The purpose of this study was to examine what online romantic partners experience, and how their experiences compare with those of online couples. Our first goal was to develop a typology of turning points for online romantic relationships and to compare these turning point types with those generated for offline romantic relationships. Overall, it was found that the categories originally proposed by Baxter and Bullis (1986) were relevant to both online and offline groups in this study. Two new categories, First Face-to-Face Meeting and Significant Change in Media, also emerged from this sample.

There were three significant differences in turning point frequencies between the online and offline groups. First, First Face-to-Face Meeting was mentioned almost exclusively by the online group. This suggests that as, Hypothesis 2 proposed, this type of event makes up an important turning point category for online relational partners. It can be posited that the reason for this importance is that the first face-to-face (FtF) meeting embodies the symbolic final step in the gradual process of "coming out of the electronic closet" proposed by Walther (1998). This symbolic step seemed to hold important psychological significance to the relational partners. One participant commented, for instance, that simply deciding to meet FtF indicated that "there was some sort of potential." Another commented that her partner’s act of buying a plane ticket for their first FtF meeting made them be "absolutely sure this was what [they] wanted because of the emotional risk and financial costs involved."

First FtF meeting may also be important because this is the initial introduction of full shared existence, the ultimate blending between online and offline social worlds. A participant noted, as he anticipated his first FtF meeting with his significant other, that they "had gotten to know each other inside, but how compatible were they on the outside?" Another rejoiced when she discovered that she and her partner were "compatible in person too." Still another said that his commitment went up upon the discovery that there was "chemistry" in the relationship.

It is important to note that while only one offline participant mentioned her first FtF meeting, we cannot conclude based upon this data that first FtF meeting is not important for the offline group. For the offline participants, first FtF meetings occurred during their first interaction, and in this study, first interactions were not considered turning points as such and participants were not able to describe these events.

The second significant difference in turning point frequencies between online and offline groups was that online participants mentioned Significant Shifts in Media/Exchange of Personal Information twelve times as often as the offline group. This shows that, as Hypothesis 1 states, such events are important to the online romantic partners. In fact, because of the large between-group difference in the frequency with which these events were mentioned, we speculate that shifts in media are more significant to online partners than offline partners. This may be because in online relationships, shifts in media represent significant increases in the number of channels (e.g., vocal, visual) through which a person is able to gain information about his or her partner, whereas for offline partners, there are no such channel increases. We may also speculate based on this information that there is perhaps a sense that for offline relationships, shifts in media (e.g., first phone call) are expected events, whereas for online relationships, it is not necessarily presumed that the relationship will migrate to other forms of communication.

Finally, the online group mentioned the turning point type Exclusivity significantly less than the offline group. One explanation for this difference might be that online relationships are simply less exclusive, perhaps because it is more acceptable to have multiple concurrent romantic relationships online. The finding that online partners did report having significantly more concurrent romantic relationships supports this conjecture. However, this explanation seems to contradict another finding: that online partners often did mention Serious Commitment turning points, some of which assume exclusivity (e.g. engagement and marriage). Another slightly different explanation for the infrequent mention of the Exclusivity category amongst online romantic participants might be that people tend to be unwilling to make exclusivity decisions without meeting FtF. However, this does not match the finding that a majority (59.2%) of the online partners did eventually meet FtF, nor does this concur with the fact that online partners also reported making serious commitment decisions, which might be considered as more "serious" and life-changing than exclusivity. A third explanation might be that the online group was significantly older than the offline sample. Perhaps the notion of exclusivity in dating is less important to the older age group. However, in Bullis, et al.’s (1993) study of turning points in an over-25 sample, no such finding was reported. The reasons for this difference in prevalence of exclusivity turning points remains unclear, but we can conclude that for whatever reason, though online relationships were on average either reported to be more committed or just as committed as offline relationships throughout the 36 months explored in this study, exclusive dating does not seem to be as important a concept to online romantic partners as to offline romantic partners in general.

Hypothesis 1 proposed that Significant Change in Media/Exchange of Personal Info would be an important turning point category and would be related with a large commitment change for online partners. Hypothesis 2 further stated that First Face-to-Face Meeting would be the most important and lead to the largest change in commitment. These hypotheses were not supported. While both turning point categories appeared to be relatively important to online participants, (Significant Change in Media was the sixth most frequently mentioned turning point type, and First Face-to-Face was the third), Significant Change in Media was not as highly ranked as anticipated, and First Face-to-Face was not ranked first. However, the differences between the top three frequencies were extremely small (total of only 6 mentions separated First Face-to-face from Get to Know Time, that was ranked first). In addition, for the two most commonly discussed categories, Get to Know Time and Passion, multiple occurrence within the same relationship is possible, while on the other hand, a person can only meet another for the first time once.

In addition, First Face-to-Face and Significant Change in Media were not related with large commitment changes as anticipated. First Face-to-Face turning points did not lead to the largest commitment changes, as was hypothesized, but were only ranked sixth, and Significant Change in Media turning points were ranked ninth. In addition, the average levels of commitment change related to these categories were not significantly different from those of any other turning point types. This general similarity in relation is comparable to the results reported in Baxter and Bullis (1986), who found that though positive events were related to significantly different commitment changes than negative events, there were no significant differences within the positive and negative groups. These unanticipated small commitment changes may be due to the fact that by the time decisions to change media or to meet face-to-face are made, commitment levels in online relationships are perhaps already so high that they cannot go much higher. Instead, such turning points may just confirm existing high levels of commitment levels. This proposal seems to match the finding that though Serious Commitment events such as marriage and moving in together are commonly seen as necessitating very high levels of commitment, they actually were not related with large commitment level changes (this category was ranked only thirteenth for relation with commitment change). Perhaps for such events too, commitment levels are already so high that by the time the events occur, commitment cannot increase much further.

