ABSTRACT
This chapter explores many different aspects of love and romance to see how they play out in the online world. Most people recognize love when they feel it, but no fully agreed upon psychological explanation of what love is exists. A more cynical approach to love involves the concept of social commerce. The emotion-centered approach views love as a combined answer to several different human needs. By focusing on the interpretation of physical excitement, the physiology approach asserts that essentially love is just the explanation we provide for an otherwise unexplained sense of physical arousal. The online lover can be reachable everywhere, anytime, so that the couple feel constantly together. The web offers many different environments in which love and intimacy can be explored. The Internet, meanwhile, has come to provide many tools besides text, including video chats in which the couple can speak to and see one another.
