Online love connections happen everyday, partly because, in the last decade, the popularity of dating sites has grown exponentially. The top five dating sites boast a combined 65-million users, and add to that the “hooking up” that happens through social networking sites, and you can see it’s a whole new world of dating, mating, and relating. For single parents the allure of meeting a romantic suitor online is huge because it so darned convenient. Courtship can be managed without makeup, high heels, or an expensive dinner and babysitter. It’s great for guys. Not one dime shelled out for romantic dates. Sounds like a win-win. But more often it’s a lose-lose.

One new phenomenon in the high-tech dating landscape is the online or telephone break up that occurs even before the first date. Here’s the usual scenario: You meet a potential mate online and begin an email exchange that evolves into a phone and text relationship. Photos are exchanged. Intimacies are revealed. Weeks or months may go by as your build up to that first date. You begin to fantasize about your possible lives together. Then it’s suddenly over. If you’re lucky you get “the chat” or in worst cases you are suddenly defriended on Facebook. And when this happens the feelings are very real and very visceral. Confusing, I know. This person wasn’t even a real-world presence. Yet the feelings of loss were so painful. Like a real break up, you drag your feet for a week or longer and vow never to enter love’s snare again.

In one other scenario of this mating dance, you finally do meet in the real world, and after one meeting, everything falls apart. The spell is broken and he or she disappears from your cyber world.

So, psychologically speaking, what’s going on here? Let’s start with what’s NOT going on here. What’s not going on here is authentic love. What’s not going on here is even a relationship. What IS going on here is something Psychologists call mutual, positive projections. In an online courtship, you are in love with your own fantasies of what the perfect love-mate is, that is, your own projections. And, he or she (if they are even being honest about their gender) is doing the same thing. It’s like you have a blank screen on which to project a perfect sketch of a mate. And it feels real because the online love interest plays along just enough to feed your fantasies. In a cyber match up, you are not in love with an individual, a real, thinking, breathing, flawed, individual. You are in love with hope. Hope that this time this person could be the one to bring you happiness. And when that hope is taken away, it hurts. It hurts bad. The loss of hope can sometimes hurt even more than the loss of a real-world guy who might not have put the toilet seat down or a real gal prone to neurotic bouts of PMS. Because in a cyber break up, you’ve lost the perfect mate.

Add to those feelings of loss, the feelings of shame that you divulged so many intimate secrets about yourself. To a total stranger, no less. Some people feel more comfortable getting a root canal than talking about their feelings. But for some reason typing feelings feels less threatening, so chances are this was one of your most intimate risks. Although the love wasn’t real, the feelings associated with the break up can be very, very real.

So, what’s the solution? To swear off cyber love forever? No. Meeting a potential partner online is a great way to find a budding relationship. The protective solution is not to avoid the game but to know the psychological rules. And the rules are simple: Exert boundaries online and meet in the real world before projections run wild.

What does that mean? It means that it’s perfectly okay to have a few email exchanges that amount to some cocktail party chat. Safe subjects might include: the weather, sports, your family structure, age & hair color, your college alma-mater or hometown. But steer clear of conversations that involve your past (or present) relationships, your fears, loves, childhood pain, and aspirations for life. This kind of talk is guaranteed to feed the machine of romantic projections.

Then try to meet quickly while you are both still strangers and can sniff mutual pheromones before your heart has been put on the table. And, for darned sake, if you’re a woman, do it as safely as possible. He could be an axe murderer! Get all his real-world contact info, check it out, and then text it to your best friend before you meet. Bring your own car and meet in daylight in a familiar place. If there is a counter, sit up at the counter so the staff are aware you are there and this is a meeting with a stranger. No dark tables in the back where the date rape drug can be administered privately! And, gentlemen, please don’t take it personally when a woman behaves this way. Be understanding and make it as comfortable as possible for her.

One other thought, ladies: If that little motherly chat has you too scared to meet in the real world, let me ask you this: If you are leery about having coffee, why would you spend hours late at night chatting online and handing him your heart on a silver platter? Oh yes, the allure of the perfect mate.

