Here in India too, virtual dating is fast penetrating real lives. According to online research firm JuxtConsult, it is the tenth most popular pastime among Indian surfers: Last heard, more than half the country’s online urban Indians — nearly 30 million — were into it. Increasingly, more Indians appear restless to return to their inboxes to see if a message from that unseen entrant in their lives awaits them.

The ubiquitous World Wide Web could well be the newest singles’ bar of our times. Romances and relationships are following the rest of our lives to the Web. Call them what you will — banal, clichéd, wild or crass — but chat-room courtships can no longer be downplayed. There is a growing desire to discover that elusive “someone” on the other side of a chat window.

Online dating no longer carries the geeky stigma it once did. It is faster, easier, efficient, and a convenient way of getting-to-know each other sans distractions. As British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes in Liquid Love: “Unlike real relationships, virtual relationships are easy to enter and to exit…They look smart and clean, feel easy to use when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, and messy real stuff.”

However, this is also breeding a dangerous tribe of serial and simultaneous daters. While heartbreaks may not be the bane of online relationships alone, all it takes for one in the virtual world is a succinct text message or a cruel discovery that the paramour is logged in with half-a- dozen other aliases and wooing twice as many love interests. Experts suggest that about one in 15 patients today seeks help for relationship problems stemming from a partner’s pursuit of an illicit online love.

Spurred by the intimacy and anonymity of the virtual world, people are dropping their guard more easily. To boot, non-verbal clues don’t exist here and words are misleading. Love here is blind indeed: It’s more about looking at the other person through glasses tinted with your own fantasies. Thanks to the Internet, infidelity and the temptation to stray stand reinvented today.

“It’s easy to share troubles and get emotional support immediately on the Web,” says Dr Sanjay Chugh, Delhi-based senior consultant psychiatrist and Founder-Chairman, International Institute of Mental Health. It also offers a way to fulfil needs such extramarital relationships, homosexuality or sexual fantasies that are found unacceptable by society, he says.

“Internet chat-rooms are a safe and secretive option in a conservative (read hypocrite) society like ours,” avers Dr Bhavna Barmi, senior clinical psychologist at the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi. “What starts with innocuous flirting and virtual interaction gradually assumes a physical nature, even becoming addictive. There is also the excitement of straying and knowing a new person without having to commit or face consequences.”

Such communication removes all inhibitions and civility, spoils one for choice, and erodes clarity on acceptable behaviour. A study led by Jeffrey Hancock, an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University, has found that online daters usually fib about their appearances: While men systematically overestimate their height, women underestimate their weight. Falling for these can extract heavy tolls in real life. According to Internet crime expert J.A. Hitchcock, it doesn’t take much for seemingly innocuous online flirtations to degenerate into a dangerous web of deceit, jealousy and despair.

Isolated lives and shrinking communities have helped turn the “never-talk-to-strangers” teaching of our childhood on its head in cyberspace, legitimising desperation in the search for ‘company’. “I can afford to be desperate when no one knows who I am,” says Daksha2005, who claims in a popular chat-room to be a 33-year-old “bored housewife”. A 27-year-old “well-travelled, well-read” man, who uses the alias “PassionateHunk1605” and gives his real name as Rohit, says he has just stepped out of a one-year relationship with a girl he met online, but not for him the heartbreak one would expect from people in his situation: “There’s much more for me out here,” he says, alluding to a dating portal’s chat-room where we found him.

Sweetaunty76, who claims to be a 33-year-old single mother, unabashedly admits she has used a friend’s help to craft her online profile. “You must write correct English and reveal just about enough. Besides, you must show good wit,” she lets us in on her secret. Passionatesaint, a 24-year-old collegian, minces no words. “Only those interested in one-night stands may reply,” reads the lead of his ad.

According to Dr Chugh, people who get into this are typically those who have run out of ways, desire and energy to improve their current relationship, which they feel does not meet their need for understanding, love, approval and appreciation. “Most are inexperienced youngsters in their 20s and people in their 40s struggling with midlife crisis and monotony,” adds Dr Barmi. “Loneliness, separation from families for work reasons, and the need for ventilation of fantasies abet this further. Many such people have personality disorders, job dissatisfaction, and substance abuse problems.”

Make no mistake: Even without carnality, online dating is very much an affair, for intimate communication with an outsider — even if it is online — is no less a breach of trust in a real-life relationship.

You could be involved in a cyber affair if you: Spend more than three hours a week talking to an online friend

Cannot wait for the next opportunity to communicate with that friend

Are not comfortable telling your partner about the friend

Chat when no one is around

Make excuses to go online

Hastily exit the chat window if someone walks into the room

Confide in your virtual friend more than your real partner

Discuss your real- life relationship problems with your virtual friend

Behave in an unpredictable manner with your real partner, even to the extent of altogether avoiding your partner

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