R.I.P. James Ganolfini "His Career & Bio

QUICK FACTS

• NAME: James Gandolfini                 
  
• OCCUPATION: Film Actor, Theater Actor, Television Actor, Filmmaker
• BIRTH DATE: September 18, 1961
• DEATH DATE: June 19, 2013
• EDUCATION: Rutgers University                                                                                         
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Westwood, New Jersey
• PLACE OF DEATH: Rome, Italy
• FULL NAME: James Joseph Gandolfini Jr.
• AKA: James Joseph Gandolfini
• AKA: James Gandolfini

BEST KNOWN FOR

James Gandolfini was an American actor best known for his role as a mobster on the hit 1999 HBO television series The Sopranos.

James Gandolfini was an American actor born on September 18, 1961, in Westwood, New Jersey. He discovered acting in the late 1980s and made his Broadway debut in 1992. Gandolfini's breakthrough came in the role of a mobster on the hit 1999 HBO television series The Sopranos. During the show’s six-year run, the actor won numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy. Gandolfini died in Italy after suffering a heart attack on June 19, 2013, at age 51.

Acting Debut

Gandolfini grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University. He discovered the stage after spending years as a Manhattan bouncer and nightclub manager. When a friend took him to an acting class in the late 1980s, he was left so unsettled and challenged by a focusing exercise that involved threading a needle that he knew he had to return.

Shortly thereafter, James Gandolfini immersed himself in the New York theater world. His Broadway debut came with the 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. His New York stage credits also include On the Waterfront, One Day Wonder with the Actor's Studio and Tarantulas Dancing at the Samuel Beckett Theatre,

Breakthrough Role

Gandolfini's breakthrough screen role came with his portrayal of Virgil, the philosophizing hit man, in Tony Scott's True Romance with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette. He went on to play a diverse range of roles in more than 25 motion pictures over his decades-long career, including John Cusack's brother in Money for Nothing, Geena Davis's plumber boyfriend in Angie and a loyal Navy lieutenant in Crimson Tide. He also played a pivotal role in Steve Zaillian's A Civil Action alongside John Travolta and Robert Duvall

'The Sopranos'

Gandolfini's gift for shedding light on the vulnerable side of seemingly ruthless characters led to his starring role on the acclaimed HBO drama series The Sopranos. In 1999, Gandolfini won both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Tony Soprano, a gangster having a midlife crisis. He also won the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series three times—in 2000, 2001 and 2003. Also in 2003, it was announced that The Sopranos would end after its sixth season.

Later Roles

In 2004, Gandolfini appeared in the DreamWorks' comedy Surviving Christmas (2004) with Ben Affleck and the political drama All the King's Men (2006) with Sean Penn. He also continued to work with HBO after The Sopranos ended in 2007, after signing a development deal with the cable channel and its film distribution company, Picturehouse, in August 2006.

Gandolfini began appearing on the big screen again in 2009. He starred in the action dramas The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and In the Loop, and became a voice in the live-action remake of the children's book Where the Wild Things Are (2009).

In 2012, Gandolfini appeared in the crime-thriller Killing Them Softly with Brad Pitt, and played a C.I.A. director in the acclaimed film Zero Dark Thirty alongside Jessica Chastain. He also served as executive producer of the HBO miniseries Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), which explored literary legend Ernest Hemingway's relationship with journalist Martha Gellhorn, who became Hemingway's third wife. The actor took a comedic turn the following year, playing Doug Munny in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone 

(2013) alongside Steve Carell, Jim Carrey and Steve Buscemi.

Personal Life and Death

Gandolfini and his wife, Marcella, married in March 1999 and divorced in December 2002. The couple had one child together, a son named Michael. In January 2004, Gandolfini proposed to his girlfriend, Lora Somoza, but the engagement was later called off.


On June 19, 2013, at the age of 51, Gandolfini died after suffering a heart attack in Rome, Italy, where he had traveled to attend the Taormina Film Festival.

How to Love Again

Once your heart has been broken, it can be very difficult to love again. Some people never move past a broken heart. However, you can learn to love again, even after being emotionally wounded by a failed relationship or a lost love. To deprive yourself of love is to miss out on one of life’s biggest blessings. Here is how to love again.

