Virtual relationships: types, pros and cons, expert advice

Our world is becoming more and more virtual. The Internet has become a place of recreation and entertainment, work, a means of communication with distant friends and completely unknown people, a second wallet, and even a place for virtual dates. Disputes and jokes on the topic of virtual love and its consequences/prospects do not subside.

Does such love have a future? What are the dangers? And why do many of us look for love on the Internet?

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Love on the Internet - what is it?

Information and technological progress has brought not only a huge number of conveniences and advantages, but also created new difficulties. One of them is virtual relationships at a distance. For many, ordinary correspondence with the opposite sex is nothing more than just another fun that will go away on its own. For others, in particular girls, this is a chance to meet the one. However, most often such relationships end in heartbreak and low self-esteem.

Virtual relationships usually take place through correspondence: people exchange messages on social networks, on dating sites or chat rooms. Particularly brave potential lovers can communicate via Skype.

Often virtual communication displaces real communication. The person is gradually drawn into communication through the monitor. Therefore, the natural need to talk to someone disappears on its own.

Play with me

“About 10% of the Internet audience is constantly on one of the dating services,” says Sergey Sigitov, former director of product at Mamba and co-founder of the Muslim dating service MyDiaspora. — And the number of users of online dating will only grow: during crises, people want to delve deeper into the emotional sphere, compensating for their experiences. During the previous crisis in 2008, Mamba itself was growing, with both the number of users and the length of sessions increasing.”

The Tinder app has over 50 million users worldwide. According to rough estimates of the experts surveyed, the number of its Russian users is about 200 thousand. Of course, this figure cannot be compared with the flock of such Russian giants as Mamba (21 million registered users), LovePlanet (19 million) or Badoo (approximately 20 million), but, unlike them, Tinder has taken online dating out of the category of an awkward activity for those who are desperate, into the socially approved practice that your friend resorts to.

Probably the main difference between Tinder and other dating services is that it has turned the search for a cute person into a fun game: in accordance with the search categories, the application displays a set of photos, among which it is as if you have to guess the one who will also like you. And only if the likes coincide, a window for correspondence will open - or you will be asked to scroll through people further. This is called “continue the game.”

“On Tinder, there are several categories of people who are shown to you,” Sergey Sigitov explains this mechanic. — Those who like you are necessarily added at intervals to the same session (a session is called each user’s entry into the application. — Ed.). People like beautiful people more. Those who are liked more are automatically shown more often.”

According to the Tinder users I interviewed, you quickly get hooked on this “game.” “Online dating is a real addiction. Every night I finished reading the book and promised myself that I would go to sleep,” says Lilia (marketing specialist, 31 years old). “Instead, I picked up the phone and looked: well, what kind of new men are there?”

“Addictiveness (the ability to cause dependence. - Ed.) is one of the most important parameters of services such as Tinder,” confirms Sergey Sigitov. — You can click on other people’s photos endlessly. In general, people are on dating sites not for dating, but for emotions: 30% of users do not meet anyone at all, they only correspond.”

But fundamentally, Tinder, according to experts, is no different from other online dating sites. “Tinder, first of all, has very competent PR, but otherwise I don’t see any distinctive mechanisms,” says Andrey Sas, a consultant for dating services. — As for the game of “like/dislike” (flipping a photo to the right or left depending on whether the person depicted on it is attractive or not. - Ed.), then the logic of the display is complex, and it is oriented to ensure that the maximum number of people receive mutual sympathy. Some services even claim that they can use user responses to show, for example, blond girls to those who more often say “yes” to blondes.”

“On Tinder, in order to speed up the process, guys like everyone , so a girl of average appearance, liking almost any guy, gets a “match””

Most dating sites (Mamba, Badoo, LovePlanet) are a set of profiles that are displayed in accordance with specified parameters (age, gender, geographic location) or based on the principle of matching answers to questions in a psychological questionnaire (OkCupid, eDarling).

