Fibre Optic Love Juice

Ohhh squishy squishy, you know the stuff, sweaty palms, drool all over the keyboard, webcams swapping images, microphones set to high to make sure “Your Loved One” can hear you, and after the call, that sense of “when do we meet again”?  Yup, good bye Puppy Love, welcome Fibre Optic Philanthropy.
It’s not a rare thing either.  How many people do you know (including yourself) that in the last 15 years since the net got user friendly, have had online romances?  Yes even I have been smitten, and for a good 3 years (she lived in The US Virgin Islands) and we were a definite “item”.  We’d often swap phonecalls, mail, love poems, you name it.  But hanging over that relationship (and yes it was a relationship) was the big “what if” or more importantly “which one won the lottery first” to go see the other.  It just never happened.  My story had a happy ending, but quite a few end up in tears.

You’ve obviously heard about the horror stories, stalkers, misrepresentation, bad love gone badder, and no doubt know someone that has been adversely affected.  Heck, it’s a small world now and getting smaller by the day as fibre optic relationships spread like wild fire.

It takes two to tango right, and therefore you’d expect that internet relationships are by and large open minded and casual, and also where a lot of information and personalities are evidenced.  But like ordinary relationships (heretoafter known as 3D Love) internet relationships too have their problems.  Too often you hear about people that mislead and those that have been mislead and it’s not until they meet in 3D that issues arise.  Ok don’t get me wrong, many Fibre Optic relationships are beneficial to both parties, but the ones you tend to hear about are the ones that went wrong.  So how do you know if your relationship is safe?
Your personal boundaries are key.  If you get warning bells, listen to them otherwise the train is going to mow you down.  Make sure you have safe procedures in place.  You should do this as a matter of caution on anything you do on the internet.  Be safe and stay safe.  If someone pushes your buttons, just terminate the call and erase from your systems memory.  That’s emotionally hard to do, but better than being fleeced of your fathers fortune over a casual relationship.  And yes, men, women and teenagers are all susceptible.

Here is some helpful advice:

1.  If they send you a kiss on the monitor, do your lips pucker?  If you can’t do flesh to flesh the relationship will founder.

2.  If they say LOL a lot, they are probably nervous about something.  Don’t laugh back right away, hold your ground and see the reaction.

3.  If your dog starts growling when the other person’s picture flashes on the screen, your dog is probably right.  When the cat starts pacing across the keyboard there are probably two reasons. i) You have been online for three days (OCD) and the cat’s trying to tell you they are hungry, or ii) witches used cats for good reason, they know things.

4.  If your other half is told you have 14 children and they don’t respond straightaway they’re not trying to guess their names, they are rattled by that knowledge.

So I guess in summary, Fibre Optic Love is dangerous to the human psyche in that it holds a lot of promise but generally fails to materialise.  Pay $15 dollars a week to go to your local Line Dancing group.