Instructions

1. • 1
     Grieve your losses. Before you will be ready to love again, you need to heal the pain that your lost love has inflicted. Whether you lost your love through a failed relationship or the death of a loved one, your lost love left emotional wounds. Grieve your losses so you will free yourself to love again.
   • 2
     Recognize the need to love again. Loving others is one of the most basic needs of human existence. Without love, life is meaningless. While you might need to take some time to lick your emotional wounds, closing off your heart to love will make your life seem empty.
   • 3
     Decide that loving again is worth the risk. While you are still in the grieving process, your heart might feel too fragile to take the risk of loving again. However, as you grieve your loss and become more emotionally healthy, you will move toward being ready to open up your heart again.
   • 4
     Love yourself. The more you love yourself, the more likely you are to attract a person who is emotionally healthy. If you go out looking for love to fill a hole in your heart, then you are much more likely to attract someone who wants to take advantage of you. However, if you come from the perspective of having lots of love to give, then you will attract a similar person.
   • 5
     Think about what you want in a new relationship. Set a standard for what you are seeking in a new relationship. Make it a point to progress in this relationship, and don't fall into old patterns just because they are comfortable.
   • 6
     Let the love come to you. Don’t go out looking for “Mr. Right” in places where singles congregate. Instead, get involved in activities which you enjoy that bring you into contact with people who have the same interests. Whether you do this through a church, a bowling league or a city tennis club, get involved in your community in a positive manner.
   • 7
     Ease into a new relationship slowly. Do not try to replace the lost relationship. Instead, allow a new one to grow and blossom in its own way.

• Discover a shockingly simple way to

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Tips & Warnings

• If you are having a hard time grieving the loss of a past love, consider finding a therapist with experience in counseling people with similar issues. A good therapist can guide you through the grieving process so that you will be able to love again.
• Don't rush into a relationship simply because you are lonely. Let love take its course.

Love After Death: The Widows’ Romantic Predicaments

"Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more." The Beatles

"I can't live if living is without you." Mariah Carey

"A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope." 
Samuel Richardson

All of us have romantic predicaments; widows (and widowers) seem to have even more. Should they actively search for another lover? And if they find another lover, while still loving their late spouse, how can these two lovers reside together in their hearts? For widows, is loving again worth the effort of having to adjust to another person? And is widowhood the proper time to fall in love again?

The end of love and death 
For many people, romantic love forms an essential aspect of their lives; without love, life may seem worthless, devoid of meaning. Romantic love is a central expression of a good, meaningful, and flourishing life. Without love and desire, many people feel that a large part of them is dead. The lover is perceived to be "the sunshine of my life," and for many, without such sunshine, decay and death are all around.

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Even in one of the darkest period of history, the Holocaust, people fell in love despite the risks of expressing it. People did not relinquish love, and love even enabled some of them to survive the horror and death around them.

Death is perceived to be associated with love in various ways. Thus, romantic breakups are often described as a kind of death. In the words of Dusty Springfield, after such breakup," Love seems dead and so unreal, all that's left is loneliness, there's nothing left to feel." Personal relationships without love are also often associated with death. We speak about "dead marriages" (there is even an internet site entitled, "Married but not dead"), "cold husbands," and "frigid wives."

Since love is perceived to be the essence of life, the end of love can cause some people to wish to end life as well, to sacrifice their life or to kill others for love. In The Name of Love, men kill their wives and commit suicide when their wives intend to leave them. The French famously refer to orgasm as "la petite morte," or "the little death." Once orgasm is reached, it is in a sense the end of the loving experience preceding it, and hence it a little death. Similarly, it was claimed that "All animals are sad after sex."

The widow's new romantic situation
Is the human heart large enough to encompass more than one romantic love? There is ample evidence that this is possible, both in the diachronic sense of loving one person after another, and in the synchronic sense of having two lovers at the same time. Widows' love involves indeed both aspects. Their love to two people is more complex given the continuing impact of bereavement, even years after the loss. The widow's ongoing relationship and bond to the deceased remains a central aspect in her life. She has to cope not merely with the new situation of loving two men at the same time, but also with the shift in the way she has loved her deceased husband: a shirt from a relationship with a person with a physical companion who provides active support and love to one who is no longer alive and cannot be active in her life. 

In the Romantic Ideology, profound love should last forever. The end of love is taken to indicate that it was superficial in the first place. Contrary to this view, love can perish for various reasons that arise from changes in intrinsic or extrinsic circumstances; such changes do not necessarily indicate that initial love was superficial. It is true that profound love is less likely to perish, but it can perish nevertheless. Hence, there is no reason to assume that one's heart is not big enough to include several genuine loves in one's life.

