I think you can be intimate online, but I wonder who we are being intimate with. In most relationships, there is a certain amount of projection, as we imagine the other person to be one person, and they might not have that idea about themselves. Not at all! On the internet, since we only have words (and maybe photos or video) to go on, there is so much more room for what @funky_princess mentioned: imagination.
The more you use your imagination, I believe, the more the person you are relating to is yourself. So, to the extent you love yourself, you are that much more likely to feel love for the person who you imagine is at the other end of the internet. In other words, on the internet, the person you “love” is much more of a fantasy than that person would be in real life.
I know that some of what we see gives us a good idea of who other people are. This makes it possible for people to meet and get married, etc. I think we truly underestimate how much of our image of the other person is constructed in our own heads, when we fill in the gaps that, in real life, would be filled by sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
As an example, I’ve been involved in more than one relationship where the other person said they’d be willing to come to my town, get a room, and meet me there, sight unseen, naked and willing. This never happened. But they said they were willing. Of course, they knew I wanted to think that, and they filled that fantasy, in my imagination. Would they really have done that? I have my doubts. Although, at the time, I was somewhat manic, and who knows: maybe I would have been surprised.
Anyway, as I started to recover from my mania and my depression, I started seeing things differently. I realized I had been throwing myself into these virtual love affairs out of a desperation that stemmed from an idea that I was worthless. I thought if women could fall in love with me, then maybe I wasn’t worthless. So I tried, and they said they were in love with me, and it changed nothing in my feelings about myself. I’m sure it would have been fun if we had met, but it wouldn’t have solved my problem.
As a result of this experience, I’ve come to the explanation that I provided above. I am very suspicious that we really know much about each other based on what we say here. It’s not even because we are pretending to be anything. It’s because of the inherent way our brains correct an image when information is missing.
Intimacy happens on the internet. Very powerful intimacy. Personal relationships are formed. Ones that can feel incredibly deep. But are they really what we think they are? As I said, I have my doubts.
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