Real Life Friends vs Internet Friends

[stargazer]

I ran a search on PsychLinks on "Internet friendships" and am glad I found this thread. I really have only hung out on two different Internet sites, in all the time I've been online (about 10 years now). Psychlinks is one of them, and the other one is a blogging site.

For whatever reason, I seem to have formed closer friendships on the blogging site. Some of them have escalated into telephone relationships, although I've not yet met anyone in real life. I don't know why this is.

But what seems to happen is that, either the friendships work out almost perfectly, with hassles never happening in any way, or the friendship seems somehow convoluted and doomed, no matter what either person tries to do about it.

There's this one person on the blogging site, a woman my age, who always seems to take everything I say the wrong way. And it bugs me so much that I finally asked her not to contact me. This happened this morning.

I feel really bad about it, because I know she's going through a divorce and is unhappy, but it's always awkward when I feel like a statement of mine is being twisted or misconstrued, and a single telephone conversation would probably solve the problem and heal things.

I asked her to call me, but she doesn't seem to want to. She did call me about two and a half years ago, and we had a nice lengthy conversation. I think I almost always come across better on the phone than I do online. But some people want to remain only online, which I have never understood.

I feel really bad about the whole thing. Maybe I should just stick with the Internet relationships that are working, and not try to solve the ones that don't.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Online communication in any form often does create the potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding - I think that's just the nature of the beast.

It's usually best to ask questions ("I'm not sure I understand you - did you mean....?") before drawing conclusions.

 

[stargazer]

It's usually best to ask questions ("I'm not sure I understand you - did you mean....?") before drawing conclusions.

I probably ought to have asked questions such as those, prior to emailing her with an exasperated statement regarding how often we seem to collide with each other.

After the fact, I realized that she was actually trying to be encouraging in her comment on my blog, even though it was frustrating that she had misconstrued what I was trying to say.

Interestingly, I got a second comment from another person, and he completely understood what I'd said.

Compounding this was a religious element that tends to be inflammatory, but I have ordinarily felt more comfortable talking about my religious beliefs on the blog than elsewhere, either in real life, or on the Internet.

So I think that the second commenter probably understood my belief-system, and she didn't. Still, she meant well.

All that said, I later went back and read the email I sent her, and it wasn't all that bad. In fact, I think it was all right, and I'm going to let go of the whole thing now.

 

[Elizabeth]

Sadly I have way more online friends than RL friends, and I wish I could meet some of them

 

[stargazer]

I just re-read this, because I got the thread reply notification. I'm getting along really well with that woman I mentioned these days. But my situation is pretty much like Elizabeth's. I seem to be more sociable on the Internet than I am in so-called "real" life.

 

[Elizabeth]

So true Stargazer, I think this is because you aren't speaking face to face with someone you can type freely how you feel etc..do you know what I mean??

 

[stargazer]

Yeah, sort of. I've thought about it a lot, but I can't quite put my finger on it. If I've known someone from the Internet for a while, and we've added each other to our messengers, we seem to be able to say things very easily to each other that might not go over too well in real life.