Cyberfriends

I met my husband online. We both kept blogs, and one day he found mine, was tricked somehow into thinking that I sounded cool, and contacted me by text. We kept in touch over the next few years by texting, calling, and using video services like Skype and Google+. I first saw his face over the internet. His psychologist told him that I didn't count as a real friend, which neither of us understood: his analysis wasn't compatible with the close connection we had established between us over days and weeks and months of our ongoing conversation. You know the end of the story already: we met in person, kept flying out to spend time together, and eventually decided to make this superhero team-up a permanent act: Generalized Anxiety Disorder Boy and Schizotypal Personality Disorder Girl, together forever.

Technology has given us many new avenues to make and keep friends, and as that technology provides more ways to access people it gets the chance to be the main connection between them instead of just a supplement to in-person interaction. There's an online component to my closest friendship that both I and my friend are able to participate in more easily, with our busy schedules, than an in-person relationship, and both she and I really appreciate the way our modern gadgets let us have that in our lives.

I really do think that online friendships can be just as real and fulfilling as in-person ones, and I think the ability to connect with someone who really understands and shares your life experiences despite the distance between you is valuable. It's been especially valuable for me during my struggle with mental illness, physical illness, and sensory difficulties, since I can text, call, or otherwise get a hold of friends without costing myself the energy it would take to meet in person.

I know people will disagree with me. Conversation about the value of cyberfriends tends to focus on their downsides. "Quit poking at your phone and talk to the people around you," is the kind of sentiment repeated over and over. Never mind that the intimate conversation you can have with a close friend over text could be more meaningful than a cursory hello to a stranger. Where someone may see the back of a phone, someone else sees a screen full of access to a kindred soul, a bff, a confidant. A phone can be a portal to many friends, all of them available at the touch of a screen.

And screens can provide many different kinds of interaction. While Jack and I were separated by several states, we could write to each other by text, carry on conversation by phone, share pictures of us and our surroundings, send each other music, and play co-op video games together. He knew me better after all of this than many of the people I knew in person: there's a reason we got married.

There is value to stepping outside of your comfort zone, value in talking to new people, and value in trying to find common ground with strangers; this isn't to dismiss any of that. It's to say that friendships begun or conducted through technology have just as much potential to be great relationships as those conducted in person. It's the effort that both parties invest in the relationship that makes a friendship meaningful, and technology has lots of opportunities for that kind of investment. Dismissing online friendships helps no one. Validating the support and companionship that can be offered between cyberfriends, however, makes a kitten smile. And you wouldn't want a kitten to go without a smile, would you?

#onlinerelationships #AdventureTime