Guard your heart when online

By Atty. Farah G. Decano

 

THE pandemic and social distancing policy certainly have caused isolation among many individuals.  Thus, they resort to online apps to re-establish connection.  Whether for personal or for business purposes, video calls have become a popular replacement for face to face interaction.

Instant messaging remains widely used, too. This online chat messaging is almost akin to spoken conversation. In 1988, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) made it possible for users to chat in multi-user groups known as channels.  Later in the 1990s, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger were introduced and became mainstream platforms to communicate via instant messaging. Despite the shift to mobile devices in recent years and the rise of services such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Twitter, instant messaging has endured.

Curiously, romance can blossom among individuals who frequently socialize with each other electronically even outside the portals of dating apps.  They “fall in love” virtually without intending so.

Why fall in love?

Unlike in the real world where we use all our five senses, we only use our senses of sight and hearing when doing video calls and meetings.  We rely on our sense of sight to read the words displayed on our screens when exchanging instant messages. Both online means make non-verbal communications, including body language, normally unavailable for our appreciation.  As a result, we miss out on critical details about people we meet over the internet. 

With some facts inaccessible for observation, people enjoy some kind of anonymity online, whether partial or whole.  The lawlessness in some chat groups has become a spring board for the socially awkward individuals and for the fraudsters to assume a certain persona.  Truth can easily be distorted in cybercommunications.

Then there is this incidence of tunnel vision. It is a phenomenon wherein one’s attention is focused on the center and the peripheries become obliterated.  Individuals experience this narrowed vision whenever they spot another who complies with their minimum for attraction such as good grammar or expertise in a subject. They tend to ignore all the red flags around.  In text messaging, a person’s thoughts work double time. The time lag between typing the reply and anticipating the other’s response is an occasion for the mind’s eye to see whatever it wishes to see.  Sometimes, the imagination tricks itself into providing a romantic scenario even when there is actually none.   The consciousness of the online chatter is then seduced to enter a narrow passageway wherein the focus of attention starts to become larger than life, more beautiful, intelligent, and full of charm.

Guard your heart.

Are we really perceiving the person we are chatting with?  Or, have we generated a sham individual behind that mobile gadget or desktop? Most of the time, the image formed of the person behind the gadget is but the reflection of the online user. We could have been easily lied to and manipulated.  We could have misinterpreted people because they may have “typed” something and meant something else.

If one is already in a committed relationship, ignore and don’t explore possibilities. For those emotionally available and are looking for love online, the challenge is to reconcile the persons created in our minds with the real persons behind the gadget.

To do this, we need to personally meet them more than a few times. We must unmask them from illusions of our own making or from any deception hovering over their persons. We must have the courage to painfully dissect our own fantasies and bring out what probably is a hurtful reality. The glass bubble may shatter and its shards may pierce our hearts, but the knowledge of accurate facts is comforting.  Only those online relationships with solid connections can withstand the strict scrutiny of truth.

So, to prevent deception from other people and trickery of our own selves in our e-relationships, let truth be our hearts’ guard. Always.

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