“If we are talking about dating sites with profiles, then there is no special principle for recruiting people,” adds Andrey Sas. — Each user’s profile gradually moves down in the results as newcomers register and appear at the top. Most dating sites have a paid service that allows you to get back to the top of the results.”

“Now there is dissatisfaction with Tinder: girls complain that guys don’t write to them,” adds Sergey Sigitov. — The fact is that on Tinder, in order to speed up the process, guys like everyone in general, so a girl of average appearance, liking almost any guy, gets a “match” (from the English “match” - coincidence of likes. - Ed. ). The guy, seeing that some “Natalya, 23 years old” of average appearance liked him, simply closes her profile.”

The young people I interviewed who use Tinder actually admit that they often use this tactic: “I had a self-deprecating period when I swiped everyone to the right, to guess your “number” based on the response swipes,” admits Timur (head of the IT department, 29 years old). “The Americans have something like a rating on the marriage market - a hotness scale from 1 to 10: scary, normal, hot, ultra-hot, find.”

At the same time, girls like only those they really like, and quickly become disappointed when they do not receive messages from people with whom they supposedly like each other. “After a couple of months of being on Tinder and having collected more than a hundred men who liked my photos and were silent, without showing much initiative, I deleted the application and started meeting people in person: in traffic jams, at work, on a walk in Bitsevsky Park and on airplanes. This is much more interesting,” says Marina (university employee, 30 years old).

Competitors have taken advantage of this shortcoming of Tinder, so the next generation of online dating are the so-called on-demand services (Clover, Whim, Pure and HowAboutWe), which are highly functional: they are invented only to set up real meetings with those who already agrees to come to them.

“People have begun to value their time and be attentive to how and what it is spent on, especially online,” explains Roman Sidorenko, creator of Pure, an application for anonymously searching for a sexual partner. “I created Pure because at some point I realized that the amount of time I had to spend on online dating greatly exceeded the time spent communicating offline.”

Virtual love and relationships: what's the difference?

Each of us needs love, we have an innate need to love and be loved. Moreover, this need is manifested in recognition, approval, respect and complete acceptance. When a person is in love, he is happy, fulfilled and full of strength and energy. Therefore, if a person does not find love in real life, he looks for it on the Internet.

Virtual love and virtual relationships are almost the same concepts. Love on the Internet is a far-fetched fact that is based on fantasy, imagination and the idea of a partner. Moreover, these ideas may absolutely not correspond to a real person. Therefore, people often get upset when meeting a virtual partner in life. The far-fetched does not coincide with reality. Moreover, the fact of unjustified expectations is manifested from appearance to demeanor and character. For example, “ugh, she’s not as beautiful as in the photo” or “he turned out to be so unsightly.”

Virtual relationships are communication between people in which they do not see each other, do not touch and do not perform any actions towards each other. However, they conditionally consider themselves a couple. They reinforce their “love” with emoticons with kisses, compliments and wishes of “good morning” and “good night”.

Virtual love is a kind of mind game. Playing at love, a person does not see, does not hear, does not understand what is happening around him, in real life. Moreover, he can talk about himself for days. It is not a fact that what is told will be true.

It is very rare that virtual lovers meet in reality.

Both virtual relationships and virtual love begin as quickly as they end quickly. Especially after a real meeting.

What are virtual relationships on the Internet?

Love on the Internet brings different emotions. Let's consider the main types of relationships on the Internet, which are easily determined by the fact of correspondence:

