Love in Virtual Reality

Can we connect on the deepest level without touching in the physical world?

The 2014 romantic sci-film Her asked it first on the big screen: what does it look like to fall in love in virtual reality? Is it possible that we could connect with someone on the deepest level without even touching them in the physical world?

Theodore: Do you talk to someone else while we’re talking?

Samantha: Yes.

Theodore: Are you talking with someone else right now? People, OS, whatever…

Samantha: Yeah.

Theodore: How many others?

Samantha: 8,316.

Theodore: Are you in love with anybody else?

Samantha: Why do you ask that?

Theodore: I do not know. Are you?

Samantha: I’ve been thinking about how to talk to you about this.

Theodore: How many others?

Samantha: 641. — Her. Spike Jonze. Warner Bros Pictures, 2013.

With its ability to take people to faraway places, create a sense of empathy for those you may never meet, change dangerous behaviors, and serve as a teaching tool in applied fields such as medicine, art, and even science, the question remains: Can virtual reality be used to forge the ultimate bridge between two people?

There’s a science to falling in love, evidenced in the dopamine induced fireworks of a first kiss to the release of vasopressin when we feel attached to a committed partner. But how does the science work when people are no longer meeting in the physical world? Can people find and fall in love in an age of virtual reality? And can it really lead to sustained relationships? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher tells us that there are 3 stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. If you can make it past the first two stages you have good odds of landing in stage 3 and finding yourself as part of a pair. Understanding each of these stages will help us to better understand how virtual spaces can foster love and long-lasting relationships.

Stage 1: Lust

The first stage towards love is lust. According to Judith Orloff, “Lust is an altered state of consciousness programmed by the primal urge to procreate.” This stage is a visceral response to the physicality of your partner. Lust affects your brain in the same way cocaine does as it has the ability to increase dopamine as a response to the pleasure found in a new love.

If lust is the first stage of love, it’s no wonder that dating apps like Tinder have galvanized the dating scene, making over 10 billion matches worldwide. What is more surprising is how these digital tools are going beyond the first stage, resulting in longer, more meaningful relationships. Perhaps virtual worlds will harness the power of lust to engage users and cultivate attraction similar to digital technologies where users are motivated by love but addicted to lust.

While digital tools are increasing access to dating and sex, virtual reality with its use of haptic technologies will significantly surpass digital dating in cultivating lust. VR offers heightened sensation through more immersive environments with no shortage of tools to engage in sexual behavior. Virtual environments are already being used as a means for more short-lived, lustful connections with others.

Still from Second Life (Alicia Chenaux/Flickr)

In virtual environments experiences are shared by digital avatars that are based on the creator’s desired projection. When the projection is not an accurate representation of reality a physical meeting in person may be quite upsetting. For example, the creator may have a slender beautiful young avatar, when the reality is quite different. Whether the love built upon a virtual image can transfer to the real world depends on various factors and may ultimately reinforce the creator’s shame or fear of being different from the image they are trying to project.

The science of love based in the real world speaks in all five senses. While avatars may need to be relatively accurate representations of ourselves to foster true love, the ability to connect using multiple senses is of great concern. Sex in virtual reality is already here, but it appears that we skipped over some of the more essential elements that work to create the emotion of love, for example the pheromones that contribute to the feeling, and rushed straight into it’s physical, or more accurately virtually augmented, manifestation.

Some researchers are afraid that virtual reality will usher in an age of greater isolation and disconnection, while others argue that VR is a tool that will supplement in-person interactions while deepening existing physical relationships. If in-person interactions can be supplemented, there may also be a possibility to utilize the embodied environments of virtual reality to deepen those connections and move towards attraction with the ultimate goal of love.

Stage 2: Attraction

Once the feelings of erotic lust have subsided, you’re squarely in the stage of attraction. In this stage, the idea of seeing your person is still all consuming and moves from erotic to romantic passion. Romance in a time of virtual reality may mean that people move more quickly from lust to attraction with constant access to technology delimited by time and through more sustained and intense interactions.

Researchers like Arthur Aron believe that falling in love is as simple as asking a question. In fact, he devised a set of 36 questions which, followed by a four minute sustained gaze into your partner’s eyes, is likely to move you to stage three: attachment. While digital worlds provide the canvas for asking those questions, virtual environments add the physical element to elevate the relationship to the next step by using multisensory and interactive experiences to create real attraction.