The death of a spouse places the widow in a new situation, which has similarities to other situations in which love ends; nevertheless, widowhood has unique aspects. Whether a relationship is average, as most relationships are, or very good or very bad, the ending of any personal relationship changes one's circumstances. In most of cases of widowhood, if there was a positive attitude toward the spouse during his lifetime, this is enhanced. This is due both to the tendency to idealize the past and to our sense of propriety in not speaking ill of the dead. Although the late spouse is physically absent, the widow's love for him can remain and even grow.

New widows (and widowers) face a range of circumstances in which their decisions are likely to be different. Here I will discuss three such central circumstances: (a) adapting to a new love while still loving the late spouse; (b) tending to avoid a new marriage or relationship, as it doesn't seem worth the effort; and (b) falling in love with another man almost immediately. (Most of the claims presented here apply to widowers as well.)

Adapting to a new lover
The case of a widow's love for a new person is different to that which pertains when a regular love affair occurs after a previous one has ended. This is especially so if at the time of the spouse's death, both partners shared a profound love. In this case, the survivor's love does not die with the spouse's death.

The love felt for the late spouse is likely to increase in light of the prevailing idealization of the relationship and of the spouse. Although a new love might physically replace the previous one, from a psychological viewpoint the widow will now love two people at the same time. Her love expresses the nonexclusive nature of love more than it does its replaceable nature. Thus, one widow writes: "'Second love' is different, but it's very good. I will always love and miss my late husband. It's really hard to understand sometimes how I can go from tears for my late husband into smiling and thinking of my new guy. There's an odd ‘divide'. I love both of them, one here and one gone." It seems that we are blessed with a heart that is very flexible and can accommodate various people at the same time.

Consider the following sincere description (which appears on the site Widow's Voice) by Janine, a widow, about her feelings toward her new lover.

"I had only loved one person in my whole life... And he had only fallen in love once. We both had that love for over 27 years... When C came along and we started dating, it was different. I knew things would be different because he was not Jim. But I didn't know that love would feel different. And so as we became more serious and had deeper feelings for one another, I started to worry. A lot. I questioned myself and my feelings. Because this did not feel the same. I wasn't experiencing the feelings that I had 27 years ago. I wasn't feeling that ‘if I don't see him today I think I'll die' emotion. I wasn't feeling that I was falling more in love each day. I wasn't feeling that my heart would burst from how much love I had for him. I didn't wake up each morning almost counting the hours until we'd be together again. So I wondered if I truly loved him. I stressed a lot over this, not wanting to give up on the relationship, but wondering if I was being fair to him if this truly wasn't love. It's hard to express how much pain I was in. He loved me a lot, but although I was not sure that it was love for me, I not willing to stop seeing him. I thought I was being selfish. Or worse... maybe I was settling. And [then after talking to another widow] I began to realize that the way I was loving this second time was ‘normal'. And that I had to let go of my expectations. How could this love feel the same as my first love? I was younger then. We were both worry-free. We had no children. We really didn't have many bills. We had no jobs. We had time. We had freedom. We had youth. We had only each other. And we had a long future ahead of us. ... It's 27 years later. I have 6 children. I have bills... I have a dead husband... I have a scarred heart. I am in a different place. Love after love will not feel the same. But that doesn't mean that it's not love."

The important lesson to be drawn from Janine's moving description is that love can be different; looking for the same love with another partner can be devastating, as no two people are identical. It is not wrong that your new love is different from the previous one. Realizing the difference in circumstance enables a widow not to feel that she is compromising or settling. Despite the fact that her late husband raised the bar very high, she may believe that here there is now a different bar. In a sense, the new lover brings the widow back to life. As Annabel, a widow, said to her friend who ignited in her the desire to make love: "Thank you for bringing me back to life."

The widow faces the challenge of entering into a new and meaningful spousal relationship without letting the former relationship be forgotten or denied. In a recent study, by Bar-Nadav and Rubin, comparing the issues facing bereaved and non-bereaved women when they enter new relationships after a long-term one has ended, the bereaved experienced themselves as having changed more, but it was the non-bereaved who reported greater meaning in life and saw their life change as the more positive. The growth experienced by the non-bereaved at this stage of life is likely to be less conflicted and more positive, and while the growth of the bereaved remains present and distinct, it lags behind that of their peers...