Random. Two people met by chance on the Internet: they liked the photos on their avatar, for example. Moreover, casual communication can smoothly retrain into “virtual love.” Communication is free, without a specific goal, but soon the person begins to realize that he has found his person. For example, life goals, positions, feelings converged. Sometimes a chance meeting on the Internet ends not only with great love in reality, but also with marriage.
Epistolary. The epistolary genre cannot be said to be outdated. It just changed its form somewhat: the letter turned into messages on the Internet. Previously, the epistolary genre was called a novel in letters. Today, almost nothing has changed. Usually married men resort to epistolary relationships, women less often. The reason is a boring life, in particular family life. Such a “verbal” game usually proceeds with an exchange of pleasantries, flirting and ends. However, in rare cases, an epistolary novel can weave suffering, passion, and even a vow of eternal love. In both cases, epistolary love ends after realizing the meaninglessness of relationships on the Internet. Moreover, there is no need to start a relationship in reality.
Mental relationships arise due to the search for a partner with whom you can have a heart-to-heart talk and talk it out. Chats and forums are an ideal platform for these purposes. This form of love is reminiscent of communication on a train. Two strangers talk about painful things, and when they leave the carriage they will never see each other again. So it is with the mental form of relationships. It usually doesn’t come to a meeting in real life.
Intimate relationships begin on the Internet due to a person’s sexual need. Moreover, the goal is to find a partner for self-satisfaction. Recently this phenomenon has become widespread. In this way, people emotionally break up their monotonous lives without resorting to physical infidelity.
Regular relationships on the Internet are dictated by one goal: to find a soul mate. When during correspondence people feel that they are suitable for each other, then in reality the relationship continues. Moreover, such relationships often end in a wedding and a happy family life.

choose me

The medieval French philosopher Jean Buridan, commenting on Aristotle's Ethics, was skeptical about the thesis of the existence of rational freedom of choice. In his opinion, if it were, the choice would be constantly slowed down by the assessment of its results, and it would be completely impossible to choose from identical options. They say that in support of his argument, Buridan cited an anecdote about a donkey, which will endlessly be tormented by a choice, standing in front of two identical haystacks. Since the times of Aristotle and Buridan, everything has become somewhat more complicated: we live in a world with open access to an infinite number of these same haystacks.

Psychologist and author of the book “The Paradox of Choice: Why “More” Means “Less”,” Barry Schwartz went to war for the seemingly holy conquest of the market economy and the capitalist production system - freedom of choice. According to him, never before has a person had to make as many decisions as he has to make today. Which yogurt should I buy? Where to have dinner? When to have children? Which bank should I take my pension to? This, according to him, greatly harms us: firstly, endless choice is paralyzing - people try to put off difficult choices until later. Secondly, the greater the choice, the greater the disappointment in case of dissatisfaction with it, because, having chosen, we still keep in mind all the missed opportunities. Thirdly, with an endless number of options, our expectations are steadily rising: if we spent so much time choosing jeans, then they must be at least perfect. So Schwartz's recipe for happiness is simple: lower your expectations and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Barry Schwartz's theory is well suited for analyzing the marriage market, which has greatly changed its contours thanks to the Internet: an infinite number of potential marriage partners have become available to us - both those who go to the next Starbucks, and those with whom we live on different continents or belong to different social circles. “The Internet suddenly showed men that beauties with model looks were available to them, and women that her loved one could be not only Vasily from next door, but also some oligarch,” explains Sergei Sigitov. “And it takes time for people to understand that this is still difficult to achieve.”

I’m 31 years old, and I keep thinking: why should I get married? My mother is already yelling at me: “How many can you choose?”

“Yes, thanks to the Internet, dating has become easier, and dating resources have become endless. This has never happened before,” says Grigory Asmolov, doctoral student at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics (LSE). “An infinite resource, in principle, implies an infinite search: if the market expands, then there is a constant need to check whether there are better products on it.”

“To be honest, I’m against Tinder: it terribly corrupts the already corrupted modern mind,” says Liliya (marketer, 31 years old). - Too many beautiful, fashionable, good, sexy. And when you travel, there are no boundaries before you: a man will write to you from any part of the world, and you can go to visit him. I myself am a product of this corruption: I am 31 years old, and I keep thinking: why should I get married? My mom is already yelling at me: “How many can you choose?”

