Psychology of Internet communication. Features of virtual dating and relationships

Let's first consider the positive aspects of online dating and relationships, and there are more of them than might seem at first glance.

Advantages of virtual communication:

Voluntariness of contacts and relationships.
Possibility to interrupt communication at any moment.
Errors in virtual communication are easier to correct, especially before they become relationship in real life.
A wider circle of communication is an opportunity to find a heart-to-heart interlocutor or a partner to create a serious relationship. Someone who is not nearby in real life or it is difficult to start communicating with him.
There is no virtual pregnancy and the possibility of contracting an STD is excluded.
The ability to realize personality traits, play roles, experience emotions that, for one reason or another, are frustrated in real life.
Self-discovery and development of your strengths in virtual communication.
Development of communication skills, greater self-confidence in general.
And others.

There are also negative aspects of online dating and relationships, and they cannot be ignored.

Disadvantages of virtual communication:

In the event that communication for the sake of communication is to the detriment of relationships in real life.
Lack of non-verbal communication - using gestures, intonation, etc., which impoverishes communication and gives rise to misperception of the interlocutor, overestimating or underestimating.
An opportunity to meet extortionists who gain confidence in order to further enrich themselves.
Virtual communication has increased compared to normal social contacts emotional intensity.

Learn more about the latest feature of virtual communication. Virtual love, "Love on the Internet" ( further development this feelings already individually, it can end in nothing or develop into a serious long-term relationship in real life) - this is an extremely common “disease” on the Internet, something like “virtual measles”, which almost everyone has had in a mild or severe form. Most often virtual novel is a state of extreme emotional excitement bordering on euphoria. A virtual romance develops very quickly; what takes months in reality takes days on the Internet. However, such novels end very quickly. No meetings in reality virtual romance rarely lasts more than six months.

General principles for virtual communication and relationships in real life:

Truly interpersonal is dialogical communication, where both partners are equal.
Previous communication experience, genetic characteristics (temperament) and characteristics of upbringing, the society in which a person moves, form standards of communication, set patterns of behavior that a person learns to follow when interacting with other people.
It is necessary to understand the uniqueness of each communication partner and under no circumstances adjust the inner world of another person to your stereotypical vision.
Scientific researchers J. Teutsch and Ch. Teutsch developed a completely different theory from the previous ones, explaining behavior in the process of communication as genetically determined.

Psychogenetics considers the main conditions for choosing a communication style to be the main internal direction and negative emotions, which, intertwined with life circumstances, form a certain model behavior that is invariably repeated from generation to generation. A behavior model is a stable, regularly repeated, “recognizable” form of behavior, otherwise patterns. Patterns, like physiological information, are passed on from generation to generation: a person's individual history repeats the history of his parents or one of his ancestors. The pattern is formed by previous consciousness and experience; the history of the family up to the third or fourth generation is embedded in the individual model of behavior. Thus, a happy person attracts good teachers, friends, co-workers and even favorable circumstances, which together further contribute to his prosperity. A “loser,” or more correctly, a pessimistic, negatively-minded person, on the contrary, attracts negligent or cruel mentors, unfaithful comrades, worthless colleagues, dangerous strangers, finds himself in fatal situations, and becomes a victim of accidents. Everyone who interacts with the bearer of a positive internal direction - regardless of their will - will help him achieve his goals. The owner of a negative “radar” will “beg” from the same people first of all painful reactions or simply allow himself to be treated poorly, unpretentiously and silently agreeing to everything. To denote this, a special concept is used - “indirect consent”. Indirect consent is a person’s unconscious predisposition to silently accept or provoke one or another negative attitude or influence from others. Undesirable hereditary traits are preserved and passed on from generation to generation, which manifest themselves in one aspect of life and have a significant impact on others - marriage, relationships with people, health. IN in this case the same person is a negative factor in at least two functional blocks, unconsciously contributing to the strengthening of not only his own negative models, but also those who interact with him. The “victim” and her “persecutor” are drawn to each other not by chance or failure, but by natural law. Ch. Teutsch explains this pattern discovered by him with Newton's law of attraction, according to which the force of attraction between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Family law, which determines the basic patterns of behavior and relationships among family members, can be changed if a person wants to “retrain” his subconscious and persistently works on himself. Awareness negative aspects helps you become masters of your life and with my own hands, mind and will to create your present and future well-being. With the help of conscious effort, appropriate actions and positive life experiences, a person can abandon the position of victim and change his attitude towards the world, people and himself.

NLP rules(Neurolinguistic programming) For effective communication - both virtual and in real life, enriching our lives:

The meaning of communication is in the response of the interlocutor.
Behavior is not the person himself.
Behavior changes in accordance with the context (circumstances of communication).
Nonverbal language (gesture language, intonation, etc. - which, unfortunately, does not exist in virtual communication) is the most truthful source of information.
The more choices, the more freedom.
Everyone chooses and does the best they can.
Every action has a positive intention and is therefore useful and meaningful.
Look at failure as feedback.
Everyone has the resources to change.
Everything that is possible in this world is possible for me.