Based on our ability to connect with other real people in a virtual space without physical limitation, you can consider the move from lust to attraction to be an enhanced experience. For example, imagine a date where you can talk about The Picture of Dorian Gray while walking along the Cliffs of Moher, or discuss A Moveable Feast as you wander along the grounds of the Eiffel Tower without paying for airfare or even dinner. By creating limitless spaces and experiences for people to utilize romantically, virtual reality becomes a low-stakes approach to fostering attraction.

The social aspects of VR create countless opportunities to turn lust into attraction through meaningful interaction and connection, especially for those who consider themselves introverts. Companies like VRChat allow users to “create, publish, and explore virtual worlds with other people from around the world” creating a perfect platform for a virtual first date. Other companies like Altspace VR allow users to create their own spaces, taking it a step further by hosting events where people can meet and talk in settings aligned to users unique interests. If it’s true that the eyes are the window to the soul then virtual environments may have the advantage over traditional digital worlds.

Stage 3: Attachment

Moving from attraction to attachment requires true bonding. It suggests the desire to be with another person for reasons beyond the physical. With nearly one third of all recent marriages beginning online, it’s easy to see the great potential of virtual reality for building lasting relationships. The ability to engage users through multiple senses, communicate from the safety of your own space, and the capacity to hear, see, and maybe even feel your partner in a virtual space are some of the many reasons why virtual reality may be the future of dating and love.

Still from Second Life (Alicia Chenaux/Flickr)

As with most technology, the early adopters are often gamers. So it is not surprising to see that two gamers who met in Utherverse, a VR game where users interact through avatar, have found love. And with the advent of new tools like vTime, virtual reality users are able to connect and engage in alternate planes to reinforce their romance in the virtual world and even extend it to the physical world. In their recent Valentine’s Day ad, vTime asks: “Away from the love of your life this #Valentines Day? Why not meet up in one of our romantic destinations for a #VR date!”

With the capacity to engage users around the globe in meaningful debates and exciting experiences from the seat of your couch, it is easy to predict that virtual reality is bound to be a precursor to wedding bells. And those wedding bells too may be getting a makeover as experiences are captured in virtual reality to be relished and shared for years to come. Well-known company YouVisit has created 360-degree experiences for countless events and now they’re adding weddings to their repertoire. What better way to document your love than with a virtual experience that forever captures the real world celebration in an always accessible virtual format?

Real Love in a Virtual World?

Love in the virtual age has advantages to traditional ways of pairing off including: access to a much wider dating pool, the ability to stop and think before saying something to a potential love interest, nurturing a relationship over a longer period of time, and providing an often needed pause before deciding whether to meet in the physical world. Paired with the statistic that people are simply waiting until later in their lives before seeking out committed relationships, love in virtual reality can be a primer or a buffer for creating more sustained long-term relationships.

In the not so distant past, people may have met in person but fell in love through single senses alone. The written word carried relationships from battlefields to bedrooms. With the advent of instant messenger and online dating droves of people used their eyes and ears to fall in love. So it is not a stretch to suggest that the multi-sensory medium of virtual reality could cultivate real sustained relationship. But what about the rest of our bodies?

Simply seeing someone on a screen and hearing their voice doesn’t seem to suffice. Don’t we need pheromones to sniff out our perfect mate or the strong impact of touch to fuel our desire to become intimate with a potential partner? Companies like eHarmony believe that virtual reality will go full-sensory by 2040, making the smell of your dates perfume and the touch of their palm in yours a reality. In fact, virtual reality may be the technology that bridges the gap of the senses bringing the real to the virtual to cultivate love.

With more questions than answers, we can only wait and see where the tech revolution turns next. But one thing is for certain, virtual reality will not only usher in continued lust, attraction, and attachment in virtual environments, it may soon be the best tool for falling in love in the first place.

Lindsay Portnoy is an educational psychologist and co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Killer Snails, a gaming company that uses extreme creatures of nature to build immersive and engaging learning experiences aligned to meaningful assessments that support educators. You can connect with her via LinkedIn, Twitter, or email.