Zhanna Tikhonova, director of development at eDarling, a “dating site for serious relationships,” believes that online dating is not to blame: “I don’t agree that dating sites corrupt. Rather, everyone is different, and modern technology dumps diversity on us that we may not have wanted to know about, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” “I am not close to the approach according to which the Internet is viewed as an enemy guilty of the moral decay of society,” says Grigory Asmolov. “The difficulty of choice has always been there: the paradox of Buridan’s donkey did not appear in the days of the Internet.”

However, the problem is that each of us wants to have a choice, but few people think that by taking part in it, we agree to simultaneously be the objects of someone else's choice.

“Online dating in general greatly changes the approach to relationships: they kill the uniqueness of a partner,” says Andrey (financial consultant, 29 years old). “In ten minutes you can look through hundreds of completely different girls, but in real life it would take a year. At first it seems like stupidity, but then the thought of alternatives is constantly present in your head. There is not even a desire to fight, to overcome, because you know: there is an endless stream on the site, and therefore you jump off at the first jamb. There could be any problem: she didn’t come when he called, she didn’t go to the cinema, she calls a lot, she calls a little. What’s also scary is the stupid women who fall on you with love on the second date.”

Marina (university employee, 30 years old) also agrees with Andrey: “When you like 10–20 people a day, then what the hell is uniqueness here? We are all becoming replaceable." “When a person - no matter whether a man or a woman - has the opportunity to meet and start relationships with millions of other people without leaving his chair, and sometimes even correspond with several dozen potential partners at once, the uniqueness and value of each such relationship individually tends to zero,” - confirms the feelings of Marina and Valeria Aginskaya, sexologist, program director of the Secrets Sex Education Center.

In this reduction in the uniqueness of each individual relationship, some users of online dating even manage to see their advantages: “You know for sure that you will find someone else, you don’t have to try to stay with one person,” says Anton (PhD in Philology, 28 years old). “On the other hand, if you get rejected, it won’t hurt you as much anymore: there are always 49 backup options in the area.”

Virtual relationships: psychology

Building a relationship between a woman and a man implies certain principles. Virtual relationships are based on the following basics:

the peculiarity of communication is formed on experience, temperament, upbringing and social environment;
in psychology, the basis of communication between the opposite sex is equality, which gives the right to conduct a dialogue;
the individuality of each person.

Why do people meet online? This phenomenon is rather a consequence of our modern life. Nowadays, many young people are passionate about building a career and making money. They work hard. Therefore, there is practically no time left for relaxation and meeting people in a club, at parties, exhibitions or restaurants. Other people often have complexes because of their imagined shortcomings, so they are afraid to meet someone in real life. They feel much bolder in their comfort zone: at home in front of the monitor.

On the Internet, anyone can become some kind of superhero, successful businessman, top beauty or model. These are the masks that you can try on, and you won’t get anything for it. In fact, such people in life turn out to be cowardly, unsociable and complex.

Trick me

Another unpleasant aspect of the penetration of the Internet and social networks into our lives is that even if a person gets married, he does not leave the marriage market. He is still available for new acquaintances. And hardly anyone knows what percentage of divorces occur annually due to fault.

“Thanks to the Internet, we have gained access to absolutely everyone, and the problem of relationships now is that they need to be built on an emotional level, and not at the level of social obligations (children, mortgage), says Sergei Sigitov. “Approximately 75% of those who are already in a relationship would potentially not mind changing their partner: I conducted such a survey among my friends, which is why every fourth online dating user is married.” “There are a lot of colleagues, acquaintances and partners on Tinder - married and with many children. At some point, I even started collecting a gallery of screenshots of Russian top managers who appeared in the application,” notes Marina (30 years old).

The realization that your loved one is still available for romantic advances does not add peace to family life. “How not to be jealous if you have a handsome man? — Lilia (31 years old) is indignant. “I’m even afraid to think how you can live with your husband on watch all the time: has he downloaded the app?” Isn’t he “bopping” girls there?”

What is the danger?