Bar-Nadav and Rubin argue that the experience of loss and its aftermath are reflected in the fact that widows feel greater hesitancy than their peers do about engaging in intimacy with new partners. These concerns about intimacy arise from the anxiety that they might lose someone again, their fear of opening up to new relationships, and their concerns about not maintaining fidelity to the deceased spouse; all these issues enhance their tendency to avoid intimacy. The role of imagery and counterfactual thinking is central in widows. While the deceased spouse ceases to disappoint and irritate us, the living new partner continues to do so; he reminds us of the richness and the difficulties of ongoing living relationships. Although love for the deceased spouse may increase as times goes by, a certain disengagement from constant occupation with the deceased occurs over time, facilitating attempts to adapt to the new relationship. The connection to the deceased spouse is likely to remain throughout the widow's life, but its nature will undergo many changes. The creation of a new loving relationship involves both the capacity to let go and to hold on to the previous relationship, thus creating a new equilibrium (see here).

Like other people, a widow yearns for her lover to come back, but unlike others, she knows it is impossible. Which position is worse, the widow who knows that her lover cannot come back or the woman who knows that her ex could come back but might not wish to do so? The pain and sadness is greater on the widow's side, not merely because of the terminal nature of the loss, but also because of the greater romantic intensity. On the other hand, frustration and the ongoing damaging wait is more profound in the case of the living ex-lover. The widow is eventually likely to accept her given situation, and this will help her to live more peacefully with her current relationship.

Another marriage is not worth the effort
Finding the right partner and then learning to live with him often involves a lot of time and effort. Some people reach an age at which they doubt whether it is worth the effort. The price of adjusting to a new person may be too high-one reason being that the presence of her late husband, whether for good or bad, will remain with her most of the time.

It might be romantic to remember the late husband as a great lover who completely filled the widow's heart and thus prevents her from falling in love again; but this is not very common, since profound loving relationships that last forever are not frequent. In many cases, the personal relationship would have been satisfactory, but not one in which a great fire burned constantly in the couple's hearts. It is likely to have been good and comfortable but not what we are presented with in romantic movies. In such situations, the considerations about whether to enter a new marital framework are typically more mundane and relate to maintaining a comfortable life. As Nancy, a widow, indicates:

"The difficulties in falling in love again has usually nothing to do with a profound love for the late husband, but to other reasons, such as mental and physical fatigue, the attitudes of children and friends, the joy of being independent and free to do whatever you like, reading at the middle of the night, not needing to cook every week, having sex only when you really want it, and not willing to get used to a new person with his wishes and oddities. The heart may include this person, but the question is whether it is worth the effort."

How soon should I fall in love again?
Even if the predicaments surrounding being with a new lover are solved and the widow can spare a place in her heart for the new lover, there is still a whole set of dilemmas concerning how and when to embark on a new love. For example, what is the proper duration of grieving, whether and when to take off the ring, when to begin dating, when to give away his clothes, which clothes to wear in various circumstances, what and how often to talk about the past, and what loving behavior toward the new lover should be shown in public. 



Widows are judged more critically and hence sensitivity, careful pace, and moderation are necessary. Thus, a widow dating a married man will be subjected to more criticism than a divorcee or a single woman—after all, she should know better what it is to lose a spouse.
One sensitive issue is how soon the widow should wait before dating. There is no acceptable norm in this regard; in some traditions a year is the norm; in others it may be longer or shorter. 
The case of Michelle Heidstra, described in Mail Online, is particular striking as just four weeks after her husband's death she was embarking on a new love affair with his best friend, Adrian, a pallbearer at the funeral. Lost in her grief, she found herself drawn to the man who could comfort her. Adrian was very close and supportive to her and to her baby. At the end of a day spent with a group of her husband's friends, including Adrian, Michelle found herself in his house. "We were both in turmoil and we needed each other. We made love," says Michelle. "We couldn't help ourselves. It seemed so right." It is, she says, exactly what Jon would have wanted. She was not even embarrassed to tell her friend about it.

Michelle understands those who criticized her, but says "How can you make rules about people's emotions? We all love and grieve differently. I have never stopped grieving for Jon. But that doesn't rule out a new love." After a year of seeing each other, they felt that the relationship was getting too serious too quickly and they took a break. A year later, they started dating again. This time the pace was slower, and they moved in together only 6 months later. They are now engaged to be married. Michelle says: "Blame me if you like, but grief hits people in different ways and I have no regrets."
The case of Michelle is not rare; there are many similar stories of widows falling in love with their late husband's best friend within a short time after his death. It is a kind of reaction to their great loss, and the supportive friend is a most natural person to be with.

Conclusions
Widows (and widowers) are confronted with a particular form of romantic breakup, but while this involves a terminal physical breakup, it is not a psychological one. The breakup caused by the death of the spouse is unwelcome and irreversible, and the widow might be still in love with her late spouse. There are various paths one can take in this situation, and any of them may be right in different circumstances.