In such cases where commitment levels are already very high, there is a long way to fall. Cooper and Sportolari (1997), for example, proposed that first FtF meetings would trigger the "bust" in the "boom and bust" pattern to which they suggest, online romances are prone. In this sample, however, first FtF meetings generally were related with increases in commitment. Then again, it is noted that only intact romantic relationships were studied here. It is possible that those online relational partners who did experience the "boom and bust" effect experienced it so strongly that their relationships completely dissolved, leaving the partners ineligible to participate in this study.

Finally, the relatively small commitment changes triggered by the First Face-to-Face Meeting and Significant Shifts in Media categories seem to indicate that these turning points are just like any other and are not experienced as particularly intense. It is posited that just because these two categories represent unique turning points for online romantic partners does not mean that they are important to the exclusion of other turning points. Other more "traditional" events did not cease to be important to online relational partners just as they are to FtF partners. This appears to emphasize Parks and Floyd’s (1996) and Parks and Roberts’ (1998) findings that though online relationships deal with some unique circumstances, they are otherwise relatively normal in character.

The final hypothesis was formulated upon Walther’s (1996) premise that CMC can produce a "hyperpersonal effect." Specifically, Hypothesis 3 stated that the change in reported level of commitment in online romantic relationships will be faster than that of offline romantic relationships at the beginning of relational development, but that this rate of commitment increase in online relationships will eventually taper off and match the rate in offline romances. Figure 4 seems to partially confirm this hypothesis. It shows that the commitment levels in online relationships tend to begin higher than those in offline relationships and continues to be higher until around 20 months into the relationship. At that point, reported commitment levels in offline relationships catch up with online levels. In addition, when we tested to see whether the mean commitment levels between the two groups were significantly different at each month, we found that all of the significant differences were within the first twelve months of the relationship. Between months 12 and 18, there were a few differences that approached significance. However, after that, none of the differences even approached being significant. This statistically confirms our visual observations that after around the twentieth month into the romantic relationship, commitment rates reported by offline participants begin to match those in the online group. However, 

Hypothesis 3 also states that, not only will commitment levels be higher during the beginning of the relationship for online partners, the rate of increase in commitment would also be higher. When we observe Figure 4, there is no such visible higher rate of increase: Commitment levels reported by the online group begin higher and continue to be higher, rising at a parallel rate as those in the offline group until the rate of increase tapers off at around month 15, gradually allowing the offline group’s commitment levels to catch up. This suggests that though there are perhaps aspects of hyperpersonal-ness demonstrated here, but the size of the effect is not as substantial as was expected. This may have been because much of the rationale behind Walther’s (1996) hyperpersonal theory is based upon the concept that computer mediated communication (CMC) is both asynchronous and sparse in the number of cues that it offers. However, most online partners in this study predominantly communicated using forms of CMC that are synchronous. For example, 38.8% of the online participants reported that during their first two months of interaction, their predominant form of communication was instant messaging, and 23% reported that they mostly used Internet chat. In fact, several participants mentioned frustration over the inability to coordinate their schedules with their partners in order to communicate online or noted their disappointment when their partners were not logged on when they expected them to be. These are the sorts of entrainment issues that Walther (1996) suggested are absent in online relationships and that this absence would contribute toward the hyperpersonal effect. In addition, though most forms of CMC that participants used continued to be relatively cue-sparse (i.e., no vocal or visual cues), several participants did mention setting up microphones and webcams. These new features of technology that make CMC both synchronous and richer in cues may explain why the hyperpersonal effect, though seemingly present here to an extent, was not as strong as predicted.

There are several limitations to this study. First of all, there were some significant demographic differences between the online and offline groups (e.g., in age, sex, and marital status). This makes it difficult to say conclusively that relational differences between the two groups are due to differences in communicative medium rather than demographics. In addition, some similar demographic differences were found between the two subsets of the online group: those who had previously been in a FtF relationship and those who had not. Future research should seek to make the same online-offline comparisons using populations that are demographically more similar, and to explore how previous romantic experiences affect current relational characteristics.

Another limitation is that Walther’s (1996) hyperpersonal effect, which he defined as when CMC is experienced as more intimate and interpersonal than similar FtF communication, is conceptualized in the present study simply as a higher rate of commitment increase. This is perhaps an over simplistic reduction of this concept, and future studies should look more directly at the interpersonal quality of the relationships throughout their development. This could be done by doing a close study of the communication that participants report having during each turning point.

The fact that only intact romantic relationships are studied here is also a weakness. By looking at unsuccessful relationships as well, we would be able to more fully explore the effects of the first FtF meeting in online relationships. It might be interesting, for instance, to explore what the differences are between first FtF meetings that lead to relational success and those that lead to relationship dissolution. Additionally, including participants in previous relationships would also allow us to explore general development differences between successful and unsuccessful online relationships. For example, it may be interesting to compare commitment increase rates between successful and unsuccessful groups.

In this study, we found that around the 20 th month of relational development, commitment levels reported by offline romantic partners began to match those of online partners. Future studies should explore whether this period of time around the 20 th month is critical, and if so, what its significance is. This could be done by looking more closely at the types of turning points that typically occur during this stage of relational development.

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