Building love online can have its consequences. First of all, addiction. People are so captivated by the fact of correspondence that they are completely immersed in the virtual world. Moreover, without embarrassment, a person introduces himself as anyone, says anything, without being responsible for his words.

The problem of communicating on the Internet is due to the fact that people here find friends and love, hiding from loneliness in real life. However, problems in life are not solved in this way, but rather get worse. It is more difficult for a person who is addicted to communication on the Internet to contact people in the future. Gradually this habit becomes dull. It is quite difficult to get out of this web on your own. Many people resort to the help of a psychologist.

The main problems of communication on the Internet:

Self-identification. A person chooses a specific role for himself, putting on a comfortable mask. At the same time, the contrived role gradually turns into a habit. A person loses his individuality.
Addiction. Problems, complexes, failures - all these components lead a person to online communication. At the same time, in real life they only get worse, and the desire to be “online” increases. In other words, a person leaves, hides from his real problems. You can compare this phenomenon with a debtor who hides from creditors because of debts.
Habit of deception. Yes, virtuality allows for lies and embellishment of one’s biography.

Gradually, lying becomes a habit and “migrates” into real life.

Good earnings7

Nowadays, unemployment has become a real problem. If employment is really bad, but you want to eat, why not try yourself in the virtual world? You can earn really good money there, which factory workers can’t even dream of. Providing sexual services online is not considered prostitution, it is simply communication. Yes, during this communication you need to satisfy a complete stranger, but you don’t even need to touch him.

Advantages:

High paying job.
Complete safety (there is very little chance of meeting people you know; you cannot get infected, get injured, or run into a maniac).
You work and have fun.
There is no need to go to your tired office early in the morning.

Minuses:

It's difficult to overcome yourself mentally.
Irregular working hours.

Despite the shortcomings, there are already hundreds of men and women around the world working in this field.

Why do men like virtual love?

The answer is more than specific: lack of communication in life. Why does a man need virtual relationships? Many men say they are perfecting their flirting practice. Moreover, it is predominantly married men who choose this method of strengthening their skills.

On a psychological level, men do not regard flirting in correspondence as cheating. For them, this is nothing more than entertainment, which can be compared to their favorite computer game “Tanks”.

According to statistics, about 26% of all men over the age of 30 choose virtual relationships. Many of them practice virtual sex and completely refuse to start relationships in reality.

Why do men love virtual relationships? Because there are no obligations. Taking responsibility is difficult. Men “save” themselves from the ordinariness of family life. And on the Internet they take turns putting on masks: today - an insidious seducer, tomorrow - a tempting serpent. However, unfortunately, not a single mask gets along in reality with such a “mask-wearing” man.

Psychologists say that men like virtual communication because of its mystery. They like to think out the image of a girl, fill her with personal expectations and fantasies. In a kind of mental way, a man himself makes his ideal out of a woman by correspondence. This is the kind of woman he lacks in real life.

However, most often such relationships do not end in anything. It is difficult for a man to match his chosen “mask” in reality. Moreover, in life you also often lack the courage to meet a girl.

Pros of relationships on the World Wide Web

Of course, not everything is as bad as it might seem. There are also significant advantages to virtual love:

the opportunity to communicate without leaving home, in a comfortable environment;
you can carefully consider the answer to a difficult question;
the opportunity to demonstrate your best side;
conflict can be avoided;
no need to dress up and think through an image for little things;
you can meet different interesting people;
you can share your problems.

Of course, anyone can expand this list.

Cons of virtual love

Not everything is so rosy. There are also significant disadvantages that can easily overshadow the advantages. So, the disadvantages of building love on the Internet:

fear of meeting and not being disappointed in real life after active correspondence;
addiction appears;
the difficulty of matching the far-fetched image that was shown to the interlocutor in correspondence;
attachment to a person, and when the virtual relationship ends, mental discomfort and suffering appears.

The most important disadvantage of virtual love is the loss of the skill of “live” real communication.