Two major paths are those of either finding a new lover or giving up the search for such a lover. The first path is more desirable, but as in other circumstances, it is not always available. 
Widows can profoundly fall in love, but their loving relationship might be complex as it is typically a three-hearts relationship. Just as such a relationship is possible when all three hearts are still beating, it is possible in this case as well. In both cases, being selfless and gracious is required more than in other circumstances. Comparisons between the dead and living lovers will be inevitable-and in many cases they will not be in favor of the living one, but one can reduce their relative weight by realizing that different circumstances cannot generate identical emotions and attitudes.

The second path leads to a more comfortable life, in which freedom is greater and the widow accepts, at least for the time being, the lack of a profound lover. This does not exclude becoming involved in a profound loving relationship if it happens to come along.

The romantic paths of widows are typically more complex, since widows are associated with a certain stigma, and people are more critical of them. A major issue in this regard is how soon they "should" fall in love with another person. For some widows this takes a lot of time, for others is much briefer as it offers them a meaningful way to get back to full life.

The above considerations can be encapsulated in the following statement that a widow might express: "Darling, my new lover, you may always be second in my heart, but not a far second; and in any case, I am also merely a second-hand woman."

- Falling in love signs -

- Falling in love signs -

What are the telltale signs of being in love? Will you know falling in love signs when you see them? How to read the signs of being in love?

We are chemically programmed to react in certain ways when we fall in love. Like it not, we all exhibit certain signs when we fall in love.

Read through my list of signs of being in love to see if you recognize some of these signs in yourself. Some of it is tongue in the cheek, but most of the signs of being in love in my list will (un)fortunately be true and yes, falling in love turns most of us into (happy) fools.

Luckily for us, love is blind and the silliness most of us goes through will be seen by the object of your affection as adorable and oh so sweet!

If you want to pass through this successfully, enjoy the ride and except it for what it is: the first stage of being in love.

Signs of being in love

1. The silly grin

You can’t get that goofy grin off your face however much you try. Every time you think about him (which is most of the time) you smile. Some of it is due to feeling so good and some of it because you are laughing at yourself.

2. Butterflies!

If you have a really bad case of falling in love it will be butterflies as big as bats! Your palms will get sweaty, heart rate will increase, you will go weak at the knees, and the worst is of course when you so get tongue tied that you’ll sound like an idiot when you finally have the courage to speak … and then there’s the humiliation of you laughing too loud at the inappropriate moment!

3. Endless playback

You keep on going over how he said this or that, the special tone of his voice that you are sure were reserved just for you, you re-read his text repeatedly and of course you have to share every little detail with your girlfriends (even when you see signs of boredom setting in) so that you can figure out what he really meant when he said: "Hello you."

4. Music becomes deeply meaningful

Every song you hear is suddenly meaningful and mirrors exactly what you are feeling. Slow love songs makes you swoon. You become convinced that those lyrics were written for you and destiny willed it so.

5. Time goes wonky

When you’re with her, time just flies, hours feels like mere minutes and you feel slightly cheated when you have to say goodbye – has it really been 2 hours already? When you are away from each other time just drags slowly along and this weekend feels eons away and the thought of waiting so long seems impossibly hard to cope with.

6. You are willing to go somewhere you hate

As long as you are together you are willing to go to the ends of the earth with him, even if it means going to boring motor shows, drinking sessions with his mates or even your mother in law to be that you can’t stand. If the object of you affection is a girl, you may even find yourself at a fashion show or sitting patiently waiting while she gets her hair done.

You will even start enjoying music (and food) you previously hated just because she loves it. Oh, love is a strange thing! You become blind to everything around you as long as you can look into those gorgeous eyes.

7. You become jealous

You find out that he went out with his friends last night and you feel strangely enraged and left out. You start obsessing about why he didn’t include you, where they went, what they did and (heaven forbid) whether he spend time with other women. Oh, why isn’t he spending every free moment of his time with you?

8. You develop tunnel vision

The object of your affection takes over your normal thoughts patterns. The logical center of your brain temporarily shuts down. You have trouble focusing on your work and everyday life and he keeps on creeping into your conversations. You continually catch yourself staring of in the distance dreaming silly little dreams about him.

9. You see your future together

You are secretly practicing how to sign your new surname and daydreaming about how your children will be. Will your little daughter look like mommy and your darling boy like daddy? You are picturing a happy little family with all the usual trappings behind that perfect white picket fence. Happy ever after is so close you can (nearly) reach out and touch it.

