Re: [TCLUG:8719] Marriage (was: Found the offender)

["Joel A. Koepp" <jkoepp@atlas.socsci.umn.edu>]

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Trainor, Kevin T. wrote:
> 
> I think it depends a lot on how well you get to know your
> prospective date before you actually get together. I also
> think successful marriages depend a lot more on the couple's
> willingness to work on the relationship, no matter how ugly
> and painfu it sometimes gets. Marriage is a process, after
> all, not an event.

That's interesting. I would think that one would try to avoid getting to
know someone too well online before actually meeting. The way someone
types things on the screen can be very different from how they communicate
in real life. I'm of the opinion that you can often learn more about
someone in a half-hour of being together than you could in many hours of
online chatting and swapping emails. To me it's quite fascinating how fast
we can form our estimations of someone (rightly or wrongly, but usually
our instincts our pretty good) in a short time of talking, measuring
responses, noting body language, gauging intelligence, wit, composure, 
etc. My trepidation about this online phenomenon is about the ease with
which you can throw up a digital facade, whereas it's usually more
difficult to fool someone in person. I don't mean to be too pessimistic,
but I'm sure it happens. 

I also see good potential for having expectations after
getting too personal online, and then being disappointed for one
reason or another when a meeting takes place. 

But technology is probably changing society so fast that this is more
commonplace than I like to think. I'm probably just not hip to it. To take
a postmodernist stance on it all: I'm OK, you're OK; if it works for you,
great; if you don't want to have anything to do with it, equally great. :)
Neither makes anyone a better/worse person than someone else. 

As to the rest of what you said about marriage, I'm in complete agreement. 

Cheers,
Joel