cyberlovers 3

(this article is one of a series about online dating correspondences in which the couple never meet, despite conspicuous outlays of time or emotion)

To a large extent, i have no one but myself to blame for the prolonged wound-scrape that was my relationship with B. When we met online, i was looking for healing...for the truth of touch to salve my weary spirit. At the time, i was in love with a woman i couldn't be with, and battered by a lack of physical healing in any relationship i'd had in years. To be held with unconditional acceptance and love...it had been over a decade since i'd felt anything like that. And my experience with C had made me wary of any kind of online emotional involvement prior to meeting.
It took me the better part of a year to discover that B's needs were almost the polar opposite of mine. Her own path had been one of harshness in physical intimacy, and she needed spiritual love and acceptance more than she actually needed to meet someone. She did want to meet me eventually, for in time my resistance gave way and our spiritual love was secured. But ultimately she was so afraid of rejection, or of our love not measuring up to the intensity of the dream, that my year-long pleas for contact were an isolated howl into the winds of time.
It was one of my own ads that began our tale. I posted a poem of mine, and she was so taken with it that she responded, even though, as a devotee of makeup and heels and fashion, she wasn't the natural woman i had written about. Her intelligence and spirit touched me, and we were off. For a year, we wrote almost every day, and shared our poetry (one of my more resonant poems, "Sanctify", was inspired by her). She had lived through a loveless ten-year marriage, in which she had once been raped. She had been born in the Caribbean, and was taken with my light skin and long blonde hair. We sent each other very naked pictures...in most of her photos, her face was turned away, and i learned this was because she didn't like her eyes (and because i didn't like makeup). Sometimes she would pretend that a picture she had sent wasn't her, just some island girl for me to dream about. This was a little cute, but eventually honesty became a problem for her. In most ways though, she was possibly more open with me than she'd ever been with anyone.
The profoundness of her growing love for me was intense. I tried to hold back, but with limited success. Even at a distance, we affected each other physically. She affected my breath, and made my chest tighten. We would have long back and forth conversations. A few times, i became spontaneously erect while writing with her. She would sit on her bed to write, and one night she was stunned when she experienced a spontaneous orgasm under her warm laptop. My insistence that it was unhealthy to not hold a woman who just came because of you, fell on deaf ears.
After about a year, she told me that she had to leave New York for Texas, and we made one real attempt to get together. Strangely, i had a little rush of uncertainty at the last minute. I asked to re-schedule for the following day, but it never happened. She left, and i asked to break off contact. In the year or two that followed, we were intermittently successful at this. Occasionally we would write, and once there was even a strained phone call. Throughout, she did a number of things to destroy her credibility and be less than gentle. She threatened to hook up with blonde men she met. Once she answered another ad of mine, and carried on a conversation with me for several days, pretending to be someone else. There were other untruths, but my self-preservation has blocked the memory of them.
She also revealed at one point that she was dying. I told her it didn't matter, and that i didn't understand how dying wouldn't make her more willing to meet. In meeting, the only promise i made was that she would be held. Perhaps she needed the "ever after" part so much that any less would be too much to bear. She did finally visit me on a trip to NY. Unfortunately, she didn't tell me in advance, and went to my old address.
I know that perhaps i've been a tiny bit ungenerous, and that her version of the tale might leave you feeling more sympathy for her. During our Texas time, she accused me of cruelty for sometimes refusing to acknowledge her letters. But in the years we wrote, i still searched in vain for the simple physical healing i'd been needing...so that colors my story, to be sure.
I do love her.