10. Everything is better

Everything is possible and you feel ready to conquer the world. No problem is too big, no mountain too high. Your senses kick into overdrive, food tastes better, you became acutely aware of beauty around you, music speaks directly to only you, you dress and groom with care and become greatly concerned about how you smell and taste.

11. You develop good posture

Men will adopt a that classic manly stance: shoulders back, chest out, stomach pulled in, head held high and standing tall. His female counterpart will go into super feminine drive by arranging her curves into a gorgeous silhouette: chest out, shoulders back, stomach tucked in and swinging her hips just so to attract his attention.

12. You become a hoarder

You lovingly save every trace of your times together (however little or ridiculous) from movie stubs, restaurant receipts to even candy wrappers. You save every text until your inbox is overflowing and then you despair over having to choose what to delete to make space for more.

13. Goodbye’s seems impossible

It takes you about half an hour to say goodbye and then desperate and sad business of missing each other starts about 10 seconds after you managed to put the phone down after saying good bye for the twentieth time.

14. You became a meticulous planner

You dress with care in case you run into him today. You plan little gestures/gifts that won’t reveal your true feelings but will let him know you are thinking about him. You keep your apartment tidy and stock up on beer and tidbits for in case he comes over. You now carry an extra toothbrush, sexy underwear and birth control in your bag.

15. Eye contact becomes difficult

You either find it difficult to make eye contact (in case she sees your soul exposed in your eyes) or you can’t stop staring. Stuttering, laughing too loudly, saying something really idiotic or blushing will usually add to you embarrassment.

16. Mood swings

One moment you will be floating on a euphoric cloud of perfect happiness because he smiled at you and the next moment you are crawling in the depths of despair because he walked right pass you without noticing you at all. You play the – he loves me, he loves me not – game a lot.

The signs of being love can't be hidden or explained away but should rather be enjoyed and savored as a special time.

Cyber Love: What is Real & What is Virtual?

