Love...online.

The definition has changed drastically from the early days of love online. It was logging onto a dating site or into a chatroom and commencing a romance based on pure online interactions - your profile, his profile; emails sent back and forth; heated and passionate online consummation; IM'ing one another deep into the wee hours of the morning, finding out what makes one another tick; finally meeting up; sizzle or fizzle...

Today, many of us live our lives online, our hearts on our blogs, our conversations - naked and our dirty laundry aired for everyone to scrutinize. I've talked about this before. Thus, instead of just meeting online, many of us are conducting our entire relationships online. And, some (most, actually, that I know of) even meet the 'traditional' way - at a bar, through friends or colleagues, or some other offline social thing.

Now love online means something entirely different - it means that sometimes we air our feelings for one another through the modern tools of the web. How does this play out?

"I Have a Crush"

Several online social communities have the 'option' to determine relationships between people. Dodgeball, for instance, has an option to add a person to your dodgeball list who you have a 'crush' on. On 43things/places/people, you can add a 'Why I like...' to a person's profile, putting your heart on their profile. On Last.fm, you can describe your relationship with the people you are sharing music with (someone else may be 'heart'ed, but I'm <3'd - which, I believe, in the hierarchy of emoticons is good).

Other ways to indicate a crush is to watch who 'favorites' the photos of you on Flickr, or tags your posts more often on del.icio.us. One or two? That's normal. More than that, we are entering crush territory.

Of course, someone reading and linking back to your blog frequently may be a fan, but they could also be hankering for you. ;)

Publicly Dating

When a couple makes it official and decides to make their relationship public, you can confirm it by taking the 'crush' logic and cross referencing the two. They may not instantly say, "We're an item" but it becomes pretty obvious when, on every available social network, the two are intertwined. His favorites include many shots of her, her favorites include many shots of him, they, being in total twitterpation phase, create their own little 'echo chamber', cheering one another's posts incessantly.

This is sweet, but can be temporarily a little gross...sort of like the online version of a P.D.A. (public display of affection). Jennifer recently coined the term O.D.A. (online display of affection) to describe this particular phenomenon. This is the phase before the relationship is established, but each partner wants to acknowledge their mutual admiration. Think of it taking place of the traditional flowers or chocolates or the like.

In our so-called online lives, we woo by linking, tagging and bookmarking. Hot, eh?

Established Couple

Once a couple has firmly been established in the blogosphere, the romance echo chamber will cease (unless, of course, one feels obligated, perhaps through 'guilt' or 'special occasion' - remember linking=flowers). The couple and everyone around knows the relationship, so there is no need for reinforcement of the relationship. RSS subscribers will often follow the blogs of both parties to get a full picture of the story. So, if I subscribe to Maryam, I will subscribe to Robert and vice versa. I appreciate their respective insights into similar subjects and get a kick out of their tales of their own 'online' lives.

But something special does happen with online couples...they relate to one another a bit differently. They have to communicate better offline so that their disagreements don't get augmented online. They are connected with a wider community that gets to know both of them. Either way, it makes for a very interesting read and adds incredible dimension to each partner's writing.

Breaking Up?

If you publish your romantic life online, will others see the fissures in your relationship before you do? Will total strangers end up saying, "I could have told you it wouldn't last"?

Having experienced a couple of offline breakups in my past (and recent past), I've experienced the phenomenon of 'community breakup' where not only your flatware and other assets get split down the middle, so do your friends. And, each "side" of the couple's friends get one side of the story - usually seeing the 'other' as the villain and your friend as the 'victim'.

I would imagine that when you both live your life online, those that read both blogs will be less likely to cast judgment and more likely to just understand that the relationship has come to a natural end...or, at least, understand the bigger picture. But then again, I (luckily) haven't experienced this.

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There are advantages and drawbacks to Love Online.

Disadvantage #1: A very public relationship with a very public breakup is tougher to leave in your past.

Disadvantage #2: One partner could be more public than the other. You may want to sit down and discuss this before you blog about how you feel.

Disadvantage #3: Some people may not want to hear about your relationship. Period. You have to determine what kind of readers you have and whether you care or not.

Disadvantage #4: If you aren't so good at communicating offline, be prepared for some major online dirty laundry.

Advantage #1: A great relationship's history will be documented forever online. Your grandchildren will be able to follow your story. Even if the relationship ends, if it is amicable, you'll have good memories to look back on.

Advantage #2: It gives a deeper, richer perspective of each person to have both partners perspectives online. It is my experience that there are certain nuances in the communication of each gender...this isn't universal, but quite often the case.

Advantage #3: One or the other partner will rarely felt left out of discussions in the community at large.

Advantage #4: Links, tags and bookmarks are geeky, but an insanely sweet way of showing affection - and they last a helluva lot longer than flowers (although don't forget that the occasional flowers are nice, too). ;)

I'd love to hear from more of the community on examples of love online, other online couples...and your various perspectives...

:: oh...and another drawback...your ex's trolls...but I'm not afraid...bring it on...;)

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