housekeeping items:
1) magnificent charles, with the assistance of intriguing sara linked me to tertia. tres cool. thank you!
2) there is no new president.
3) andreah – is there an email address to contact you at? i keep trying, but your link comes up a blank screen and i am told your blog cannot be displayed.
X O X O X O X O X O X O
here’s another aspect to yesterday’s blog.
when your cyber relationships begin to infringe on your “other” relationships, do you need to pull back?
i have on occasion, chosen not to go out with friends because i want and need to catch up with my on line friends. when i explained this to a friend, she was shocked.
online friends are not real friends.
does physical proximity mean the person is by default, a better friend?
just because the above mentioned person can hear and see you cry, does that mean they will offer wiser, better and sager advise, or even better, no advise but a listening shoulder?
online friends are like harvey the rabbit, you can make them be anything you want. just choose the topic (ie:infertility, weight loss support, online bridge club, cancer support) and you have support in that area.
is this a bad thing?
issues that affect me are thankfully issues that do not affect the majority of my physical friends. i don’t have a close friend, or even an acquaintance who has epilepsy. before we went public with our infertility issues, i only knew two friends with similar issues. getting support in that area is good, because chances are your “Group” can’t afford you much sympathy (just relax and it will happen!!!) and your like issued friends can also educate you, something i like friends to do all the time. whether by example or by sharing something they read in their local newspaper.
online “issue oriented” friends make you a drama addict
your website got the most hits when carys was closest to dying. everyone loves a drama.
or maybe the people praying wanted updates? the friends who had supported us from clinical conception to emergency c-section? yes, issues, particularly health oriented ones do have dramas, days of test results or procedures in particular. does living amongst these highs and lows make us drama addicts? i can’t say i am bored when i get on line, read a blog or a thread and see that no one is having a test, change in medication, blood level come back today. or dang it, that tertia is still pregnant.
it isn’t like a real friendship, where one missaid word or tone lingers and can hurt, irretreivably alter the friendship. you get to type, edit and then post, and even then you can edit. that’s not natural.
i named my firstborn daughter sela, which, among other things, means pause and reflect.
i wish more people did think before they speak. lived by bambi’s “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say nothing at all”. i try to think before i speak. online posting has helped me there, and i am grateful. i admit, my words sound better after edited, but does that mean i should stop doing it because it wasn’t the first sentence that jumped out of my mouth?
the reason you are so close to these women is because you haven’t met them, or spent any time with them
possibly. or maybe it will be like friendships you have with kids you went to first grade with. you’ve known them for so long, and have so much dirt on them, (ie: head lice, puking in the sink in grade three) and have so many shared experiences, you can forgive their political leanings, their clothes, their musical tastes, you can look past all that to the person they are. and not be afraid or disdainful. i think it is wonderful.
or maybe they can’t be classified as friends because i am so completely honest with them? how many of us have that luxury with our physicla friends, when conversations tend to include other people, opinions on how husbands acted, well, do you think he was drinking too much?
i would love your feedback on this one ladies. (and gentlemen).
or should i say, FRIENDS.
xo
Reader interactions
10 Replies to “cyberFRIENDS or codependents?”
Oh DUH!!! I had myname and the Andreah part mixed around. it should be fixed now. My blog is password protected so I emailed you the name and password. Derr ralph.
Anyways I thnk you are right on the button with the online friends. We know so many persoanl details of the blogs we read. I know it’s much easier for me to write about and express a personal issue like constipation, pubic hair or the love for my baby to complete strangers than to express it in speech in real life or over the phone to people I have known for years.
Maybe it’s the anonymity that makes it easier. Even if you make the big step to phone calls or even meeting your internet friends its still easier because there was a method of how you came to read their blogs anyways. An instant connection you may say. Sometimes it takes years to develop a friendship and still may not have a whole lot of experiences in common. In blogging it’s like match-making. I search or get recommendations to peoples blogs that I have in common or just find interesting and I go from there.
And I can do it while at work!
A friendship in r/l doesn’t fall to the side when you move necessarily does it? So why would a cyberfriend be any less a friend because she/he isn’t close at hand? Sure there are some friends that you lose with a move, but not all of them.
A friend is someone who will tell you the truth, encourage you, support you, sometimes vindicate you, catch you when you are falling, make you laugh, make you smile, let you cry, let you rant or whine, and still come back for more of all of the above even when you may have overextended your welcome.
I, for one, do not like a lot of drama. When a cyber friend is having a “rough patch” I’m not going to the blog or email for more drama in my life. My life has plenty of drama. I’m up to my eyeballs in drama. I go “visiting” online because I want to lend my support, and help as best I can with words of caring, or to bring a much needed smile (to them or to me!).
I also think that it is far easier to be closest to my real self online than it is in person. I can have my hair a mess, a pile of laundry on the floor to get done, dishes in the sink, a husband wanting my attention, and my cyber friends are still there for me. They can put up with it because they don’t see it. I don’t have to race around and pull my life together, or use my “phone voice” when I get a call.