Purpose virtual dating and relationships should be the development of communication skills to improve the quality and satisfaction of real-life relationships.

Ideally, any online communication at some stage should be reinforced in the form of a real relationship - at least on Skype, even from time to time, otherwise there is a high chance of communicating with a fictitious person invented by oneself.

Virtual communication should serve to strengthen or build new relationships in real life, but not to destroy existing ones in pursuit of illusory mirages. First of all, this concerns male-female communication. At the same time, virtual friendly communication is built on a commonality of interests, values, worldview and can continue without reinforcement by real-life communication for the longest time and contribute to the development of the personality of both communicating parties. I repeat once again: such communication should not be at the expense of real-life communication. In virtual communication, the rule is more relevant than ever: the less you expect from your interlocutor, or rather, the fewer demands you make, the greater the chance of not being disappointed and getting a positive experience and positive emotions from dating, communication and online relationships.

Not for everyone a virtual romance means a lot right away. At first, it is often perceived as a fun game, a cure for boredom, a pleasant pastime. The person is very critical of what is happening and does not attach much importance to correspondence. However, you need to be prepared that, due to the “peculiarities of the genre,” everyone, even the most sober person, has a serious threat of getting too carried away and falling in love for real and becoming dependent on pen pal relationships.

Why is this happening?

The main danger of virtual relationships is not even that the person on the other end will not be who he claims to be, but that you yourself begin to idealize the person, to invent his image. Due to the fact that you only see what is written to you, you have a huge space for imagination. In addition, unlike real communication, you are deprived of the opportunity to use such important analyzers as olfactory and tactile-kinesthetic. You don’t smell the person, you don’t see the dynamics of his movements, you can’t touch him. You don’t hear how he communicates with other people, you don’t see his facial expressions in response to various situations. Meanwhile, these analyzers, although not always conscious, are very important when we evaluate a person in real communication.

You imagine a person in your own way, completely different from how it might actually be. The desire to meet an ideal partner paints beautiful images; this takes many (especially romantic girls) away from a sober analysis of the person sitting on the other side of the screen. In addition, you do not see his negative qualities, if only because he does not demonstrate them to you. However, like you to him. This is generally a feature of correspondence as a genre. But you receive magic words addressed to you personally: compliments pour in like from a cornucopia. Writing the phrase: “I have never met a girl like you” is much easier than saying it in a real situation. Therefore, the virtual partner finds himself in a more advantageous situation than a real person. The virtual partner also has time to think, to compose a beautiful phrase, to choose words... Thus, he can turn out to be a hundred times better than any real person whom we see in the entire complex of his life, and not just in what he decided to us demonstrate. Idealization makes you break away from reality and believe in a dream. Full contact cannot be as ideal as virtual contact. Therefore, falling in love virtually is much easier.

During correspondence, people find themselves in addiction to emotions, which they receive by reading the words of another. Moreover, most emotions are contrived by themselves and are attached to to a specific person. There is a feeling that no one else is capable of causing the same thing in you. Therefore, feelings arise not only that are quite real, but often even stronger than those that you experienced for someone before, for someone who could be touched in real life.

People who have experienced this intoxicating feeling of closeness and trust in virtual communication claim that it is simply impossible to feel this during real communication. For many, it’s becoming increasingly clear what a person actually looks like, what he does, the main thing is that “he is able to speak like that and understand like that.” It is because of this that many tend to identify what they feel like true love.

I know one couple who met on the Internet on one of the forums. Soon they met in real life, liked each other (with their olfactory and tactile analyzers already working!) and soon got married. But here’s the paradox - they still felt the need to write letters to each other, which they often did while sitting in different rooms one apartment. In letters it was easier to say about the secret, tender words were easier to come by.

And here is how Olga, 26 years old, describes the intensity of feelings. “We understood each other perfectly, it seemed as if we had known each other for 100 years. We talked with him about everything and our thoughts, tastes, and views on life simply coincided amazingly. He sorted out all my fears and guessed all my dreams. When I realized that my roof was slowly but surely leaving its rightful place, I suddenly found out that he was 16 years old. I couldn’t believe that a 16-year-old guy could write SUCH letters... poetry, music... I decided to interrupt the correspondence, but I couldn’t... It was a drug. We wrote to each other 2 times a day, called each other, exchanged photos. I couldn't deprive myself of this happiness. I listened to the words that I always wanted to hear, such beautiful and talented poems were dedicated to me. And on top of that, they also responded to my every thought objectively and with sincere interest. If suddenly the letter did not arrive, I simply began to choke. Tell someone at work that I have the same thing with a 16-year-old boy..."

