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One-on-One Relationships

While online groups can be very valuable, the greater intimacy and honesty that occurs in one-on-one relationships may be especially helpful in your exploring your issue. As you meet people online, think about whom you may want to contact privately via e-mail or instant messaging - perhaps people in the groups you join. Try to connect with several people. Ideally they will be people who are familiar in some way with your issue. Some relationships may "click" and others may not. That's OK. You can learn from both. Some people may not reply to your attempt to connect to them. That's OK too. It happens online. Read that article below about "black hole experiences."

In some cases you may simply "hang out" with these companions and casually talk with them about the issue, or other things not necessarily related to the issue. In other cases, you may decide to do a more formal interview, but be sure to consult with me first before doing that. Whether your relationship to that person is brief or longer term, casual or formal, take notes about what happens and what the relationship is like for you.

Store the conversation: If you're emailing a person, use your email program to set up a separate folder or mailbox for each person's mail and create a "filter" that will automatically direct his/her incoming mail to that folder. Also store your own messages to that person in that folder or mailbox. You may have to move your messages from the outbox to this folder or mailbox. This creates a kind of "room" for your conversation with that person, so you can go back and reread those messages. It's an "archive" of your relationship.... If you are using chat or instant messaging, see if you can find a way to save those coversations and store them in a folder. Some programs have this feature.

Compared to face-to-face relationships, online relationships are unique in many respects. There are pros and cons. Be sure to read these articles from The Psychology of Cyberspace that describe how online and offline relationships compare. Understanding online relationships of all shapes and sizes will be an important aspect of your project.

- The online disinhibition effect
- The black hole of cyberspace
- Identity managment in cyberspace
- E-mail communication and relationships
- Transference among people online
- The Final Showdown Between In-Person and Cyberspace Relationships

As with online groups, be honest in your online relationships. It's OK to let them know about your independent study project. If you do a formal interview with the person, you must first get informed consent. Be sure to contact me first about this. Otherwise, your goal is NOT to "study" the other person, but rather to learn something about yourself and your issue from that person. When you mention a person in your final paper, never mention real names or any information that could identify them. Create a pseudonym for each person, perhaps one that is meaningful to you in some way, that captures something that you think is important about that person. Think about these questions, and write about them in your final paper for this project:

- Why do you think you chose the people you did for creating one-on-one relationships?
- What strikes you as important about their personalities?
- What did you like and dislike about those relationships?
- If you've never seen or heard this person, what do you imagine they look like? Or their voice?
- What do you imagine their life is like, their home, work, family, things they didn't tell you about?
- Who do these people remind you of in your own life?
- In some ways might you be misperceiving them... imagining what they are like based on your own expectations, feelings, or wishes?


Your Relationship with Me

One of the people you'll be connecting with online and offline is me. What was it like for you to do that? Do I seem different online as compared to in-person? Was there any particular event or communication between us that stands out in your mind? How come?


Exercises! Try this out and describe the results in your progress reports and final paper.

Reviewing the relationship: If you've been communicating via email with someone for awhile, go back and look through all the messages you have saved in your archive for that person. Look at the titles for the messages. Do those titles capture something about your relationship with that person? Have there been any interesting patterns or trends? Reread some of those old messages. By doing that, can you gain some new insights or a different perspective on your relationship with that person?

Imagining the Person: If there are people you get to know pretty well online, but have never met themin person, try this exercise. Think about that person. Reread some of your conversations with him/her. Then close your eyes and try to get a picture of what you think that person looks like, sounds like, his/her body language, home surroundings? What do you see, hear, feel? Even if you only get brief glimpses into these things, it may tell you something about how you are subconsciously imagining what this person is like. When you try to imagine the person, do other people that you know pop into mind? Perhaps this person online reminds you of that person.

Hearing your voice: After you compose an email message to someone that seems interesting or important to you, read it outloud to yourself. Try to read it in different ways, with different tones of voice, maybe even melodramatically. Then read the message silently. Is the message capturing the emphasis and feeling that you originally intended?