Rules of communication on the Internet

Virtual relationships involve interesting communication. You can't go anywhere without this. So, to establish contact, you need to follow these rules:

Don't respond to banal messages with a smiley face or "Hello." Reply to long, complete messages.
Finding the golden mean will help you answer questions correctly. For example, you should not answer too briefly or too long. You can answer the question without starting “from the fifth kilometer” and telling the details of your biography. Otherwise, your interlocutor will become bored with you.
Obsession repels a woman. Therefore, men, if a woman has not responded to the first two messages from you, it means that she does not want to communicate with you.
If you really like the interlocutor, then you should not write about your feelings in the first message. This will scare you. You should not talk about intimate topics with an unfamiliar interlocutor if he did not initiate the discussion of this topic.
Women love with their ears. Correctly given compliments have never harmed anyone. At the same time, you need to give a compliment unobtrusively, carefully, without flattery.

The main rule in virtual communication is to be sincere. Just as you are!

Bored of sex with a regular partner5

It happens that no matter what kind of sex you have with your loved one, it doesn’t suit you and gets boring. The husband or wife begins to feel discomfort, they want to try something new, but there is no desire to change.

It is always very difficult to imagine yourself in the arms of another person when you have your own, beloved and only one. What to do in such a situation? You need to think carefully about experimenting online. If you know what virtuality is, then it is easy to understand that it will not be treason as such.

The person on the other side of the screen is real, but he only warms you up, tunes you to a certain wave, and suggests something. He doesn’t touch you with his hands, not to mention other parts of the body, so virt simply cannot be called cheating, it’s self-satisfaction (and who hasn’t dabbled in this at least once?).

So, how to get free sex on the Internet? You can surf social networks by typing virtual in the search bar. It’s better to find sites that specialize in providing virtual pleasure for money. Why? More on this a little later. And all that remains is to choose a partner, pay the application, and wait for the long-awaited online date.

Advantages:

No one cheats on anyone, but at the same time they try sex with someone other than their regular partner.
You add variety to your sex life, while being completely safe for both health and the well-being of family relationships.
No one will know that you tried virtuality, but real betrayal is very difficult to hide.
Perhaps virtual sex will teach you something new, and you will be able to indicate to your partner what points you need to influence in order to get satisfaction.

Flaws:

It can be difficult to overcome embarrassment and personal moral principles.
Virt can drag on, and regular sexual intercourse will no longer be satisfying, so you shouldn’t use it too much.
It is difficult to find time for such a pastime, especially for family people. After all, you need to make sure that your spouse doesn’t find out, so it’s also worth clearing the search engine history.

In general, virtual is a good option for everyone who does not want to cheat, but also wants to get new sensations.

Tips for guys

Banal messages like “Hello! How are you? What are you doing?" are a thing of the past. It's become a cliche. And in general: why should a girl answer a guy she doesn’t know well how she’s doing and what she’s doing?

A guy should interest a girl from the first proposal. So, some advice from psychologists:

Be playful, optimistic and humorous.
Don't bombard the girl with messages.
Show interest in her field of activity or hobby. She should feel that you are interested in her.
Be the initiator of communication.
Keep things interesting to talk about.
Communicate culturally and do not take long for her to see respect from you.

The main thing is respect. You can be culturally insolent. The key word is “cultural”.

Is it necessary to move from virtual to real?

It all depends on your moral readiness and the purpose of communication. Sometimes it is better not to move from the virtual world to the real one. However, if the desire to meet in life is mutual, then why should you resist? If your wishes do not come true, then let it be a lesson. As they say, it is better to do something and regret it than not to do it and also regret it.

You should not have high hopes for a meeting in reality. Often people become just good friends. Often the first meeting in life becomes the last. The interlocutor does not have to meet your expectations, just as you do not have to meet his.