Masha met Patrick on a language exchange site. She indicated in the questionnaire that she wanted to learn French from scratch and was ready to help in mastering Russian. He wrote to her in English. She answered. He wrote again. Things never got to the point of learning French and Russian, since a lively correspondence ensued in English, which they both knew. Already from the first letters, she was fascinated by his personality, rejoiced at every letter like a child and checked her mail even at night. He cheerfully expressed his opinions on serious philosophical problems, joked all the time and greatly entertained her with his letters. They loved the same books, they liked the same films, he sent her amazing compositions, they discussed everything in letters and never ceased to be amazed at the incredible coincidences in everything. They found so much in common in each other that it seemed like her twin brother was sitting on the other side of the screen. Sometimes they wrote each other 30 letters a day. She fell in love so much that sometimes she forgot that it was time to pick up her daughter from kindergarten, cook dinner for her husband, or check her son’s diary. Correspondence with him became the most important and priority thing for her. She was aware that her dependence on this correspondence was akin to a drug addiction, but she could not help herself. She tried to get rid of her... But if she didn’t write for more than a day, he would bombard her with letters full of sincere anxiety, and for some reason she didn’t want to play cat and mouse with this man. They talked about everything in the world, and it seemed that there was no person who understood her better than he. But the thought that she wanted to touch the real him drove Masha crazy. Just touch, nothing else is needed.

The marital status of both of them did not allow them to talk about their surging feelings for a long time, but after about five months Patrick could not stand it and began to write “I love you.” And a year after we met, he came to Moscow. Decide on real acquaintance It was not easy and very scary. Masha really didn’t want to be disappointed in the fairy tale that her fantasy had drawn for her. But the virtual relationship had reached such an intensity that the meeting was supposed to be a salvation from the feeling that “we will go crazy” if we don’t meet in real life and don’t understand: we all imagined it all for ourselves or we are actually two halves who miraculously found each other in the big world?

At a distance, feelings begin to go off scale due to the inability to receive natural contact for a person - bodily contact. The thought of a real meeting drives me crazy. Frustration due to the inability to feel real closeness with a person with whom virtual intimacy has arisen fuels feelings and ignites passion. One of the partners takes a ticket and goes to where virtual love lives... True, he doesn’t always find what he expected to see... but that’s not what we’re talking about now.

A real meeting is actually necessary, when it comes to feeling. The sooner the real meeting takes place, the fewer misleading impressions you will have about each other. Only it will become a measure of where the fantasy was and where the truth was, whether it was fate or the mockery of fate. And here you need to be prepared for any development of events. There is no recipe or reliable statistics on this yet. But there is a main one a sign of a healthy relationship between partners By virtual love- this is a mutual readiness to transfer the relationship into real life. Even if you are separated by distance and borders, the first meeting is simply necessary, and only after that a virtual and real communication can successfully complement each other for some time.

Real love, and not its illusion, can arise when partners imagine each other in all reality. If your partner avoids a real meeting in every possible way, then you urgently need to pull yourself out of dependence on love for him.

Psychologist Tatyana Nikitina not only talks about the complexities of relationships between men and women, but also helps those who want to improve themselves.

— Nowadays, when communication between people is increasingly transferred to the Internet, not only acquaintances, but also friendships (akin to the old pen pal friendship) and even the emergence of feelings occur more and more often there. This is what we call virtual love. In virtual relationships there is a main and clear advantage - it is speed and time saving. And quite a lot of minuses.

Let's start with why people go into this acquaintance, essentially blindly. Can we call the main reason for this behavior a lack of communication and acquaintances in reality? Or, do people entering into virtual relationships have their own special needs, weaknesses, which are the reason why they go for it?

— What pushes people into virtual relationships, into virtual love? The same as for ordinary love. But only love, it turns out, happens different types. True love is the need to “do good” to the object of your feelings. Having understood this, we can easily see in our relationships the presence of the opposite feeling - this is the need for us to feel good. That is, the need is not to give pleasure, but to receive it. This need is exacerbated in a person who really lacks something in life. This is not some kind of selfish, consciously taken consumer position: “I’ll pull from all the people” - no. This is what a person who feels bad does, simply due to his own internal emptiness - due to the depletion of a certain internal resource.

- Which resource exactly?

— This resource is the so-called self-acceptance. This is a feeling of self-sufficiency. When this resource is depleted, there is a feeling that I am “something wrong.” “When I go to bed on time, spend money only wisely, don’t be late for anything, don’t let anyone down - then, probably, I deserve to be rewarded, to be taken into account, etc. But now this is not the case yet. Nowadays, I can and do puncture myself at any moment. Therefore, today I am, as such, “something is not right” - well, speaking loudly, “I am bad.”

This feeling is not stimulating at all, very depressing. Few people sincerely understand this about themselves and say “I’m bad” - of course not. This is experienced in the form of a feeling of melancholy, uncertainty, loss, loneliness - what is generally called discomfort. And the more acute the discomfort, the more acute the need to please oneself—to make oneself comfortable. People, driven by this feeling, this unsatisfaction, embark on a love search. They may outwardly look like womanizers, philanderers - if we are talking about men - who easily pick up women, as if they do not take them into account. In fact, they are looking for someone who will truly accept me for who I am today - they are looking for unconditional acceptance.

