I'm almost too embarrassed to tell you this! I had met somebody on-line and we were talking--well texting and e-mailing and even talking on the phone pretty often. Now, you need to know this, if you somehow thought otherwise: being a psychotherapist in no way makes me immune from the same sorts of problems my clients deal with. As we therapists say: "A fish doesn't know that it's wet."
I have told other people (and need other people to tell me, at times) that, often our best quality is also our worst quality, as well. My imagination is essential to me in so many ways. It helps me to find out how to help people, which is my profession. It gives me things to write about for this blog and for the essays of mine that occasionally get aired on the radio. And, it's so much a part of my very personality....And, yet, it gets me in trouble, as it did with this total stranger who might very well be a unibomber or a sexual predator. Let me explain.
Sight unseen, this rather attractive (I had only seen the photo he posted on his profile--and his profile made him sound so adorable) man, told me that he would be in Milwaukee in a few weeks for a family wedding and would I like to be his date. I answered back that this was an interesting proposition, but hadn't we best meet one another first. He agreed, but since he was in another state; he probably would not be here for the wedding for several weeks.
We exchanged e-mail addresses and telephone numbers and started to have a virtual relationship, that is, talk to one another by one or another of these methods of comnunication quite often. It almost seemed as if we had a running conversation going throughout the day. He'd text, then call. I'd e-mail him back, then we'd text one another photos of what we were doing that day. It almost felt as if I had a h**band! I mean, I would tell him what I was doing throughout the day & he would tell me. It reminded me of what I really liked about having a h**band.
Then, it got a tad flirty, almost intimate. At times, he felt to me like he "went over the top." I pulled back, but then he'd write or call and say something sweet and charming. And there I was again, making up the "us" story....We can live here part of the year and there part of the year...and He's a writer, I'm a writer: We'll write together...and we both liked to travel: He has relatives in Paris, I have relatives in Normandy...We can spend time in both places visiting our families and traveling in Europe.
So, there I was, concocting a story about a person I didn't even know I liked. A person who I might meet and have no chemistry with in any way! But, on-line, on-the-phone, by text it was fun to dream. And so I did. For a week---maybe it was two, this went on. At one point, he invited me to fly out to meet him halfway. And, though I knew how crazy this would be, I was actually tempted to do it.
And then, just as he had appeared on the don'tbedesperate.com dating site, the one where a lot of really nice guys appear; he totally disappeared. He didn't write; he didn't call. I texted him and got the he's- really-not-that-into-you response: "I've just been busy."
Now, I have a friend who has lost the love of her life to cancer; a friend whose husband is so depressed he's been living in their bedroom. I have another friend who's fiance has been on a fishing trip and has "gone missing"! So, I really have got some nerve whining about this guy who is not even a real person. He could be married. He could be afflicted with a terrible drug problem. He could be a group of precocious teen boys who made up an identity. Yet, as if he were real; as if he were a h**band, my husband.....it feels as if a real person came into my life and he's left me. I know, I have nothing to feel whiny about....but, I feel whiny. So, hey, please pass the cheese. I do so like cheese with my whine.
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