LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

In our increasingly inter-connected world, people are finding love everywhere. Relationships forming over the Internet, in chat rooms, via emails, and even through online gaming are not uncommon anymore. But the reality with online love is that you're no closer together than what your new found relationship might suggest. And if you're pining after someone whom you'll never meet, let alone ever be sure reciprocates your feelings fully (or at all), sometimes you need to accept that things are just not going to work out and that it's time to move on. However, it's not easy to just stop loving someone no matter how you fell in love. Here are a few pointers on how to end a long-distance relationship with someone you'll never meet and how to move on with your life.

STEP

• Examine whether you really love this person Internet relationships can often be a surrogate for a real life lack of love or certainty in your existing relationships, and may in fact only be infatuation. If you have fallen into a habit of thinking that no one will be attracted to you or that no one in your town or city is available, an Internet relationship can be an easy substitute for dealing with personal issues; online love interests are low-maintenance, sometimes glorified by omitting to reveal the real self, and can be fairly safe with respect to avoiding being heartbroken (some online relationships can carry on for years and years without facing the realities). Indeed, online love can often assume a large role in meeting your need for feeling accepted, especially if you're unhappy, feeling alone or alienated, or hoping for better things beyond where you are now. As a result, it's important to test your feelings thoroughly to find out whether you really love this person or you're just afraid you won't find love elsewhere in your life and are using this online love relationship to fill a gap in your life. Some things to ask yourself include:


• Do I prefer online time over real life time? This can be a dead giveaway as to how you feel about your life in general.


• Do I feel that this person is the only person who is genuine and real in my life, despite there being people around me in my real life that I could be interacting with more?


• Does this feel thrilling because it's secret, it's easy to control (switching off the computer screen is easier than switching off from a person in front of you), and I can share really deep thoughts with this person that I cannot do in real life? The thrill and seeming depth of an online relationship can cause you to elevate it above real life relationships.


• Analyze whether you’re actually ever going to meet the online person you feel you love Although Internet and long-distance relationships may seem impossible at first, even to the people in the relationship themselves, this alone cannot stop people from meeting. Internet relationships being unfeasible is a thing of the past and some people do connect successfully in real life after having an online relationship. In other words, if you have reasons stacked up against the two of you ever meeting, then one or both of you is probably not taking it seriously enough to ever follow it through to the natural consequence of meeting. Things to examine that could impact whether you ever meet or not include:


• Location - If you are in the same country, there is still a high chance it will work out, barring other circumstances. However, if you are on opposite ends of the world, then your chances will probably be very low of ever seeing this person. And if you are in the same country but haven't yet made arrangements to meet up, perhaps it's never going to happen.


• Income and means - If you both have a low income or still live at home with relatives or cannot leave your job, then this can all impact negatively on your chances of ever meeting and forming a life together.


• False emotions - Again, relationships such as these can confuse the lines of infatuation and love all too easily. Do not kid yourself any longer.


• Emotional affair - this is an unfortunate situation to be in, when one or both of you are married or in a dating relationship but you're carrying on an online "emotional affair". Even if you're never found out, this is a damaging relationship for both of you and will often not result in meeting up but can cause harm all the same through being disloyal to real life partners and preventing you from mending the things that aren't right in your real life relationship.


• Current situations - Jobs, personal demands, and even being on the front line or in prison can all be situations which are difficult to extract yourself from, for obvious reasons. If you or the one you love is in a constraining situation, then it will surely hinder your chances or efforts to meet.


• Consider all of these aspects of your relationship, emotions and lives. If you think that is it is still feasible, then by all means you should at least form a plan to meet. However, if like you originally suspected, you're never going to meet the other person, then you need to accept the inevitable, take actions to end the relationship, and move on.


• End the relationship You need to talk or communicate to the person that you know you are never going to meet and explain that you want to end the relationship. Chances are, they will have been feeling the same way about not meeting. End it exactly the same way as you would a normal, in-person relationship, and expect similar heartache to arise, too. Ending the relationship means ceasing all romantic and emotional interactions (and possibly all contact) with the person and making it a clean break without getting into a heated argument. It really is important to take all the same steps as you would with a real-life relationship - block all contact and don't assume you can be friends!


• Get closure. The key is to make sure that both of you know that there is no chance ever again, no matter how hard it will be for a while, and that things are not going to work out. If you still feel like you love the person, try to gain closure from within and tell yourself a few things which will ease your fears:


• Internet relationships are hard because of all the "What ifs...?". What if you don't find anyone else? What if they really are 'the one'? What if it could have worked out? What if they lied about everything they said? What if you had met them—would it have been different?Just remember that if someone who never met you could feel so strongly about you and you could feel so strongly about them, then someone else you can meet with face-to-face will be able to do this too.


• If meeting the person really isn't a possibility, then it's nobody's fault. Internet and long-distance relationships are difficult, and engaging in one is commendable in itself. However, the odds are against you, and you both have to be in a similar place of mind to make one work successfully.


• Relationships are hard, even in real life. If you were having doubts or struggling with a relationship over the Internet, be thankful that you've saved yourself the trouble of having those problems doubled in real life. Situations change when you meet someone, and quite often not for the better. You can never know what would've happened if you had met in real life, so leave your fears, doubts and "What ifs...?" behind. It's time to move on with your life and love and start healing yourself.


• Just be thankful you didn't even have to meet the person. If things had gone wrong, as implied by the difficulty of meeting, then knowing the person in real life would make it harder to get over them. You really need to just forget all about them. Even if it sounds cruel, you need to forget they ever existed. If you really both loved each other, then you'll want each other to be happy. If you can't satisfy the relationship's needs by meeting, then you know it's for the best that you go your separate ways.


• "If you love someone set them free" is a good saying to remember at this point. You will soon feel much better about ending the relationship if you know it will be making the other person happy and you'll feel more invigorated knowing that the other person would want you to be happy also.


• Take it down as experience. If you let the situation consume you then you will never get over the person. Take it down as experience and it'll let you know that, not only was everything not lost and that it was actually a worthy venture, but also that there is a life after this person. Whether you've learned that you can be loved, that your personality is relationship-worthy or that long-distance relationships are just plain hard sometimes, the important thing is to not let the whole situation be a wasted experience.


• Talk all your fears and thoughts out with someone you can trust to give you good, sound advice. Discuss your feelings with someone who can tell you what you need to hear rather than what you want to hear. Whatever you do, do not send or communicate your fears and thoughts to the person you broke up with, since this will only prolong the process of healing from the breakup. It may lead to you resenting them, loving them again, or feeling hopeless.


• Refrain from falling into a similar situation again. Do not be fool yourself into starting another relationship with someone else on the Internet. Lingering feelings from the last relationship will likely skew your perspective of the new one, hurting your chances of the new relationship succeeding. Initiating a new Internet or long-distance relationship will only hurt you more in the long-run. Avoid flirting or even thinking romantically about people online. If necessary, stop using the Internet for a while to prevent opportunities for falling into a similarly difficult relationship; you deserve better than that.


• Get back out into the real world with physical, real-life relationships. In cases like this, there is no better saying than "There are plenty of fish in the sea". You already know someone could love you; aren't you excited that someone similar could be in your country, city, or even suburb? There are so many experiences and relationships to have that you shouldn't feel a need to focus all of your energy and attention on someone whom you probably won't ever meet in person. Think of the good times you can have together without the added pressures of first finding a way to meet each other. So go out with your friends, pick up a hobby and work on yourself. Remember, a confident, happy person doing what they enjoy is someone desirable, so when that special person comes along, you'll have forgotten all about the problems from your previous relationship.