How is virtual search and “virtual love” different from what happens in real space? This is much easier to maintain on the Internet, because virtual relationships are relieved of large quantity important personal manifestations - any relationships of obligation. There are no facial expressions, intonation...

— If a person considers himself “bad,” it’s probably easier for him on the Internet to present himself as “good” to his interlocutor?

- No, not quite like that. Everyone easily presents themselves as good in personal communication - they tell only good things about themselves, they are kind. But in order to really communicate at a table or on the street, or in an apartment, much more is required of me as a partner than on the Internet. I must look good, I must be on the rise, I must not look with a downcast, sad look. But in the virtual all this is not visible - and therefore there is less risk. If I write something impudent, at worst, they won’t answer me, or they will answer me with something, but they won’t shout at me, they won’t slap me in the face, they won’t make me the hero of a scandal.

- What exactly is such a person afraid of?

- He is afraid of being judged. He is afraid that some glaring wrong will be pointed out to him. Moreover, he is afraid that they will correctly point her out to him.

— Aren’t virtual lovers afraid of the development of these relationships? After all, the natural development is their real meeting.

- They are afraid. People are afraid of the transition from the virtual plane to the real one and can gush and fantasize as much as they like in correspondence, but they are in no hurry to actually meet in real life - due to the same fear.

This is pure drug, strictly speaking. This is a narcotic pleasure. I really want it not to dry out. And as soon as we actually meet in life, it turns out that she is waiting for me to be nice to her, for me to ask her about her circumstances, otherwise she will be offended that I only mean relationships below the belt. It's all tiring...

— What development of these relationships is acceptable, at least on a subconscious level, for such people?

— Continuation of such narcotic virtual pleasure. They wait all day long - they can’t wait until the evening when they can finally run to the computer and again send a note, receive a note, or send some pornographic SMS during an important meeting. They sit on this needle.

- And what are they waiting for - acceptance?

- No, no, no. There is no expectation of acceptance in this relationship. Because in these relationships he communicates not with some real person whom he imagines, but with an imaginary one.

- What does he get from this?

- Purely narcotic pleasure: “Well, she agrees to discuss with me how they have sex there.” These are such itchy-nice topics...

Neither of the corresponding parties has any intention of truly delving into the life and circumstances of the other person. Therefore, none of them receive real acceptance here. Neither does it suggest nor does it mean. Just like two drug addicts who shoot or snort together do not assume that they are gaining any self-acceptance in their relationship.

- Does it follow from this that they prefer to talk than to listen in this communication?

— You say that unhealthy virtual relationships are associated with intimate communication, and you interpret this as precisely intimate communication below the belt. But this is not always exactly the case. After all, these people, suffering from dislike, want not only and not even so much, let’s say, some kind of sexual arousal. Often they are looking for some kind of understanding and, as it seems to them, quite sincere communication.

— This difference, which you are right about, is more pronounced between men and women. Women in their virtual and therefore not very benign relationships, acquaintances, connections - they really have a greater interest in the everyday side of communication. They still treat their partner as a consumer. They feel the need to speak out, to be heard, to be supported, to be sympathized with, etc. And they are trying to implement all this on more everyday matter. They tell you where they went, what they like, what they watched, how they dressed, what colors they prefer. And men, of course, place more emphasis on the sexual component of relationships. This is not mathematics, it is not one hundred percent like this on one side and the other, but, undoubtedly, these are the trends.

— Can you give us any experience stories?

“I remember a patient, a forty-something woman, married, with children, who loves her husband very much. She speaks about him with great respect, with sincere delight: “This is my happiness,” “This is my only light in the window,” etc. At the same time, she began a correspondence on Odnoklassniki with a random person she did not know, whose photo she really liked. So she says: “Simply fabulously beautiful, some ancient biblical king, handsome, extraordinary.” And a correspondence began. And he was happy to abuse this readiness - both the correspondence and the relationship instantly slipped into sexual-erotic ones. She says: “At first it offended me that he seemed not to be interested in anything else, but was always talking about bed and bed.” And then it bothered her, and she also felt that she was simply obsessed with this, she really needed it. And she made it clear to him in no uncertain terms, to her virtual partner, that she really wanted to meet and wanted full sex, not virtual sex.

And he, being a typical hero of our discussions, was in no hurry with this. All this virtual entertainment and correspondence was enough for him. But in real life - well, she doesn’t know whether he didn’t need it, or he was afraid of responsibility, or, I don’t know, what else - well, in general, he didn’t cooperate. And she felt very bad, she turned to a psychologist. Here. And after several months of cooperation, our communication, she felt much better - in general, she somehow got rid of it.

— What, in general, is the mechanism of pleasure from these... conversations about below the belt? If we don’t talk about rough virtual sex, the mechanism of which is clear, then what attracts people to these conversations about what doesn’t exist?

