not problems for my cousin and his love. The article by Ramirez and Wang talked about face to face interactions being made better in “early” stages but more strongly negatively effected in the “late switching”. There seemed to be nothing negative about Bill and Carol’s switch from online to face to face interactions. It has been five or six years now and this happy couple remain in good spirits and company. Our family is shocked that this relationship has lasted, but I guess we are happy for my cousin and his new wife. However, our heart goes out to his first wife, who clearly never saw this “online affair” coming until it was too late. But as scaring as this is for her, it must be a tiny-bit reassuring to know that her ex-husband found “true love” online and not just a little fling that didn’t last for long. This relationship supports the Social Information Processing Theory which talks about time and adaptation as the key elements. This theory says that with enough time, impressions over CMC can be as strong as Ftf interaction. With enough time, Bill and Carol formed very lasting impressions which caused sparks to fly and a deep love to form.