It takes 18 to 20 hours week in and week out to establish and maintain an intimate relationship. You can take the occasional break from that, but if there is a permanent drop off in contact, the relationship quickly begins to die -- or at least changes into something else, something less intimate.
If you do the math, that's between two and three hours daily, but you don't have to have daily contact and you certainly don't need that much daily contact. It's fine to have big chunks of time together on, say, the weekend and lighter amounts of contact on other days.
The internet can facilitate that contact and can facilitate intimacy but it can also confuse people and go weird places and make people imagine they have relationships they don't actually have.
In the past, it was fairly easy to tell who was famous and who wasn't. Famous people made movies or music or did politics and you watched them on TV or whatever and you readily understood that it was a one-way relationship.
The internet means you can interact directly with actual famous people and it also means ordinary people can have lots of followers on social media or blog or what not and this can make it really confusing as to what your relationship is to someone.
Some of their social media followers may be people they actually know in person and have a strong relationship to, such as spouse, coworkers or family. Any casual remarks made on social media between two people who actually know each other IRL will be interpreted by those two individuals through the lens of that context and this may not be obvious to others who know them via social media.
So when you also crack jokes or whatever and you don't have that same context, you may be befuddled as to why they react differently to you than they did to this other person. You may feel rejected or mistreated or frozen out when the reality is they just don't know you and these two relationships are not alike.
When ordinary people post a lot online regularly and yet remain not famous, other people seem to somewhat often interpret their contact with them as being more intimate than it really is. They seem prone to failing to recognize the one-sided nature of the contact.
Instead of feeling like they are talking to Famous Star whom they know of because Fame, they seem to feel like this is more like "My favorite aunt Sally!" -- except Sally may have no idea who you are because you don't share as much about yourself or they simply don't follow all that you share online.
Real and healthy intimacy requires some additional elements to happen:
If you are spending 18 or more hours per week consuming works by someone online and they are not investing similar amounts of time into getting to know you, you do not have an intimate relationship. At best, you are their fan.
Some portion of that 18 to 20 hours per week needs to be private and needs to involve sharing things that neither person shares with just anyone and everyone. Interacting only with their public personae doesn't really give you a good idea of who this person really is.
No matter how much they appear to share of themselves, public personaes are typically fairly carefully crafted and there are things people routinely leave out, gloss over and so forth. No matter how much you consume of their public personae, you do not actually know them intimately if that is the only way you know them.
That means sometimes people they want nothing to do with can stalk them and try to force a feeling of intimacy. If you are trying to force yourself on someone who wants nothing to do with you, no matter how much you manage to learn about them, you do not have some kind of healthy, intimate relationship to them.
They are not your friend or lover. They may well be your victim depending upon how far you take it in terms of forcing yourself onto them and demanding their time and attention.
Giving someone no means to opt out of dealing with you makes you a bad person. If you feel compelled to keep trying to force yourself on someone who doesn't want you in their lives, you need therapy at best and possibly also psych meds.
If you met them through a public forum where you both participate regularly, I recommend keeping the budding romance part of the relationship on the down low. It helps preserve your options for leaving the relationship without one of you feeling like you must leave the forum.
If you join a forum expressly because your SO is there, don't tell people that's your reason for being there and don't spend most of your time talking with your SO on the forum. Establish your own relationship to the forum, even if you don't participate all that much.
If you do the math, that's between two and three hours daily, but you don't have to have daily contact and you certainly don't need that much daily contact. It's fine to have big chunks of time together on, say, the weekend and lighter amounts of contact on other days.
The internet can facilitate that contact and can facilitate intimacy but it can also confuse people and go weird places and make people imagine they have relationships they don't actually have.
In the past, it was fairly easy to tell who was famous and who wasn't. Famous people made movies or music or did politics and you watched them on TV or whatever and you readily understood that it was a one-way relationship.
The internet means you can interact directly with actual famous people and it also means ordinary people can have lots of followers on social media or blog or what not and this can make it really confusing as to what your relationship is to someone.
Some of their social media followers may be people they actually know in person and have a strong relationship to, such as spouse, coworkers or family. Any casual remarks made on social media between two people who actually know each other IRL will be interpreted by those two individuals through the lens of that context and this may not be obvious to others who know them via social media.
So when you also crack jokes or whatever and you don't have that same context, you may be befuddled as to why they react differently to you than they did to this other person. You may feel rejected or mistreated or frozen out when the reality is they just don't know you and these two relationships are not alike.
When ordinary people post a lot online regularly and yet remain not famous, other people seem to somewhat often interpret their contact with them as being more intimate than it really is. They seem prone to failing to recognize the one-sided nature of the contact.
Instead of feeling like they are talking to Famous Star whom they know of because Fame, they seem to feel like this is more like "My favorite aunt Sally!" -- except Sally may have no idea who you are because you don't share as much about yourself or they simply don't follow all that you share online.
Real and healthy intimacy requires some additional elements to happen:
- Mutuality
- Special access to private info
- Genuine choice
Mutuality
The very definition of fame is that more people can know a lot about the famous person than the famous person can know that well. A million people can read their book or watch their film, but it simply isn't possible for the famous person to devote two hours of their time to knowing something about each of those million people.If you are spending 18 or more hours per week consuming works by someone online and they are not investing similar amounts of time into getting to know you, you do not have an intimate relationship. At best, you are their fan.
Special access to private info
If all of your contact with someone is with their public comments and public online presence, you do not have an intimate relationship with them. If most of your contact with someone is with their public online presence and you only very occasionally email them or DM them, you do not have an intimate relationship to them.Some portion of that 18 to 20 hours per week needs to be private and needs to involve sharing things that neither person shares with just anyone and everyone. Interacting only with their public personae doesn't really give you a good idea of who this person really is.
No matter how much they appear to share of themselves, public personaes are typically fairly carefully crafted and there are things people routinely leave out, gloss over and so forth. No matter how much you consume of their public personae, you do not actually know them intimately if that is the only way you know them.
Genuine Choice
If someone has a public presence, to some extent they will end up interacting with people they didn't specifically intend to interact with. They can't hand pick the thousands or millions of people who may consume the content they create.That means sometimes people they want nothing to do with can stalk them and try to force a feeling of intimacy. If you are trying to force yourself on someone who wants nothing to do with you, no matter how much you manage to learn about them, you do not have some kind of healthy, intimate relationship to them.
They are not your friend or lover. They may well be your victim depending upon how far you take it in terms of forcing yourself onto them and demanding their time and attention.
Giving someone no means to opt out of dealing with you makes you a bad person. If you feel compelled to keep trying to force yourself on someone who doesn't want you in their lives, you need therapy at best and possibly also psych meds.
Dating
If you met them on a dating app, they may not want you to insert yourself into other parts of their online life. Always try to establish if you are welcome in other parts of their online life before joining in. Don't act like you are "entitled" to be there.If you met them through a public forum where you both participate regularly, I recommend keeping the budding romance part of the relationship on the down low. It helps preserve your options for leaving the relationship without one of you feeling like you must leave the forum.
If you join a forum expressly because your SO is there, don't tell people that's your reason for being there and don't spend most of your time talking with your SO on the forum. Establish your own relationship to the forum, even if you don't participate all that much.