“If it were only a matter of physiological pleasure, then any man would have enough of his one partner and that’s all.” Where psychological pleasure lies - no matter how strange it may sound to some - is in overcoming, breaking through cultural prohibitions. The prohibition of casual sex with anyone is that very tasty forbidden fruit. Overcoming this taboo is the driving force behind pleasure. And then it becomes clear why a person is looking for this in the virtual: “They allowed me in, they agreed to discuss this with me, present it all together, I broke through this cultural ban, this barrier.”

- Well, once you’ve broken it, then, apparently, you no longer need to have this virtual sex with this person for a long time, right? You've already broken through, what else?

- This good question. No. We see in practice that this is not the case. That people who engage in virtual sex are much more likely to engage in it with the same - well, let's say, if we're talking about a man - with the same virtual correspondent for much longer than in real life - when, indeed, if a man... - he has achieved his goal, it is often enough for him, well, one or several times, and then she becomes not so attractive to him. Because, we repeat, this barrier has already been overcome. And in virtual communication this pleasure is exploited for much longer. Probably because it is not accompanied by a real physiological climax.

“It’s strange that in the event of loss of reciprocity, these people suffer as if it were really some kind of serious relationship.”

— The strength of suffering is not determined by the seriousness of the relationship. It happens that a person is truly involved in these virtual relationships, hooked on this needle. And if the second partner turned out to be not so gloomy, at first he dove a little into this matter, and then emerged and swam away and no longer maintains regular correspondence - here the first one becomes very sad, very painful. A person is struck by the “unrequited love syndrome” and begins to suffer severely.

This happens not only in virtual communication, but also in real life, when, as a rule, a girl, girl or woman falls madly in love with a man. Let's say, a student turns into a teacher, a fan turns into a singer. And he goes crazy and dreams about him, doesn’t sleep at night, all the walls are covered with photographs. In fact, these experiences develop precisely in the virtual plane, because there are no real relationships. She does not imagine this person, again, in the entire volume of his life, circumstances, experiences, relationships with household members. She doesn’t know what really irritates him, how he spends money, how he behaves in quarrels. This is some kind of phantom that she has formed in her head. And this phantom was, again, connected to her consumer hopes that she would feel good with him.

— So the analogy between such relationships and virtual ones is that in both cases there is some kind of communication with an image, and not with a real person?

- Yes, that’s absolutely right, these feelings are attached to some kind of abstraction, and not to a real specific person. In this sense, strange as it may sound, virtual relationships, virtual love can be called love at first sight. When people fall in love with each other at first sight - like Pushkin's Tatyana Larina, or a holiday romance - they lay on the beach for two weeks in Turkey, and that's it, they fell madly in love. What is the parallel with virtual relationships? The fact is that, again, we fell in love with a person about whom we really know absolutely nothing. This is some kind of symbol of the fact that I will finally be truly happy with him (with her). And, by the way, Pushkin’s Tatyana in her famous letter to Onegin very accurately describes:

Imagine, I'm here alone,

Nobody understands me

My mind is exhausted

And I must die in silence.

“Will you save me?” - thus she says. This is not written there further, but it is assumed. “You see how bad I feel alone. Because no one here understands me. I'm well-read, I'm sophisticated, I'm highly organized. And here they all live with simple, red-cheeked village joys. And you are a guy from the capital, you read everything, you know everyone, you judge everything so condescendingly. This is who will finally appreciate and understand me.”

Therefore, love at first sight is always a pure example of such a consumer-drug “entrapment.” Not the need to do well for our partner in our relationship, but the hope of receiving.

— So, “love at first sight” is not love yet? And this is not a sign that people are suitable for each other?

— We must first agree on terminology about love. This can be done on the basis of what each of us considers love towards ourselves. Many people on Earth agree on this idea. I feel this desire to be cared for, to be treated well, to be looked into, not to be overly burdened, to be perceived not only within the biological contour of my body, but with the whole complex of my relationships, with my difficult parents, with my previous love affairs, my problematic relationships with people, with friends, with my maybe job, in which I feel bad. I want to be completely taken over, so to speak. And this is correct, terminological accuracy can be recorded in this place. We will call this relationship of one person to another, with the biggest “plus” sign, love.

Then this is what immediately becomes clear. In what life circumstances is it especially noticeable to any person that he is treated with a “plus” sign? Is it then, when he is on the rise, in favor, in strength, in good shape, smiling at everyone, supporting everyone, making sure everyone has a drink, and telling jokes? In this situation, it is very easy to treat him with a “plus” sign; this is not indicative. But it is significant when he is in exactly the opposite state - depressed, out of sorts, scared, irritated, not getting enough sleep, hungry, being rude to someone, not noticing someone. Now, if in these circumstances he is treated well, then yes, this is definitely it.

This means that love is when not just one person treats the other as well as possible, with a “plus” sign, but when this relationship withstands the test of negativity, conflict situations, clashes of interests. And due to what we just discussed, it turns out that the right choice of a person is not the one whose virtues he admired, but the one whose shortcomings touched him.