Virtual relationships are all about experience: whether good or not depends on the situation. However, this experience is priceless. It’s better to meet a person in life and chat. In this case, you can consider it. What if, indeed, this person is the one you’ve been looking for for so long?!

surprise me

As much as we love new acquaintances and new followers on Facebook, our ability to remember the faces and circumstances of other people's lives and feel empathy for them is limited. Anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar, studying primates and the influence of the group on individual brain development, came to the conclusion that a person, like his ancestors, is able to maintain emotional connections with no more than 150 people. This is the average population of a prehistoric village.

“Now we are in a situation of regular communication with a very large number of people,” says Alexey (art director, 34 years old). “The blurring of your social circle puts you in a situation where you are unable to feel emotions towards everyone you know.”

As a result - again, according to the theory of Barry Schwartz - the requirements for a potential partner who claims to be included in a limited number of emotionally close people are steadily growing: “What scares me away from all these dating is that they look for a man there like a dog, in terms of parameters. Not a person, but a thing,” says Yuri (law firm employee, 32 years old). “And it’s not for nothing that they say that when you’re over thirty, dating in Moscow begins to resemble interviews.” They ask me about my social status, income, apartments, cars, whether I have a mortgage. No one needs me as a person, I am needed as a social unit: a potential husband, breadwinner, father - but I don’t agree to that. And I gave up all this junk: it’s better to look for a normal woman at some lectures on architecture.”

Potential partners already on the first date intend to get the maximum pleasure from him: “When the girls found out where I work, some funny scam began against posh restaurants: “Let’s go see how Komm is doing!”” Timur (head of IT) is surprised -divisions, 29 years old). In such a situation, a potential partner no longer has the right to make a mistake: “A “flipping effect” is created, which is put into practice: you didn’t like something, and you immediately “skip” the person,” says Lilia (marketing expert, 31 years old).

“The more personal experience, the more difficult it is to fall in love, because people are able to experience love only when they are able to be surprised,” explains Sergei Sigitov. “With the acquisition of personal experience, people begin to treat potential partners more calmly: “Well, you have a Mercedes, so what?”

But despite the disappointments that online dating and one-time dates bring every now and then, many Internet users are again and again ready to meet new people on the Internet and hope for a miracle. This paradox can be attributed to the so-called “Coolidge effect” - the exciting effect of novelty.

The fact that everything will be different with the next partner is a fairy tale delusion.

In the 1950s, American psychologists conducted the following experiment: a male rat was placed in a large closed box with four or five female rats who were in heat. The male immediately began to mate with all the rats again and again until he was completely exhausted. Even though the females continued to poke and lick him to continue, he did not respond. But when a new female was placed in the box, he still found the strength to mate with her. The same effect, but to a lesser extent, is present in females. However, for the “Coolidge effect” to occur, a person must value novelty and have enough courage to seek it.

Experts say that we are attracted to new acquaintances, no matter what, simply because we tend to idealize strangers. “Relationships in the Internet space are characterized by a large number of illusions: online we communicate with our ideal projections, thinking up a partner to our ideal,” says archetypal analyst Liliya Chetverikova. “When the relationship develops, we begin to see each other completely, unpleasantly surprised, although this is where real relationships begin with real people, and not with fantasies. Couples who meet in a normal environment have fewer illusions about each other.”

Let's be honest: the dating market sells you the dream that your ideal partner lives out there somewhere, with whom everything will finally work out, but whom you simply have not met yet. But psychologists are skeptical about this belief. “Not all young people grow up with the understanding that no one has prepared an ideal partner for them: everyone has their own views on life, habits with which they come into relationships,” explains systemic family therapist, junior researcher at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, Alena Golzitskaya. — Looking for someone who will meet expectations 100% is a waste of time. If you break off a relationship at the first opportunity and go looking for the next partner, then you can choose for a very long time and not decide.”

“The fact that everything will be different with the next partner is a fabulous delusion,” says relationship consultant Irina Kolesnik. — It is impossible to change something if your behavior and thinking patterns remain the same. The Internet simply revealed this problem: before, in order to understand that you had a certain pattern in relationships, you had to go through ten stories, but now in a year you can understand what kind of relationships you attract.”