For those of you who may be wondering, there is a new class of Haves and Have Nots in the world: Those who have or do not have...a life online.

For the uninitiated or unaddicted, a life online means you have friends/lover(s)/ s or even business in cyberspace. Let's do business another time. For now, let's talk about the fun stuff, the women's hangouts.

If you have much of a life online, and you have non-online friends (what a concept), there may be a conflict already. If you have a lover/partner IRT [in real time] and a sweetie or close friends online, you are more than likely in or about to be in big trouble. Especially if the IRT folks and the cyberfolks do not care much for each other.

Online relationships have an intensity and at times a seductiveness that is unparalleled in 3D, unless, of course, you have just fallen in love. Okay, some would call it addiction. So in the spirit of scholarly endeavor, this being a high class publication, it would be well to examine the psychology of these involvements. Because sooner or later more of you than not will experience them.

Lets consider this on three levels: friendship, flirting, and romance. But before we get to the lurid details, let's see what they all have in common, i.e. that this whole scenario is done without visual cues.

Now, IRT, those of us who are sighted make split second judgments upon meeting other people. We notice their gender, ethnicity, age, size, perceived similarities and dissimilarities. Sometimes we have instant opinions about whether the other person is attractive/unattractive, good/bad, interesting/boring, etc. We use our senses of sight, smell, hearing, and of course then we filter it through the psychological baggage we all carry around.

This is not necessarily a great system, but it's what most of us use for starters. The wisest among us will reserve further judgment until something more illuminating comes out of human interaction -- say, kindness, character, intelligence, and/or talent. Some, of course, don't bother taking that kind of time out of their day.

In cyberspace, all that's available is the written word. It is a medium in which the verbally gifted have a decided early advantage. Those who are less fortunate, however, still have plenty of chances to join the action and ultimately they have as much opportunity to display their character and talents as anyone else.

In the most benevolent psychological sense, it is a gold mine. To be able to be who you are without worrying that someone will like or dislike you because you are too fat or thin, old or young, is something most of us value. Of course if you've always been able to get by on looks without much to shore it up, this could be a problem. And of course, online relationships don't always work out to be what we would like. Let us not, however, digress.

There is something about the screen that gives the illusion of trustworthiness. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant. In the early research on psychological tests taken on the computer, it was demonstrated that people are more honest in that medium than taking the same test in a room by themselves with pencil and paper. Go figure.

Is it because the monitor does not scowl at your comments? Does not talk back or criticize? Does not catch you in your untruths? Or because it has an on/off switch that gives us the ultimate control?

Whatever it is, it affords many an ease in talking, relating, that is not available in 3D. This is even easier than airport intimacy -- you know, where total strangers tell you their life stories, including their worst transgressions, before you can get from Denver to Kansas City. And you know they feel a lot better for it.

Unless one has a laser-beam focus on a specific interest, say chess, one is looking for the same things online that one looks for in 3D: a safe place, acceptance, the "space" to feel comfortable and be who you really are. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of all is that online affords a feeling of community--a community that often is missing for most people today. If you live in the gay/ / , and moreso if you live in a small town or in an isolated/closeted profession, the online community is a godsend. Where else can you find several million like-minded people?

Continue with Part II of Cyberpals/Cyberlove

Dr. Pearse is licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Denver. Reprinted with permission from Circles: Celebrating Colorado's Lesbian Community, Volume 1 Number 1.