ROMANCING THE COMPUTER

By Anastasia Toufexis

THE HEART MAY HAVE ITS REASONS, BUT it also has its places. Romance blooms at Niagara Falls and in Paris in April, on moonlit beaches and before glowing hearths. As Valentine's Day rolls around this week, love is booming in yet another and far less likely spot: cyberspace. Untold thousands are flirting, courting, marrying and even cheating online. Three weeks ago, John Goydan of Bridgewater, New Jersey, sued for divorce from his wife Diane, citing the steamy onscreen affair she had been having with what appeared to be a married man in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Diane's liaison with "The Weasel," as her cyber-Romeo signed his E-mail, may not meet the legal definition of adultery--which implies physical, not virtual, coupling. But there's no doubt that cyberromances, whether licit or not, generate genuine feelings. "This is not the same as reading Playboy," says psychologist Sherry Turkle of M.I.T, author of Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon & Schuster; $25). "There really is another person there, and that person can touch you and move you in various ways, emotionally and sexually."

Can people truly fall in love via modem? What are the psychic rewards and risks of computer-mediated romance?

One advantage of a virtual affair is that it shifts the emphasis in a relationship from outward appearances to inner thoughts and feelings. Result: a quick and intense intimacy. That tends to make women happy. "It forces men to do something they don't normally engage in: communication," says psychologist Al Cooper of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Centre. "You have to communicate to be on the Net."

But is the communication honest? Cyberspace is filled with dissemblers who mask their age and even their sex, usually to enjoy, or avoid, the attention showered on women in chat rooms and bulletin boards. A 43-year-old Bostonian who thought he was having a hot fling with a 23-year-old woman discovered to his dismay that "she" was an 80-year-old man in a Miami nursing home.

Even when people are truthful, online relationships are necessarily limited. "You're only accessing a portion of a person," points out psychologist Michelle Weil of Orange, California. "As people, we need a tactile physical presence to make a complete bond. We need to see their face, see their gestures and smell their breath." Jonathan Steuer, an Internet consultant who lives in San Francisco with a woman he courted by E-mail, agrees: "Finding someone online is great as long as you take it to the face-to-face level and have a real-life relationship too."

Alas, most romances don't survive the move offscreen. A cybersweetheart rarely lives up to the mental image created of him or her. And no wonder, say psychologists, since that image largely reflects the reader's needs and desires rather than the other person's reality.

Claudia Poblete, a secretary in Miami, swore off online love after a correspondent from Indiana flew down for a visit and ended up chasing after her best friend. But her abstention was brief. Next month Poblete plans to meet her latest online suitor at--where else?--Disney World.

--By Anastasia Toufexis. Reported by William Dowell/New York and Tara Weingarten/Los Angeles

With reporting by WILLIAM DOWELL/NEW YORK AND TARA WEINGARTEN/LOS ANGELES