The conventional bar scene of the 70s and 80s is no longer the accepted place to meet prospective dates. Lately, more and more singles are turning to the Internet for better dating opportunities. Talk show hype over cyberspace love encounters and the movie You've Got Mail have popularized the romantic potential of the Internet. The process of an online relationship, however, is very different from real time dating processes. The online environment is, by its very nature, restrictive. For new Internet users, the online culture shock can be daunting.Learning to communicate on the Internet is the first obstacle for newbies. Emoticons such as :-), LOL, and <G> are used liberally to express emotion, and can be like learning a foreign language. The rules are different online as well. There are protocols to follow in chat rooms; for example, to avoid accidentally offending others, sarcasm must be spelled out. Devoid of body language and intonation, the typed word is the only way to get the message across. Most novice Internet chat users first begin as "lurkers," content to quietly watch others interact. This way, the Internet culture is safely and quietly experienced before a user feels comfortable interacting within it. Another noticeable inconvenience, especially for women, is the seemingly endless number of chatters who want casual "cyber sex." This affront discourages many new chat users from returning, and also perpetuates the image of the Internet being "dirty." These cyber sex hound-offenders are attracted to the anonymity of the Internet. Where else can they act so rudely without getting caught? However, all novice chat users are mesmerized to some degree by the extreme anonymity and fantasy potential the Internet provides. Often, the user eventually realizes the sensitivity needed to interact with others – a transition is made from relating to the computer to relating to other people online. Often, this transition is coupled with an event that brings about this reality – such as "falling in love" with a fantasy and dealing with the reality that follows, meeting a chat partner face to face, or realizing that careless actions have hurt another person. Once this transition occurs, the chat user suffers a period of disillusionment, and then chooses to continue chat use – now wiser and kinder, or abandons Internet chat altogether. MIT sociology professor Sherry Turkle has extensively studied people’s relationships to computers. In her book, Life on the Screen, Turkle defines the aspects of the self as they relate to the new Internet culture. According to Turkle, "people are able to build a self by cycling through many selves" on the Internet (Turkle: 1995, p 178). This is a new phenomenon, and counters the psychoanalytic definition of identity as being forged early in life. By trying on various personas, Internet users are able to experiment with their own identity. This identity experimentation, however, is not without risks and complications. While experimentation can be a healthy exploration, it can also be damaging to self-esteem. Turkle describes cases where the Internet users feel more confident as "altered selves," losing confidence in their real identity (Turkle, 1995). Often, it is the state of the self-esteem at the beginning of the experimentation that determines whether the experience is positive or negative. For example, someone who suffers from depression, will likely realize a negative impact by experimenting with his or her identity online. Identity experimentation also complicates the Internet dating arena. Not all identity experimentation is intentional. Some Internet users involved in online romances describe their relationship in these terms: "I’m a different person when I’m with him [online]" or "I’m happy and confident when we are talking online. I’m not like that any other time." These feelings might be incorrectly attributed to the relationship’s success, when the reality is that behavior has been altered through subconscious self-exploration. Once these relationships move off line, they often wane, since the magic (and the altering of identity) cannot be maintained without the online illusion. Turkle describes two phases of Internet relationships.
In a first phase, [Internet] players feel the excitement of a rapidly deepening relationship and the sense that time itself is speeding up…In a second phase, players commonly try to take things from the virtual to the real and are usually disappointed (Turkle, 1995, 206).
The Internet encourages transference, a classical psychoanalytic behavior. Transference is traditionally defined as the client’s projection of feelings and wishes onto the analyst. The analyst becomes what the client imagined. On the Internet, interaction is limited to typed words. Tone, emotion, voice, appearance, and inferences are all imagined to help construct understanding. All too often, the image of the perfect mate is projected, and transferred. What appears to be the perfect soul mate is actually an illusion. To some degree, transference during online interaction cannot be avoided. After all, we are conditioned to rely on all our senses to interpret situations. When some of the input is missing, our mind fills in the blank. The key, however, is to recognize that this occurs.Another complication of Internet dating is the use of the Internet as an escape. The Internet can become a fantastic and unreal world. Online, we are who we say we are, if only for a few hours. This escape from reality, however, makes online dating more difficult. Trisha, a friend of a friend, ruined a potential relationship because fantasy caused her to be dishonest. Trisha met a man online, and the online relationship quickly blossomed into an intense, intimate encounter. She had lied in the beginning of the relationship by understating her own weight by 150 pounds. When he asked for her picture a week later, she worried about her lie, and sent a picture of a slimmer woman instead. In her mind, however, he would come to accept her physically once he fell in love with her soul. A few weeks passed, and the relationship intensified. He arranged to fly to meet her. She felt confident that her lie would be forgiven if she confessed in person. However, the woman he met was nothing physically that she had led him to imagine. He walked away angrily and refused to speak to her again. Distraught, Trisha blamed society’s focus on beauty, not willing to realize that she had betrayed him by misrepresenting herself. Jana, was hurt by a more intentional deception. For over a year, she was involved in an intense, intimate online romance with a man called ‘Chad.’ Stating that he was worried he would lose custody of his son if his ex-wife discovered his online addiction, he never disclosed his true identity. At first, this appeared normal. However, a few months into the relationship, they became exclusive, and Jana pushed to take the relationship offline. Still, ‘Chad’ would not agree to disclose his identity or agree to any phone calls, or real time meetings. And while he asked for pictures of her to be sent over the Internet, he refused to send her any pictures of himself. Online Jana made friends with a female buddy of Chad’s, and soon began divulging her concerns and insecurities to this female buddy. Fifteen months into her online love affair, she discovered that the man she was involved with was the same person as the female buddy. When caught, this "person" justified their behavior as a way to test Jana, and immediately disappeared altogether from the Internet. Jana, convinced that she been involved in a committed and honest relationship, suffered for months to come to terms with this betrayal. She never found out if ‘Chad’ was actually a man or a woman.
