Assign. 5 Opt. 1

I have a boyfriend whom I see only during the two summer months of June and August. The rest of the year he attends the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and I am here in Ithaca at Cornell. During the summer we reside together in New Jersey where we are both from and met during our high school years. Our relationship since then has become one in which we rely highly on technology to communicate with each other, especially the internet. William being a year older than I am, started dating me three weeks before he graduated from high school and then after a great summer together he went off to college and I remained at home for my senior year of high school. Since then we have remained together through the bumps and bruises of a long-distance relationship. Therefore, I feel like I have experienced a variation of an online relationship over the past two years with Will.

Will and I were both recruited by our respective schools to row on the varsity team. This is how we initially met in high school because we were on the same club team but did not attend the same high school. Additionally, we have similar religious views and come from families with similar economic status. We both come from 3 sibling families with a mother and a father and have been taught the same values for education and much more by our parents. Additionally we both go to Ivy League schools where we enjoy living active lifestyles in rowing and outside of our sport. We both share a portion of Dutch heritage in our blood and are often told that we "look cute" together with our similar features; including our blonde hair, blue eyes, tall height, and athletic body types. I could go on but I think you get the point.

All of these things that I mentioned and much more have been discussed over the years in depth between us mainly over the internet. Because of our busy schedules we do not have time to spend hours on the phone with each other but will often multi-task online and talk to each other through AIM (spontaneous) or through facebook. We share a lot of the same friends. The rowing community that we entered into, each on our own accord, in high school generated a lot of friends on other teams, other schools and the general competition was a small world where people got to know each other over time. Thus, we each know people that row for each others teams that we did not necessarily meet through our relationship together. From there we also, know each others team mates from visits and regattas. All of these intertwined shared relationships come together on the internet spaces especially on facebook. I know all of his good friends and can relate to him about them because we all row and visa-versa. On facebook we are in many of the same groups and on AIM we talk to many of the same people. My point being that we share a thing called common ground. This is a communications term is also known as the Law of Attraction. Will and I are clearly drawn to each other because of all of the interests, friends, ideas, and attitudes that we share together. Even though most of these times we do not converse about these things face to face the psychological spaces on the internet allow us to do so. In almost all psychological spaces that I access on a regular basis (AIM, facebook, and email) I almost always am communicating with him. Our common ground is most of the time expressed this way rather than FtF.

Another attraction factor that Wallace discusses other than the common ground factor is the physical attraction factor. This idea states that because people are less inclined to judge people by their appearance on the internet because they have less access to their others' looks that there is a better chance people will get to know each other on a personality and interests basis rather than a physical one to start out. Now I do realize that Will and I began our relationship offline however when we had to make the adjustment to an online relationship soon after we started dating I feel like we got to know each other in much different ways that completely removed the physical aspect and really forced us to look at each other on a deeper level. For example we quickly had to decide what we valued most in a relationship, physical contact versus intimate emotional communication because we were really going to be limited in our ability to see each other because of our busy school and sports schedules. After developing our intimate emotional communication relationship we realized from this that we really did want to stay together and sacrifice the FtF aspect of our relationship because we came across so many things that we loved about each other online where there was no physical aspect. Therefore, I definitely agree with Wallace's ideas on physical attraction being that online is very different in that it "pulls the rug out from under our tendency to rely on good looks in interpersonal attraction". (Wallace, 138)