“Grey Zone: that unspoken sphere that arises in haze where the games take place between men and women.”
Pascal Bruckner

Love: that longing after another, which in cyber romance accordingly is the multidimensional interference points of virtual individuals expanding universe at the speed of light. The problem is that if we should find the perfect partner in cyber space our desires are fulfilled merely on the level of ideals.  We must be satisfied with the image that the medium allows to create to suit our desires without a form.  In a relationship such as this the honeymoon passes without reservations yet without consummation while discovering new, even perverse characteristics of our partner.  To make it simpler, we don't even have to share living space with anyone and in the cyber world there is no HIV virus.

Darling, your monitor has a cold glare today, have I offended you?  Would you like me to immediately log out of your life?  You've picked up some cheap cyber tramp again?  May fatal error strike your damned server!

If this or lines like it appear on your monitor chances are it means, as in real life, that romance is at an end.  On the net things hardly ever get this far, because partners make the mistake of meeting in person over a cup of coffee or something of that sort, and then never again ANYWHERE!  Assuming of the physical body can be a very disappointing experience.

Cyber romance can be abnormally wonderful only if we never actualize ourselves to the potential partner.  Adding only to the sad charm of post modernism, perhaps new-relativism that seems close to Werther’s type of chewing one's own tail sentimentality, a dangerous mind altering method of the post-gutenberg era.  This assistance allows us to make a break and completely get away from reality, if there is such a thing at all.  To fall in love and remain so for a lifetime to an individual wrapped in mystical haze represented by the symbols on the monitor, who may not be a blond cyber demon at all but a curious, fiftyish  psychologist with a hairy chest and a few fetishes.

The net is a painfully ideal medium to escalate the mysteries of undiscoverable personalities to infinity.  This mystery is part of the light and shadow play of love in the real world but the e-mail is far more adept at perpetuating this.  Between each SEND and REPLY one can work out the tactics of the virtual personality and those not so experienced may read pointers from Anderson.  You can take this artificial picture and press it into cyber time.  If someone is flirting simultaneously they can multiply their personality on the spot.  The only danger of this among the more emotional is, that they end up believing that the virtual presentation is who they really are.  This leads to a complete split in personalities and the unfortunate, frustrated soul may throw himself into the system until all of the servers in the world freeze.

How does a real cyber romance begin that only reality put an end to?  Whatever the answer to that question, we know that it will NOT start if any of the following appear on the screen by e-mail or in chat:

You've only one flaw, baby, I don't see your thigh?
Or
Are you also chatting from your home telephone?  In that case, stay a while….
Or
We're right on track mama, I'm inspired by conspiracy.

As a matter of fact, a relationship could begin in any of those ways, but it is not the beginning of cyber romance.  Let's see how we can best emphasize the phantom:
….I've searched for you on Alta Vista and….now I've found you
or
it happened, I'm here and when you responded my heart skipped a beat…Perhaps a more imaginative one: I've a monitor shape, 101 fingers, 20 SGA 1280*1024 stereo 16 bite ears and a brain equipped with dual Pentium 180.  The rest of my body parts are in a tower case box currently playing with my mouse.  I'm only in touch with spring through the meteorology server.

When you've finally succeeded in catching your loved one on-line:
Are you really here?  I can't believe it, let me sniff the monitor for a while.  I’ll get a scent card and then I’ll have a RealSmell server….

Subject lines could prove to be fatal attraction where the would-be Cyber-Romeo or Cyber-Juliet may begin to rejoice once the mail is downloaded.  The utmost of thoughtfulness may be the cyber-galery, which due to the picture size uses a large memory portion of the machine.  This way you may send 10-20 of these out of virtual revenge to anyone you don't like so that they mail slows to a virtual stop.

Naturally, cyber love is also similar to real love in that once we become familiar with the characters of the loved one, the desire for new challenges appears and new underlying feelings.  Times like these the more romantic sort will archive all the letters of the loved one, those with a cooler head, while shedding an acidic tear will send it into DEL oblivion.  The more frivolous will keep all of the residue from the simultaneous flirts, developing virtual harems since there is little chance of being caught and even so, the machine is not loaded.

For the purposes of keeping this specific gray zone even darker, we could neglect answering the e-mail of the other for weeks until they will chaotically wonder in the frightening labyrinths of the net searching for their cyber love, knocking on the doors of all net sources while the idealized (because love's non-democratic character holds valid in cyber space as well) is occupied with something entirely different in this world that to them is not only home but is a linear, sunny, comfortable place.