In order for a real love relationship to develop between two people, it is necessary that at least one in this couple has, in principle, such life position: look not who is bad, who is good, and who is bad, and who is good. And, seeing that someone is endlessly making fun of everyone, someone is ridiculing everyone, someone is behaving irresponsibly, in these manifestations you can feel, not even understand with your mind, but feel - his self-doubt, his suffering, his weakness, which he didn't choose for himself. This is his problem, not his fault. It is on this internal basis that only real relationships can develop. I repeat, if at least one in a couple is generally oriented in life in this way, he sits in some company and involuntarily, with his skin, simply perceives that someone is stuffy, someone is noisy, someone is hungry, for someone this the topic is traumatic, and this is how he always tries to optimize the situation for his neighbors - such a person is much more likely to become the bearer of that real feeling we are talking about.

But this does not mean that he or she can therefore fall in love with anyone or marry anyone. Further, indeed, some coincidence is needed, which, apparently, consists of this. I have now listed the different manifestations of this internal distortion of ours - some are irritable, some are apathetic, some are narcotically obsessed with money, some are obsessed with power, some are obsessed with love pleasures. Since we are all, in one way or another, at least somewhat unloved, this has led to our own individual deformations for each of us. Therefore, apparently, the man who is suitable for a woman is the one in relation to whom she feels the opportunity to treat him, due to her characteristics, her psychophysical constitution.

- If such a relationship of “virtual love”, virtual flirting begins, a rather strange thing happens. Trust without any basis for such trust. Why, when meeting on the street, will a person not be frank with the first person he meets, but on the Internet he opens up and trusts - although he does not even see not only the true face of the interlocutor, but even in his gender and age he can be greatly deceived? Well, there is another question here - is there, in fact, this trust? Maybe, based on what you said before, this is just throwing some unexpressed thoughts and feelings into the void? There was a case on our anti-suicide website when a girl fell in love with a guy via the Internet - their relationship lasted more than a month, then he left her, she suffered greatly, and even thought about committing suicide. Then it turned out that this was not even a guy, but old man. In short, is there trust, and if so, where does it come from?

- You know, there are still the very best different examples and plots of such virtual love and virtual relationships. In most of them, of course, there is no trust. To understand this, we must again formulate what “trust” actually means. Trust is when I am not afraid to tell you some very unsightly things about myself - this is trust. And none of the virtual professionals do this with much passion. What's going on there? This is a conversation not about some negative topics of mine, but about intimate topics - these are completely different things. This is not trust, but, again, a claim to such sexual intimacy. And why does it happen there and not in real life? because in real life you can get punched in the face for this. And on the Internet it is much more secure.

- Is it possible to fall in love without opening up?

- Of course, you can.

— On the Internet we deal not with real people, but with the images they draw for us. Is it possible to call an attitude towards an image, and not a person, love or at least falling in love?

- If we call love a relationship with a “plus” sign towards this particular person with all his individual qualities- then the answer follows from this reasoning by itself. There can be no love for an image, for a symbol—you cannot love a photograph.

True love can arise when one partner begins to imagine the other in all his reality. The difference is that in one case I somehow relate to to a real person- seeing him, observing him, in different situations: how he sleeps, how he sneezes, how he yawns, how he looks from the outside, how he looks when he screams, when he laughs. And a symbol is when I don’t know anything about a person, and it doesn’t matter to me at all, and I don’t try to find out.

— So the difference is in the amount of information?

- No, the difference is in the internal attitude. In internal need - or lack thereof. In the need to imagine this reality - or the absence of this need.

— What advice would you give to people who are in such relationships or on the verge of entering into them?

— I think that people who are satisfied with their virtual relationships may even read what we are about to record, but tangentially. It won't really affect them. This may hurt those people who feel that they have become ill in virtual relationships. Either this relationship became unrequited, or she began to suffer from it real life. These people can be told this thing: we all start out in virtual relationships, or in real drug-consumer relationships like this, because our own lives are insufficiently full. From insufficient self-realization, from the fact that we do not have comfortable enough relationships with real close people.

In fact, you are not at all to blame for this trouble - it doesn’t say anything bad about you. It speaks volumes about how life has treated you. And you should try to improve these relationships not in order not to be guilty in someone’s eyes - you should not be guilty in anyone’s eyes - you should try to improve them only in your own - literally, selfish, but correctly understood interests - for your own promising life well-being.

And so if you want to get out of this virtual addiction, then the last thing you need to think about is what to do with it technically, and ask your friend to turn off the computer after eleven in the evening. But first of all, you need to look at what your own life is like, how daylight hours go, what you do and why you do it. Is it because you have no other education and a well-established track, or because this is your business, the right thing for you, or at least you are looking for your right business. You need to look at what your relationships are like with your neighbors, specifically with your household.

