Sameer has recently met someone, and it is getting serious. It started out as friendship, as many relationships do, but gradually Sameer’s feelings for Priya, a smart and confident girl, have turned romantic.
But hang on — there’s a catch. Sameer and Priya met in the virtual world and both are dating in their real lives. Although they have shared their secrets, they are yet to meet in real life.
For many youngsters it really doesn’t matter if they already are in a steady relationship, there is always enough room for virtual lovers. “We stay in the same city but we don’t intend to meet anytime soon. We are not dating per se but we bonded intellectually as well as emotionally. My real life girlfriend has no clue that I am chatting with this other girl, but my virtual partner complements me so well that it is worth the risk,” says Sameer.
The reason most youngsters swear by is understanding. Netizens say that it is easier to convince one’s virtual partner which is not the case with their real life sweethearts.
Avid blogger Nalini Abhyankar found music enthusiast Dhruv Chandana (name changed) pretty cool and an easy-going person. She says, “While I am not dating anybody in real life, Dhruv is committed to a girl and intends to settle down with her. We started chatting by chance and before we realised, we had fallen for each other. We understand each other so well that now we don’t need to say much about anything. We just sense it now.”
Purists would say that such relationships mean fewer opportunities for arguments only because the partners are generally spending less Internet time with each other. However, Philosophy student Shameek Deb, who surprisingly found his virtual girlfriend in his real life girlfriend’s Facebook list of friends, says that minutes or hours don’t count when you have a person filling a certain void in your life, “I don’t mean to imply that virtual lives are in anyway superior to real lives. But virtual world constitutes a new living space for the mind, unaccompanied by the body. With our feet still firmly planted in the real world amidst real lives, our consciousness floats in a parallel world where we are answerable to nobody and we do what we feel like doing.”
Psychologists caution that young brains are still spongy when they feel absolutely fine in their online relationships, but they should be made aware of the repercussions of any such alliance by those they confide in.
Psychologist Deepak Gupta says, “If one finds solace in a virtual partner, all is well. But one must always ensure that the other person is not taking you for a ride.