Does technology aid or hinder relationships?

It's been about 10 years now since the whole Internet revolution became part of my life. Back in the old days. E-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, and now blogs, have certainly changed the ways people interact. Isn't it funny how people will say things to other people, strangers really, about themselves that they probably don't say to their best friends out there in the "real world?"

But for some people, the online world becomes their world. I suppose I have been as guilty of that any anyone. Although not all voyages into cyberspace have been rewarding.

Back when I was on aol lurking in chat rooms and getting billed by the minute, I got into an unhealthy pattern with some big aol bills for all the time I was spending online. Not cool. I discovered this whole subculture with this group of people who used to meet in this one geographic chatroom where people actually met periodically for parties and other gatherings. I even went to one. We all wore nametags with our screen names on them so people could put the face to the person they "knew" from online. It wasn't my scene. Going to parties with friends is one thing, but driving 60 miles to go to someone's house that I didn't know was outside my comfort zone. I guess I'm glad I went, but didn't like it enough to go back for another chatroom gathering.

A couple of times I met one-on-one with a couple of people I chatted with. Also an awkward situation. Didn't care much for that either. Although there is one woman I met up with a few times. We got to be pretty regular chat buddies online, and we had lunch a few times in the real world. The funny thing was, we got along much better online than off. We had quite the witty little dialogue going at the keyboard. It just didn't click face to face. And there were certainly no romantic sparks, which if truth be told was probably what we were both after. She later ended up marrying a guy she had met online and moving to Nebraska or somewhere. We lost touch some years back.

Now I mostly use online chat services to keep in touch with family and friends, people I know from the real world, who I maintain ties with thanks to technology. But there are two exceptions. One is a friend I met online, refered to in an earlier post as T. T and I started out as friends, became lovers, and came back around to being friends. I still hear from her occassionally, although I try not to interject myself into her life too often. She's now happily married (to a guy she met online) and living her own life. I get the occassional e-mail joke forwarded from her (God I hate those forwards, particularly the chain e-mails).

But there is one woman I met online and have known for more than 6 years now. I'll call her D. We've never actually met. In fact I've only seen a few fuzzy pictures of her, and one old photo of her. If I walked past her on the street, I probably wouldn't even know it was her. Yet, I know her probably better than about anyone in the world, or certainly so it seems, which makes it feel like I would know her instantly, even in a crowded room. We've chatted online and on the phone off and on over the last 6 years. The off periods have mostly been when one or the other of us -- or both -- were dating someone else. We've tried to get together a time or two, but fate (or bad luck or God's cruel sense of humor or something) has always got in the way. I actually had a plane ticket purchased once a few years back to fly to her Midwest locale, but she ended up in the hospital the night before I was supposed to fly out, and the trip was scuttled.

I had a lot of female friends when I was in school. Not a lot of girlfriends mind you, but female friends. There were a couple of girlfriends, but nothing really serious -- or really fun -- until I got into college. But the girls used to let me hang around. I was often the confidante, hearing about their troubles with this boyfriend, or the crush on this other guy and why wasn't he paying enough attention to her, etc. I guess I sort of fell in to the gay-male-friend role in my small town school, because we either didn't have any gay boys in our school or they were so far in the closet as to avoid getting their asses kicked regularly by a bunch of redneck farm boys otherwise known as the male half of the student body. Redneck farm boys didn't like the idea of man-on-man lovin' and they carried guns in the gunracks of their pickups. Anyway, I was sort of a geek, and not exactly popular with the popular girls in "that way," so I got to hang out with them by hearing their boy troubles. If you have to yearn, it's much better to yearn with the girl whispering in your ear, than yearn from afar while she whispers in some other guy's ear.

So, anyway, I like the company of women, and generally find conversations with women much more interesting than men. I'm not a great conversationalist, and can be vocally a bit monosyllabic. I speak slowly, haltingly, and have a habit some people seem to find very annoying, which is thinking before I speak (unless I've had a little liquor to lubricate the tongue). But that tends to make me a good listener, since often before I can respond to some comment or the other, my companion has moved on to the next throught. So, I've had many conversations with women over the years, although perhaps a bit one sided (which may be why the "real me" tends to come out more at the keyboard than over dessert at some cafe-de-courtship. But, I never had conversations with previous female friends like I once had with T and still have with D.

D is indeed a special case. About two years ago, D and I were talking about trying to figure out a way to end the long distance correspondence and actually get together, and with a real prospect of that happening within a few months time (after nearly 5 years, what's a couple of months right?). But then I messed up the plan. I met a woman that I was extremely smitten with here in Palm Springs. So, what did I do? To put it simply, I told D so long and pursued the relationship with the woman here in town. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. That old saying about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush seemed to apply, and there was an attractive bird at hand. So, I brushed of D.

Hated it.

Felt awfully about it.

But I did it anyway.

And I can't say it was a completely frivolous crush or anything, because the bird at hand (henseforth to be knows as the ex) and I did get together, moved in together. I asked her to marry me back on Christmas Eve of last year. So, it wasn't a minor schoolboy crush here. But to cut to the chase on that story, I got the engagement ring back in June, and promptly preceeded to watch the life I thought I was building crash down around my ankles like a cheap set of Legos.

Shortly after I started to try to reassemble my Legos, and reconfigure them from Legos-built-for-two to bachelor-building blocks, I decided I needed to try to apologize to D. Not that I expected anything to come of it, I just didn't like the way I left it and I wanted her to know I was sorry for just disappearing. There was that and the fact that my ex who thought I must be maintaining contact with D, actually contacted her (online) and quizzed D to figure out when I had cut the cord, etc. D called my cell phone to see if it was me or someone else online. D wrote me an e-mail after that to explain why she called, and I never replied. I felt bad about that also.

So, I wrote to D after I had got my own apartment -- and my own therapist -- and was trying to remember what I used to do when I wasn't part of that two-headed creature known as "we." So, I reached out to D, and to a lot of family members and old friends who I had lost contact with over the year-plus I was so wrapped up in the ex that nothing else seemed to matter. It was sort of like an alcoholic going through the steps, trying to atone for past sins. To my surprise D wrote back. More than that, she listened to me and offered sage advice on how to recover from a breakup. She too had experienced a failed engagement and a more recent breakup with someone she cared deeply about. She helped me get better. She helped me heal. She helped me find hope again.

And D and I have rekindled our online/telephone/e-mail relationship, now with the added technological components of text messages and blogs. I've never been able to satisfactorily describe our relationship to myself, let alone others. In many ways it is more intimate in its communication than any relationship I've ever experienced. And strong feelings develop from those deep, philosophical, emotional -- and yes often erotic and blatantly sexual -- conversations. When I can't talk to her, online or by phone, I miss her. She is now the one I want to talk about my day with, and frankly the one I think about building Legos with. The only problem is that we live more than 1,000 miles and two time zones apart. We've never looked into each other's eyes. We have never held hands or snuggled under a blanket and watched movies on the couch. Yet, she touches me in ways and places no one else ever has, or perhaps ever will.

Is that some false sense of Internet intimacy? Or is it real? It feels real, and I hold out hope that it is. Perhaps the answer to my query posed at the top of this post is written in her eyes.

I miss you D. Thanks for helping me salvage another year and the only life I've got. Here's to making 2005 the magical, mystical year.

Relationships
Internet