Dating and Saying NO to an Online Partner
by Irina Timchenko
Leave your comments about this article belowAs a relationship counselor working mostly with international couples and families, I often deal with online communication of couples, when two people are separated with huge distance and have to develop their relationship by using all possible modern means of communication - telephones, chats, forums, networking systems, etc. What is the specifics of online communication between couples? How does it feel dating online, confronting and saying NO online? How different is it from real life communication and what are the tips for those who date or who have to say no online? We'll try to answer these questions in this article.
When I was about 16 years old, I was a very attractive girl, and of course, many boys wanted to invite me for a date. Among them, there was a boy who kept calling me all the time, though he was not interesting to me at all. He used to come to my door and wait for hours, trying to catch me when I came in or out. I tried all possible polite ways to stop him from following me, but my words did not work.
Well, one day, when I just came home from school, he knocked on my door, but I decided not to open. I thought he'd left, but after a while I spotted him sitting on a bench near the entrance to my house downstairs and waiting till I come in or out. I grew angry at him, and at that moment a thought of saying NO without meeting him personally came to my mind. What I did was this. I took an old white sheet and a lipstick; I wrote across the sheet in huge letters "Sasha, I am NOT at home" and hang this sheet down from my balcony so that no one could fail to see it. The boy disappeared and never bothered me again after this.
Well, was it too cruel? Was it too stupid? I don't know. But it worked. In that particular situation, a way to say no without looking into the person's eyes proved to be the only efficient way.
Since that time, I had to witness how relationship partners say NO to each other via email, in chats, in forums, and via other ways of distance communication, hundreds of time. People do it in all possible ways. Some do it just in a few words on the other person's «wall»; others compose long letters and paste them in a chat or a forum, others discuss their situation with a community of online supporters, and some just typechat one-in-one till they come to a logical conclusion. All these acts of communication can be regarded just as self-expression techniques that can equally work for us or against us, depending on our personalities and the particular situation in a relationship.
Are there any common features that characterize situations of online/distance communication versus the face-to-face ones? Yes, there are a few differences. First of all, any communication process is characterized by a complex set of linguistic and extralinguistic means of self-expression. When we communicate (confront) face to face, we can use mimics and body language; we can communicate very quickly and expressively by using vast vocabulary of conversational language. Moreover, we can easily control the reactions of our communication partner by being able to see this person all the time.
In online communication (confrontation), the worst things that slow down (or even break) the dialog are:
- inability to see each other during the communication (confrontation) process (this means lack of control over your partner's reactions);
- inability to use full range of linguistic techniques (in typechat, for example, we always have to select good words to put our thought in a short but clear way, and emotional talk does not work as well in writing as it would work in voice communication);
- inability to use extralinguistic techniques - mimics, gestures, body language etc;
- necessity to control the while typing process, analyze it quickly but to be delayed by the need to type everything, which is always slower than talking;
- necessity to adjust to having to read/analyze remarks of the partner and to take time for writing responses, which often breaks the concentration, and affects the emotional exchange between the partners.
Remember scenes of confrontation between couples in movies. They always start it in the same room, facing each other directly. They grow emotionally hot, then there is a remark that causes a burst of emotion, and one of the two partners leaves the room. The other may follow, but quite often he/she doesn't, and there is a short exchange of very expressive phrases across the wall. The partners distance from each other, to cool down a little, for in emotional stress they begin to lose ability to think logically; their memory is blocked and the arguments which had been thought over beforehand do not come to mind. After a few moments, the two confronting personalities come up close to each other again and continue the dialog face to face.
This is a typical scheme of saying NO in many words to each other. Unlike face-to-face confrontation partners, the distanced communicators do not have the "pleasure" of following this emotional dynamics; and the whole scene flows in a much calmer environment. Probably, this is one of the main reasons why saying NO in distance confrontation more commonly happens in fewer words and in shorter scenes. More commonly, the most powerful ways in typechatting or written communication are these-
- attempts of logical explanation;
- convincing;
- providing proofs, facts even figures to stress on one's opinion;
- using all possible means of extralinguistic online communication (smilies, drawings, widely accepted shortenings, abbreviations and symbols, etc);
- using stylistically marked words/phrases;
- appealing to expert's opinions or using widely known citations;
- and even quitting the chat abruptly to demonstrate offended feelings.
The most widely used way of saying NO to a distanced partner remains the same old method that was used by our ancestors - by just writing a goodbye letter to the partner. In modern life, the letter is simply emailed to the partner; but some people prefer to surfacemail it, and some even send it hand-written.
Well, the most difficult part is to develop universal howto tips which would work for all people. I think for those who confront in writing via typechat (this is the highest level of complexity in saying no online) there are just a few:
- saying no firmly supposes doing it shortly. Avoid typing long phrases.
- try to wait till the partner finishes typing his/her remark and write yours only when you have read everything that the partner has typed. Try not to allow situations when there are many replies to your phrase, and you have no time to respond to all of them. If this happens, respond only to ONE of the statements, not to all of them. If your partner wants to stress on a different thing, he/she will repeat the remark again.
- Just as in real-life communication, it is good to keep control of the situation and lead the dialog a little. Try to remain calm and type only the phrases which you thought over well. It is so easy to produce a wrong impression or to be misunderstood.
- try to avoid using idioms or phrases which have double meaning. Again, they may be misinterpreted and lead the dialog away from the main topic.
- Avoid driving away from the main point that you want to deliver. The easiest way to do this is to select a keyword that you want to stress on, and try to use it in each remark that you type. Sentences that do not contain this word, may drive you both away from the main idea of the discussion.
- if you can make the whole discussion short, do it. What's the use of discussing things that have come to a dead end? If you are firm in your decision about saying NO to our partner, just say it and go.
- If you still feel that you are not ready to the final NO, then this is a different story. Do not hint that you are going to say NO, and do not "play" with such statements.
Most of these recommendations may also be given to those who communicate in real life, but in a situation of exchange between two distanced confronting individuals, these rules acquire more importance than any other techniques.
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