I can be, simply, *ME* with my cyber friends. Maybe it is what Andreah wrote, the anonymity, that breaks down the walls. And the fact that we gravitate to places in cyberspace where our experiences are understood because they are similar in some way.
I for one, am glad that you take the time from r/l to write to your cyber friends!
Mom
Interesting theme here… you and Dad are an internet romance. Okay I am going back to watching Nemo and sipping my apple juice.
Love Seb
My cyber support is really the only thing that has kept me out of the loony-bin. I cannot talk about IF and loss in real life -no one in my ‘circle’ has any experience of these things – and even when they are good people who care about you, they still stay the wrong thing and it hurts. I can’t form the words to try an explain things – it is exhausting to try – I appreciate the fact that in cyberspace people get it without explanation.
I checked your website more when Carys was very ill; not because I like drama – a life free from drama would be perfect – but because I cared.
I like my cyberfriends because I know where they stand on issues that are important to me. I don’t have time to follow up with r/l friends who aren’t having the same problems as I am. I can’t stand in the middle of Bank St. with a sigh saying “Hey suffering from secondary infertility? Wanna be my friend?” Doesn’t work that way. I don’t like ALL people who blog; I read about there lives and if they have a interesting writing style, intelligent commentary or life experiences similar to mine then maybe we can be friends.
Now I have to go back to my dark cave and cry.
Great post.
I think there is something about the anonymity that at first makes it easier to spill your guts and tell a stranger things you can’t fathom telling other friends, relatives, etc. But then you get to know each other’s stories. You get involved because close proximity or not, you CARE. I’ve never met Tertia and based on our situations, I’ll probably never get the chance to…..ditto with all my other friends in the cyber world, blogging, support groups, etc etc. It doesn’t mean that I don’t pray for them, their babies, their successes and journeys. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t been there for me more times than I can count.
I’ve written about stuff that’s happened between my mom and me. Heavy stuff that I don’t tell a lot of people who know me in real life, because WHO has an easy time admitting their mom is a psycho. And yet, I can blog about it and get the support I need.
Who is a better friend….the one that lives across town that doesn’t know the whole story or the friend who supports me because I feel comfortable telling her?
I started my blog because I needed an outlet and I wanted to get in the habit of writing. I got both, but I also ended up with an amazing network. WOW.
So what if sometimes all we have in common is what we’re going through? In college one of my dearest friends shared ONE major thing in common with me. The same floor in the dorm. But we were there for each other. We talked through tears, made each other laugh, reassured each other and ate chocolate. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. What’s wrong with it if I send you reassurance through a comment or email instead of in person? Nothing.
First I want to say, I love reading your weblog. Second, I believe whether you see a person or not does not make a difference on how close you are to them. For instance, I have three boys, two boys that I take care of everyday of my life and one in heaven, but I feel close to all three.
I’m from Mississippi and around here you do not hear much about infertility and preemie babies. I need the support that my cyber friends give me. My dh thought I was crazy at first but now he knows that my cyber friends are the best thing that has happen to me since we first tried to get pregnant.
I love hearing everyone’s good news and I cry for their bad. I need my cyber friends to talk to just to make it through the day. My family and phsyical friends see what I am going through but they have no clue. Like someone else said, they say the wrong things and end up hurting you.
Are online friends real friends??? YES
excellent and insightful feedback, ladies, you’ve given my stance new dimension and angles. thank you. for so much.
xo
i think everyone said everything i was going to say, but i wanted to add a bit of historical perspective. i started “VAXing” in high school. this is using the VAX computers that the university had (okay, i wasn’t technically allowed, but like that has ever stopped me), primarily for social purposes in my case. an entire culture was built around the VAX, and friendships formed, were broken, people dated (okay, a LOT of people), some married, some probably divorced by now, there were social gatherings (VAX parties, bowling leagues, pool leagues, etc), and now even a reunion is being planned. there were also bbs’s (bulletin board systems). these were all generally local as you had to be a student to get a VAX account (and the student accounts didn’t get direct access to the Internet or Bitnet), bbs’s were dial-up, and mostly local. i joined all this in the late 80’s. i’m sure this social forum has been around since the early 80’s, although it was probably initially restricted to the die-hard computer geeks.
these people all had the opportunity to come in contact, initially anonymously if needed, frequently meet in person eventually, and form friendships thanks to, not insulated by, the computers. the fact that we all had the opportunity to meet in person is only due to the fact that back in The Day(tm) most computer groups were restricted to local users. i don’t see distance created by the modern Internet to change the relationships much, just make it harder to get together in person eventually. i don’t see how this is any different from two people being brought together and becoming friends by joining the same sports team, bridge club, going to the same school, or signing up for a pen pal (remember those?). and using the computers for this has been going on for a lot longer than people realize. distance simply makes it harder to get drunk together.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce