"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love." Tom Robbins
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known." Walt Disney.
Cyberspace is a psychological and social domain. It is virtual in the sense that imagination is intrinsic to that space. In many online relationships, you can imagine your cybermate in whatever way you wish to and you can describe yourself as you want to be seen. When people are asked why they engaged in sexual relationships online, the most common reason given is that they have specific fantasies and desires that are not being fulfilled in their offline relationships. However, in another important sense cyberspace is not virtual: online relationships are conducted between actual, flesh-and-blood people. Although this relationship involves many imaginative aspects, the relationship itself is not imaginary. Cyberspace is part of reality and online relationships are real relationships.
People typically consider the virtual nature of cyberspace to be its unique characteristic. Although cyberspace involves imaginary characters and events of a kind and magnitude not seen before, virtual realities have always been integral parts of human life. All forms of art involve some kind of virtual reality. In this sense, cyberspace does not offer a totally new dimension to human life. What is new about cyberspace is its interactive nature. It is a space where real people have actual interactions with other real people, while being able to shape, or even create, their own and other people's personalities. The move from passive virtual reality to the interactive virtual reality of cyberspace is much more radical than the move from photographs to movies.
The greater interactivity of cyberspace implies that we have greater control over our personal relationships. For example, when we so desire, we can either slow them down or increase their pace. If someone surprises you-say, by expressing her love for you-you have time to consider your response. You do not have to rely merely on your spontaneous responses. In this sense, it is easier to cope with online relationships. The sense of greater control is often central to enjoyable experiences.
Cyberspace is similar to fictional space in the sense that in both cases the flight into virtual reality is not so much a denial of reality as a form of exploring and playing with it. One crucial difference between the two is the interactive nature of cyberspace. In cyberspace, people do not merely read or watch a romantic affair undertaken by others, but in a sense they are actually participating in it. In cyberspace people are not merely reading erotica, but creating and participating in it. Karl Marx once said that people "make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please." In cyberspace, they can finally make it exactly as they please.
In cyberspace, people are more actively involved than they are when they read novels, and in addition, online communication touches upon more personal and specific aspects than does reading novels. As one woman writes: "I love reading about sexual things. When I know that the writer is thinking of me specifically, it is completely, absolutely thrilling. And when I find someone who enjoys the same level of explicitness I do and has similar writing skills, it's particularly alluring" (cited in Semans & Winks, The Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web). Since the personal aspect is of special importance in stimulating intense emotions, cyberlove and cybersex are typically more exciting than reading novels or watching television.
The imaginary journey into the virtual reality of novels or movies is not usually condemned unless it is perceived to have a negative influence on our everyday life. The moment that such negative impact is present, as in the case of violent movies, the effect of the virtual reality is condemned. The interactive nature of cyberspace makes it more susceptible to moral criticism, as its practical impact is greater. As one man argues: "Cybersex is closer to having a hooker than plain pornography because there is a real and active person involved on the other end. People are touching each others' minds in a mutual and cooperative way that silent fantasy does not permit." (Cited in Love Online). Indeed, in a survey of Internet users, 75% stated that they would find it acceptable for their significant other to visit an adult site, whereas 77% said that it would not be acceptable for their significant other to participate in an adult one-on-one online video conversation with a member of the opposite sex whom they do not know. Due to the interactive nature of cyberspace, virtual activities on the Net are accorded moral significance.
Our active role in cyberspace makes this environment more real and seductive than that of daydreams, erotic novels, or X-rated movies; hence the temptation to engage in sexual activities is greater. A married man whose wife of fourteen years is having cybersex, reports: "I offered a compromise and suggested that she read adult stories or look at pictures instead of a one-to-one chat. She refused. I even suggested that while she's cybering, she types, I do the things the other person describes, but she flatly refused and told me that it was a personal chat and is nothing to do with me" (cited in Love Online) The personal actual interaction, rather than the mere aspect of imagination, is what excites his wife. Since the line separating passive observation from full interaction has already been crossed in cybersex, it becomes easier to blur the line separating imagination from reality.
Participants in cyberlove indeed take the reality of cyberspace seriously. Thus, people speak of their cybermates or even their online husbands or online wives. People have even got cybermarried and vowed to remain faithful to each other. One woman wrote that what attracted her to respond to the first message sent by her online lover, with whom she is now deeply in love, is that he asked her to cyberdance with him. Some women have claimed that they do not want to engage in cybersex with the first person who asks them, since they want to save their virtual virginity for the right man. Similarly, some say that they do not want to have a one-night cyberstand, but rather wish to have a more extended and meaningful online sexual affair.
The reality of online interaction is illustrated by the significance people attach to having cyberorgasms. People complain that they now have the added pressure of faking cyberorgasms too. One married woman described her online sexual partner: "He was "self-centered on his part and not very exciting and I found myself faking an orgasm over the computer and thought I had totally lost my mind" (see Love Online). The virtual nature of cyberspace does not diminish the need to resort to the same illusory methods used in offline circumstances. In light of the interactive revolution in cyberspace, a cyberorgasm is as real as (and sometimes even more so then) a regular one and the lack of it may hurt people in the same manner it does in offline circumstances. The virtual environment is real, and so its imaginary aspects.
The presence of interactive characteristics in the virtual realm of online relationship is a tremendous revolution in personal relationships, as it enables people to reap most of the benefits associated with offline relationships without investing significant resources.