As a rule, people who are so immersed in virtual spaces - whether in love relationships, or just in Odnoklassniki or on Facebook - these people can easily notice that real household members irritate them a little. And here lies our very great potential, which can be used greatly for our own benefit. How exactly? We must try our best to focus on these household members. And when he comes to you at the wrong time, don’t just snap back as usual, “Don’t you see, I’m busy?”, but say: “Sorry, for God’s sake, I just can’t do it right now.” Even this small effort on oneself is very tonic. And if this is not some one-time manifestation, but a gradually growing system of our efforts on ourselves, then this drug addiction to virtual relationships decreases.

— Teenagers are especially prone to virtual love. And teenagers’ households are their parents, and it is with them that relationships are most often very difficult. And the advice to establish relationships with them is not so easy to implement.

- If we talk about teenagers, or young people, or even adults who, nevertheless, live with their parents and suffer from relationships with them - and, indeed, these are the majority - then the advice can be more specific. This does not make it much easier, but perhaps it becomes more understandable.

What does it mean to focus on these neighbors of yours, that is, on your parents? This means that you need to understand that all these parental manifestations from which young people suffer so much, and, unfortunately, have reason to suffer, are not connected with the fact that the parents are bad or the children are bad, but with the fact that the parents feel bad.

All this parental edification, narrow-mindedness, formality, superficiality are not manifestations of a real attitude towards their children, but only a manifestation of their parental discomfort. And if some teenager or young man really gets this into his head, then he will brighten up greatly, he will become more self-confident, a more successful person, in the end.

But what does it mean to really take this into account in relation to parents? This means behaving towards them the same way we behave towards a person who is obviously feeling bad, who has it written all over his face. How do we behave towards such a person who feels bad - well, a small child or a friend? We look after him, support him, sympathize, help him, etc., etc. This whole set of measures must be projected onto parents, brought down on parents. In psychology, this is called “adopting a parent”: begin to delve into him not as your parent, but as some simple individual person, imagine him - what he is afraid of, what he wants, why he talks like that; ask him how his day went, and where he was, who called him, what he watched on TV; offer him some tea before he could ask...

So what happens then? After a long time of such efforts on the part of the child, in the end, it becomes unnatural for the parent to communicate with this child as before, in such a superficially edifying manner. He begins to take him into account a little. But this result is secondary - both in time and in importance. And a much more important and immediate effect will be this. If our reader spends many, many weeks investing in the parent like this and trying to be useful, kind, etc. etc. - this reader will begin to perceive his parent - not even with his mind, but with his feelings - as truly an object of his care, as some kind of unloved child. And then all this parental negativity ceases to be taken personally by the son or daughter. It unloads even retrospectively; the teenager “lightens up” a lot.

This therapy remains relevant for a person at any age, because a person at any age remains the child of his parent, all his life.

— How to behave in these virtual relationships themselves?

— Try to delve into the virtual partner as much as possible. Try to communicate with him about him, not about your own. Try to ask him more than to speak out. Not to remain in the shadows. And to give him the opportunity to speak out, so that he feels real interest in him, and not in our own pleasure from this relationship.

Then the relationship will begin to gradually transform from a consumer plan to a real one, to a meaningful one, they will become much more comfortable and less neurotic. Or you will feel that you don’t need it - to delve into it or, somehow, to be sympathetic - it’s boring for you, too much - then this relationship will fall apart with minimal trauma for both.

- That is, let’s say you try to invest in him, but he doesn’t want to invest in real life. This means that he seems to live in his neurosis and does not want to get out of it.

- Here we need to talk not about him, but about ourselves. If you begin to invest in it and become interested in it, then the situation becomes more and more benign for you. And how he will react to this is, in a sense, not very important to me.

- Let’s say you invest in him, your attitude towards him improves, and you, so to speak, repeatedly invite him to meet for real, but he always refuses. Can you conclude that something is wrong with him and this relationship is not worth continuing?

— The conclusion from the situation you described is that this person is much more dysfunctional, psychologically fragile than we imagined at the start, and that he needs to make sure that they are really interested in him, that they are really investing in him - not a day, not two weeks, or maybe two years. And then you see whether you have enough for such a period or not, whether you need it or not. If a relationship ends, then it is very important with what internal understanding, and on what internal basis.

In one case, one breaks up with the other with resentment, with disappointment: “He never gave me what I needed.” It won't be healthy. A person is designed in such a way that any subsequent relationship begins from the same point where the previous one stopped. And if you parted with a person with resentment, with unsatisfied expectations, then the following relationship will begin with this same expectation: “But he will meet me halfway, give me what I need?” This will already be stressful for that partner at the start. The prognosis will not be good.

In another case, parting occurs with the feeling that it was you, alas, who could not give the person what he needed. You for a long time you invest, are interested, and he responds sluggishly, every other time, does not agree to meet, etc., and you feel that that’s it, I can’t do it anymore - it’s probably right then to stop your efforts, realizing that you are not enough for this person.

And then the next relationship will begin, again, with this feeling: “Am I enough for this person or not?”