Online love can be intoxicating and addicting to both genders. But an online lover will never split the mortgage, sub for a carpool run, or cook you a great dinner. Remember that, people. Yes, this time, it’s all in your head.

Let me make this clear from the onset: I think feminism was (and is!) a good thing. I may not have had a career in television, nor been able to write books with such provocative ideas, had the feminist movement and the women who pioneered it not led the way for me. I am indebted to feminists.

But feminism did not liberate femininity. Feminism liberated masculine energy in women. It was a masculinist movement. And this is a good thing. Because of masculism, er, I mean feminism, we can now procure income in the male-dominated marketplace and buy ourselves any kind of life we want. Those of us who aren’t completely fulfilled baking cookies can now choose to fly jets, put out fires, or handcuff bad guys. We can also look for a cure for cancer, design computer programs, and sink basketballs, if those things suit our fancy.

But, I do think feminism has screwed up our love lives. First, because women are sometimes unsure of how to turn off this new masculine energy when confronted with a romantic suitor in a candlelit restaurant. We act like he’s one of the boys from work. And then get upset when he treats us like one of the boys from work — achieving his goal (in this case, sex) and then moving to a new project. At times, there appears to be so few vulnerable feelings in today’s “hook-ups” that it’s like two men are dating!

Feminism also gave us an easy exit door from relationships. That’s a good thing if it were a truly bad relationship, but too often our economic freedom sends us fleeing out the back door of a “good enough” relationship, instead of learning to work through conflict. Who needs conflict resolution skills when you don’t need the ally?

With feminism, we threw the baby out with the bath water.

It seemed with all the effort to conform and succeed in a male world that we unknowingly threw out a crucial, feminine skill — the ability to be the emotional conduit for a logic-locked man. For centuries, women have held the keys to the emotional locker in relationships. We come by emotions naturally, through hormones that help us bond, be empathetic, and intuitive. Our female ancestors had to decipher the meaning of an infant’s cries, or decide in an instant if an intruder was friend or foe. To do this, we developed a keen ability to read faces, sense emotions, and respond accordingly. None of these talents have anything to do with logic or thoughts. They are female gut reactions to life, and I think we’ve begun to ignore them. We’re not doing our job as women. We’re not reading men, we’re nagging them or bailing.

Add to that, the fact that we fear losing any ground we’ve gained. So, these days in love relationships, many women retreat from any behavior that could be deemed weak. They are so afraid of submission that they have forgotten how to be supportive. Indeed, many of our mothers, so inspired by the feminist ideal, deliberately forgot to teach us about love, relationships, nurturing, or — God forbid! — the power derived from running a household. Martha Stewart reminds us of what’s missing in our lives, as we manage our hectic schedules, eating from take-out boxes, in our immaculate granite kitchens, wearing our own purchases, and juggling would-be suitors who don’t happen to suit us this week. All the while sucking up deep feelings of sadness that we can’t connect with men.

One of my best role models is a dear girlfriend who runs a publicly traded company. Her husband is a major entertainment studio executive. They are a true power couple. I once asked her how the power is divided at home. She begged me not to tell anyone, so I’ll only tell you guys. Her answer: “At home, I am all girl. I let him be the king of our household because when he’s all man, I get paid back between the sheets.” Now that’s a smart feminist.

There may be no point in marrying rich. Study after study shows that there is no direct correlation between one’s set-point happiness and wealth, except at the very bottom levels, when physical needs — food, shelter, safety — are compromised because of poverty.

But married people who foster intimacy in their relationships, no matter their income level, find not only happiness but health. Research shows that depressed singles receive greater psychological benefit — from things such as intimacy and emotional closeness — from getting married than those who are not depressed.

And for the married population, there’s a psychological benefit to taking those vows. People in committed relationships have been shown to be happier than those who aren’t, despite how satisfying their marriages actually are. Yep, in large group studies, even unhappily married people have a higher set point of happiness than groups of single people.

And happiness is contagious. Research done by an economist at the University of Warwick suggests that if you’re married to someone who is happy, then you are happy as well. The research concludes that happiness, like material things in a marriage, is shared. Marry a happy person and catch the virus!