Love at first sight? No, but through an extensive amount of time online talking to a guy, it slowly developed. The long distance online relationship that I had falls under Wallace’s attraction factors. My junior year of high school, I met this guy through a mutual friend during winter break. We had only met twice then he went back to school in
Since I did not really remember what he looked like physically, I started to develop feelings for him through our almost daily conversations online. This goes along with one of Wallace’s factors of attraction, physical attractiveness. Because I found his personality appealing/attractive, I felt that physically he was becoming more and more appealing, which is what Wallace is claiming.
Another factor that played a significant role in this CMC relationship is the proximity aspect that Wallace also addresses. Wallace states that online familiarity flows from intersection of frequency, which I agree with in the fact that because I spoke several hours a day with this guy on AIM daily, if felt as if we were getting to know each other very quickly.
On top of proximity, we had a lot in common. Through conversing with each other, we figured out many mutual friends as well as commonalities in our lifestyles such as similar family backgrounds, similar churches/beliefs, and the same major. All these factors contributed to establishing a common ground, which Wallace also addresses as a factor of attraction.
All these factors contributed to the continuation and development of this long distance online relationship. I thought it was strange at first because I had only met him a couple times in person, but felt as if he were my best friend because of the frequency and the degree of information we shared with one another. I definitely agree with Wallace in that because we spoke so frequently, the attraction had increased quickly as well as having common ground in which in base conversations on and feel as sense of connection with one another.
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1 comment:
Grace, your story about this guy is really cool and it is wonderful that you were able to hold a friendship online. My friend at home tried to have an online relationship but it didn’t really work out for him. Your explanation of the three Wallace factors was really good and your story exemplified it pretty well. You can also me a prime example of Wallace’s fourth factor, disinhibition, which is increased self-disclosure in relational development. You said that you were surprised by the ‘frequency and the degree of information we shared with one another’, and this is due to disinhibition. The closer you got to this guy, the more information you shared with him and the more you started liking him.
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