by Victoria Tiegert

Created on: September 02, 2008

Online daters can most assuredly be real couples. The success of many of these relationships is proof positive of this. Many of the people who use online dating services find true love and marry the one they discover there. I know this to be true because that is how I met my husband. Although we did eventually meet in person, we were an online couple long before that. We lived in different states, but got to truly know one another over the internet lines.

Developing any relationship, dating or friendship, begins with getting to know one another. This is how we find out if there is something there that interests us and inspires us to move forth in the relationship. Online dating eliminates many of the purely visual and hormonal impressions that may get in the way when meeting in person and allows us to relate more deeply to the person we are communicating with.

Online dating is purely about communication. These are not times spent with the pressure of wondering what the expectations are at the end each time together. Both individuals knows that you are just talking and discovering. Without this pressure, communication can flow more freely and openly.

The relationships that form online are multi-faceted. They are not simply a physical attraction to a body. You are falling in love with a personality, an individual's character, a past history, a belief system, and many other aspects that comprise your online partner.

As my now husband and I wrote to one another online, we discovered many things about one another that we probably would never have had the chance to in person. One question led to another, and we talked about everything from how we were raised to why we were online to find love and much of what had happened in between. I knew him better than I had ever known anyone else I had dated previously. Once we did meet, believe me, the hormones kicked in and our communication changed drastically. I am thankful that we had the time to really get better acquainted prior to this.

We became a couple after about a month of communications. To us, that meant that we had decided to commit to being exclusive to one another. We discontinued any other communications we were having online or elsewhere and devoted ourselves to further developing our relationship. We were at this point a couple like every other. When you talked to one of us, you heard about the other. Much of our free time was spent together in the sense that we were spending it sharing one another. After a time, we were planning a future. Isn't this just the same thing that makes anyone else a couple?

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