Relationship expert John Gray identifies the five stages of dating in his book Mars and Venus on a Date.
Stage one: attraction. In stage one of dating, we experience our initial attraction to a potential partner. The challenge in this first stage is to make sure you get the opportunity to express that attraction and get to know a potential partner. Stage two: uncertainty. In stage two, we experience a shift from feeling attraction to feeling uncertain that our partner is right for us. The challenge in this stage is to recognize this uncertainty as normal and not be swayed by it. […] Without an understanding of this stage, it is too easy for a man to drift from one partner to another and for a woman to make the mistake of pursuing a man more than he is pursuing her. Stage three: exclusivity. In stage three we feel a desire to date a person exclusively. We want the opportunity to give and receive love in a special relationship without competition. […] The danger in this stage is that we become too comfortable and stop doing the little things that make our partners feel special. Stage four: intimacy. In stage four we begin to experience real intimacy. We feel relaxed to let down our guard and share ourselves more deeply than before. Stage five: engagement. In stage five, with the certainty that we are with the person we want to marry, we become engaged. In this stage we have the opportunity to celebrate our love. (Gray: 1997, 4)
Each step must be realized for both parties in order to have a complete and fulfilling relationship.Applying Gray’s stages, we can identify a recurring problem with online relationships. There is a tendency for rapid movement from attraction (stage one) to intimacy (stage four), skipping the uncertainty and exclusivity stages almost entirely. Here is a common comment from online lovers: "We instantly connected somehow. I feel we've known each other forever. I feel I can talk to them about anything." The illusion is that there is a solid foundation for the intimacy of a relationship. The online lovers fear that slowing the pace of the relationship will ruin the magic. However, these relationships often end suddenly when one partner realizes disappointment. Amy, a friend of mine, was involved in an online romance for several months with Jed, a man who lived in another state. Their relationship included lengthy and intimate phone conversations. They genuinely cared for each other, and spent time supporting one another through difficult life decisions. From their perspectives, they shared an intimate and loving relationship. When she suddenly became ill and hospitalized, I relayed messages to him, until he was able to contact her in her hospital room. They soon began discussing the possibility of living together. Problems occurred when they met for the first time. My friend confided that the spark that they shared online no longer existed in real time. Once completely enthralled, they now easily annoyed each other. After sharing their feelings and troubles for three months, they became total strangers face-to-face. Realizing that they had crossed intimacy boundaries, it was uncomfortable to assume even a friendly relationship. In order to avoid such extreme disappointments, Internet relationships should be considered incomplete relationships. A person who desires to meet potential mates online must be prepared to meet off line as well. After all, humans are based in real world situations. It is impossible to experience the entirety of another individual through a screen and keyboard. Indeed, there are successes from online romances. I know of several couples that met online and are now happily married. These relationships require work, dedication, and reality, as do real time-originated relationships. Amy learned from her mistakes with Jed. Not too discouraged with the dating potential of the Internet, Amy took a new approach. She posted an Internet dating add on a bulletin board specializing in her metropolitan area. She screened the bounty of responses, and narrowed her search to a dozen prospects. After exchanging friendly but not-too-personal emails with these men, she progressed a few to brief phone calls. She was able to weed out many men with "questionable motives," and also able to recognize what personality attributes interested her most. Finally, a few weeks later, she arranged for casual lunch dates with the remaining three contenders. While none of these men turned out to be Mr. Right, she considered this approach very successful, safe, and fun. She’s currently posting her second ad. In order to succeed with Internet dating, an online romantic interest should be seen as a potential dating partner. Once it is established that there is a potential for a relationship, the focus should shift to meeting on the phone and then meeting in person. Try to limit yourself to people within your geographical area; otherwise, you will face the expense and complications of a long-distance relationship. Here are some other suggestions for successful online dating: Be safety and security conscious. Do not readily make available your name, address, phone and social security number online. Beware of "players." Not everyone on the Internet is honest and decent. Be cautious with your safety as well as your heart. To some people, an online romance is a game. Look for inconsistencies in what they say, or pressure for you to do something that you are uncomfortable with. Dishonest is not the same as anonymous. It is appropriate to remain anonymous online until you establish mutual trust. However, it is not right to be dishonest, especially regarding your marital status. Practice courtesy. Don’t think that the anonymity of the Internet allows you to be invasive. Demanding to know someone’s weight, age, or sexual secrets is as rude online as it is off line. Realize that what you see online isn't the whole picture. There are many characteristics that make up a person. Online typing does not afford the experience of a person’s temperament, work ethic, parenting skills, or bad breath. Keep everything in perspective and don’t fall in love too quickly with the person you've envisioned. Avoid intimate online conversations until later. The sense of anonymity frees individuals to speak more frankly than they would in person. However, a relationship should progress at a comfortable pace. If you confess all your inner secrets to your new online lover, you might later regret it during your first face-to-face encounter. Don’t make hasty commitments. "Love at first type" is romantic, but not always realistic. Take your time and do it right. Consider free online dating web sites. Most of these are divided into major cities or geographical areas, increasing the chance of finding the right person locally. Also, because there is more of an expectation to meet in real time, there are fewer lurkers. However, as with dating services, you must contend with candidates with less-than-noble motives. Always be aware. Make friends. You will certainly meet many people that aren’t right for you, but they are still interesting. The Internet is a great place to make friends. Meet early. Once you like someone online and they like you, progress to a real time meeting. Until you hit it off on all levels, keep your options open. When you meet in real time (RT), play it safe. Remember that you are meeting a stranger. Opt for public places, such as a restaurant. Or consider bringing along a friend.
The Internet has its share of love and heartache. With so many people using the Internet, chances are great that you will find your mate, provided you use common sense, a lot of patience, and a willingness to take a budding online relationship into the real world.