This post is on the Other BDSM web board.
| 20 Feb 11, 4:54 PM wonderer UK, 5 yrs   |
QFT I make a massive distinction between "falling in love" and "sustaining love"; the former is a largely hormonal response of desire; the latter is an act of will, to care ultimately for the beloved's well being and fulfilment. Sustaining love can therefore sometimes be hard work for either party or both. Responding now to the OP: I think either can be done to some extent without direct contact. People with sensory impairments may have that as their only option. People with high functioning direct communication skills will probably prefer to use them, rather than have their communication transmitted over a low bandwidth and ambiguous medium. I've talked to people online at times, and felt I've got to know them considerably, and then encountered them in real life and found out a lot more. (I also had a minor revelation recently by reading the comments various people had put on someone's network, some of which described her physical appearance).
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" (Albert Einstein) Edited 20 Feb 11, 4:56 PM by wonderer | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 5:50 PM Miss_Poppins UK(RG), 2 yrs |
Entirely agree with this. It's especially interesting if you happen to meet, have the chemical reaction and then get to know each other via email/phone etc. I wrote a blog about this recently; here's an excerpt:
Hab keine Angst, einen großen Schritt zu machen, wenn dies nötig ist. Ein Abgrund lässt sich nicht mit zwei kleinen Sprüngen überqueren (David Lloyd George). | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:07 PM tanken UK(NR), 2 yrs |
I can 'love' a woman's photo and be turned on and impressed by what she writes but I don't think I could ever fall in love with someone that I have never seen and spoken to in person.
'Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather' - Velvet Underground | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:12 PM Nicko_Nick UK(WC), 5 yrs |
Not in my experience, you'll have fallen in love with your imagination.
Otherwise known as "Eventer" | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:15 PM pixie_lix 3 yrs |
So black and white, you should have just said earlier
I don't judge others. I say if you feel good with what you're doing, let your freak flag fly. | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:20 PM pixie_lix 3 yrs |
Thank you all, I've loved all your responses. This is why this place is great and fun, Discussions OP's points of view.
Personally I think it's chemical, though getting to know someone is always the most exciting thing. I know 2 people who fell in love via the net, and phone. They are still together, 10 years on.......So it can happen.  I don't judge others. I say if you feel good with what you're doing, let your freak flag fly. | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:27 PM purgamentum UK, 3 yrs |
It can happen, but perhaps when it happens to some they mistake love for lust. The explosion of t'internet has made it possible for many people to chat with and interact with a great deal of people; people you would never normally have come across. Folks tend to be be a bit more open on-line and if you happen to fall in love it may be with an idealised version of that person. I suppose it is dependant on how much time you spend getting to know them, to know their in's and out's and what they are truly like before you can call in the love police. "I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it." Edgar Allan Poe | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:35 PM Xrampage UK(PR), 6 yrs |
I think love is an illusion created by people's minds. It all boils down to simple psychology! You can fall in love with who you want and whenever you want, whether it be remotely, geographically, physically or mentally, it all depends on the individual! It's quite possible for an every person to fall in love with an incarcerated serial killer! Sorry to go off on a tangent, I think the word 'love' is often used as an excuse. Rather than a person admitting that they actually get turned on sexually by violence or any other immoral activity, they can always play the love card! Remember, we're always in control of our minds! It's a question of choice or preference! Edited 20 Feb 11, 6:39 PM by Xrampage | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 6:49 PM DeCoverley UK(GL), 4 yrs |
No. | ||
| 20 Feb 11, 7:16 PM wonderer UK, 5 yrs |
That opens up a huge philosophical and psychological can of worms, which I'm not qualified to unpack, but I'll have a go at giving a brief opinion. Our perception processes consist of receiving signals (stimuli) through our senses, paying attention to them, and then comparing them with stored representations to fill in the gaps, because our sensory signals are never perfect or complete. This is roughly what I think you mean by imagination. Scribbles once wrote a fascinating weblog about the process of "joining the dots" http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/posts/245273/ . Obviously the better our sensory acuity, the more dots we have and the more likely that our interpolations are roughly accurate. Having a face to face rather than mediated access to the source of the stimuli is likely to increase the accuracy of the stimuli. Our memory store (and our ability to access it) has a bearing on the accuracy of the picture we build up. The comparison process is subject to error - e.g. eth famous poem about the visually impaired persons from the Indian subcontinent trying to understand an elephant ( http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Blindmen_and_t... or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_el... ) It may be that it requires more mental effort to create a new memory than to categorise a set of stimuli as being an instance of an existing stored model. (Perhaps the latter is stereotyping). Philosophers sometimes seem to spend time arguing about whether or not there is an actual reality or whether we just have multiple images in brains. I think there are realities out there (though not everything is so representable) and that our mental understandings are more or less accurate, though we are of course prone to bias and illusions and so on. I think that might make me a post-positivist but I'm a bit out of my depth here. Key point is that - to some extent - everything we perceive is at least part imagination. And I think it is also part reality. And a face to face interaction is likely to increase the accuracy of the representation; i.e. reduce the amount of imaginary.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" (Albert Einstein) Edited 20 Feb 11, 7:31 PM by wonderer |