Ekaterina Leonova, 22 years old)
Dependent people are prone to virtual love ( Psychologist Mikhail Kamelev)
Virtual love needs further development to become love ( Psychologist Igor Lyubitov)
Secondary benefits of virtual love ( Family psychologist Irina Rakhimova)

More and more people in our country, especially young and middle-aged, are becoming familiar with this invaluable benefit of civilization.

Less and less we began to go to the good old post office, buy postal envelopes, send telegrams... Even money can be sent through postal services Networks.

What is not in the virtual world?

Now let’s compare real communication and what we have in the virtual world, that is, on the Internet. When talking with a person, we, either on a subconscious level or with the help of acquired knowledge, capture and interpret non-verbal signs coming from the interlocutor.

Great value has his facial expression, gaze, intonation. For example, the phrase “I want to give you this” can be pronounced with logical emphasis on the first word: “I want to give you this”, on the second: “I WANT to give you this”, on the third: “I want to GIVE you this”, and on the fourth, and on the fifth. Depending on this, the information will have different meanings.

When communicating on the phone, we cannot see the interlocutor, therefore, we do not perceive his posture, gestures, or eye expression. But in most cases we “see” the smile and take note of the intonation, which is a big plus.

What about the Internet? If we don’t talk about Skype, we are not only unable to hear a live voice with all its modulations and shades of intonation, but we also don’t even know who we are communicating with. That is, we don’t even have the minimum information that a telephone provides. Well, we can only have an idea of the degree of proficiency in the Russian language - and that’s all!

Then why does approximately half of the population of our country prefer to click on the keyboard instead of taking an ordinary pen and a piece of paper?

Reasons for virtual communication

One of the most important reasons is insufficient social circle in real life, that is, in ordinary life. For example, a person works at home, goes out little and suffers from loneliness. We will not talk about those who, due to their physical condition, find it difficult to speak or are confined to a wheelchair - it is clear that for them this is practically the only window in big world.

...Emma Fedorovna, a former cultural worker, suffered a severe stroke several years ago. Through the efforts of doctors, they managed to restore her ability to speak and clarity of thinking, but, alas, she cannot leave the apartment to this day. Here is her story: “It was as if the whole world had turned upside down for me. There are no children, my husband left me a long time ago, my friends are busy with their own affairs... I have simply lost the meaning of life - who needs me, old and sick? Meanwhile, my head works perfectly, I feel young mentally, but physically decrepit. The only outlet I saw was purchasing a computer, since my fingers and vision were normal. I thought and thought about where I could get money for such an expensive pleasure and found a way out! I exchanged my two-room apartment for a one-room apartment with an additional payment - and now I can communicate with anyone, about anything and as much as my heart desires! I was revived to life, made many friends, and not only among Russians, received a lot of advice about my health and am happy to talk to new acquaintances “for life.”

Also very important reasons include the opportunity to realize dormant acting abilities. It seems that many users of the World Wide Web are familiar with the feeling of some euphoria when, as if by magic, magic wand, turn into a young coquette, a daring macho, a “young man pondering his life,” or a bored lady... In real life, it is simply impossible to play so many roles in a few hours or even days, unless you buy a bunch of wigs and hire a make-up artist. But on the Internet such miracles are commonplace! Having put on a virtual mask, a person changes internally, and sometimes externally, he is filled with confidence in his abilities: of course - after all, he is both his own director and actor!

There are often advertisements on the Internet about free legal, medical and other types of assistance. To you There is no need to feel embarrassed and nervous about contacting a specialist: after all, a virtual consultation is, as a rule, anonymous, and you can talk about your problems openly, without concealment. Let’s be honest, it’s unlikely that the most comprehensive, qualified help will come to you virtually, but still, at least talking about the problems and getting the most general recommendations and advice on who to turn to is not bad! Do not be offended if the answer seems to you just a formal reply: when it comes to health, then, in fact, a correspondence consultation is impossible in most cases. Treat this with understanding and take into account what the specialist advises.

If you have any questions, for example, “who is Leonardo da Vinci?”, you can, without leaving home, without scouring libraries and reference books, just turn to search engine. That's all! You will receive not only comprehensive information about this genius of the Renaissance, but also, by reading a lot of articles, and become familiar with his life and work.

Not everyone has the desire and ability to adapt to external conditions, but where is it possible to fully manage them? Of course, on the Internet!

Who's on this side of the screen?

Well, frequent visitors to the Internet - lonely or “unloved” individuals of both sexes. However, don’t get your hopes up too much: these may just be people looking for easy, non-binding virtual flirting.

A certain Alexander, a design engineer, could not find support in his team, moreover, almost no one was interested in his invention at all. But he could not abandon the idea: too much effort and skill had been invested into it. “Maybe I didn’t do enough? Where can I find a more qualified specialist? — the man was tormented by questions. The decision to search for colleagues on the Internet was crowned with success: a long and interesting discussion ensued, and most importantly, useful for Alexander!

So, there are benefits to virtual reality! However, live communication– much more constructive. You should not think that only beautiful, smart, professional, honest, kind, successful and happy people are sitting online waiting for you.