Relationship Advice
Setting The Stage For Love - Internet Relationships Part One
By Kay Hutchinson CAMQ, CAMT
Apr 21, 2008

Is it possible to find the love of your life on the internet? Certainly.

You can increase your odds of finding love by being mindful of the following tips.

Create Mutuality

Mutuality involves creating an exchange of like energy.

Often times, the skills that people have with expressing mutuality in email reveals the interaction style that they might exhibit in person.

Ultimately, most people prefer to interact with others where mutual effort is present.

For instance, mutuality occurs if a man writes a lengthy response to an online profile and the other person responds with an email of similar length and depth.

If the other person responds with a one-liner, it does not reflect mutual effort and may indirectly communicate lack of interest, unless that reply is framed with "I'm sorry I don't have time to reply in length, but I just wanted to make sure I replied in a timely manner."

Mutuality also extends to pacing of the interactions.

People who develop love after meeting online often express mutual consideration in extending patience and low pressure in terms of progressing to phone calls or in-person meetings.

There is a sense of setting mutual boundaries around safety and comfort levels such that when they finally meet in person, the experience is relaxed and natural.

Match the Medium to Your Personal Strengths

People who develop love and long term relationships after meeting online tend to be people who feel an affinity for communicating in written format via email or chat.

When they meet in person, they build from the rich exchange that occurred online.

Sometimes people say, "I'm just not an email or online chat person so don't feel like writing more than one liners. I want to date online but not spend time emailing."

If that sounds like you, it may be more helpful to meet people off line and use your strengths of communicating verbally to learn about others and share more about yourself.

After all, one of the benefits of online dating is that creates a process of getting to know someone safely over the space of emails and chat before taking the next step to meet a stranger face-to-face.

Read part two of this article for further strategies for finding love on the net.