Going through the motions??????

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve had a realationship with someone for several years…a rather weird realtionship, online, basically. But we got in to some pretty serious conversations. About sex, about a lot more.

The past few months we got particularly intense (i thought) and were talking about meeting.

The other day i thought he was going to call so i was waiting…No call. Unless it was the five minutes I got on line to find out if the phone ringing was him and i missed him. Because i wanted to talk to him.

Then I get a e mail saying A) I wasn’t there and he waited but I wasn’t there and he shouldn’t have to put up with that (never mind that when we were talking online and he suddenly disappeared ii got upset…till he said it was a tech problem and I said…hey, it happens.) B) He didn’t feel the same way any more and we wouldn’t be talking anymore.

Just like that. As in, the day before he was talking intensely. Very. And as I said talking about real life…

I said i was confused. And hurt. And felt betrayed.

He said he hadn’t been feeling the same way and had been “just going through the motions” for the past month or so. But i shouldn’t be upset because it was a good experience for me.

Bullshit.

It was a good experience till i found out it didn’t really mean anything. It’s about an interaction. That’s the point. If it’s not a real interaction…no it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve been opening up to him like i haven’t with anyone for a long time. And he was going through the motions. Which is ok…i mean if he feels that way he feels that way. I understand.

But he couldn’t give me the respect to tell me? At least not till he gets pissed off about a missed phone call? I thought we were friends.

And given what we were talking about till yesterday…

And all he says is why i shouldn’t be upset…hell i should be grateful.

Well, I AM hurt. And betrayed. i don’t know what he’s going through, i do know he didn’t bother to tell me about it. And i thought we were…really talking. Apparently not.

I don’t know what to do with myself. One minute I think what the hell…we weren’t really …err…boyfriend and girlfriend. The next minute i feel all the stuff we shared over the years and mourn it. The next minute i’m just disappointed at what we won’t get to share. The next minute I want him dead. I don’t know what to think.

I just know I feel stupid. Going through the motions???

Anyway, end of vent.

2

I know it seemed real to you, but an on-line relationship “can’t” be real. Sure, a person’s mind is one of the most important parts of his or her personality, but it’s not the only part by a long shot. People have emotions and personalities that are conveyed physically as well as verbally. If you spent any face time with this guy, you would have probably been tipped off to the fact that things weren’t exactly as rosey as you thought they were.

Humans are meant to be with each other physically. That’s not to say you can’t form a friendship with someone on line. But when you talk about relationships, it has to be in person most of the time or your lives will never truly meld together.

I suggest you find a nice guy in real life to share your thoughts, secrets, and heart with. They’re out there. Probably closer than you think. Several years is a long time to spend in a half relationship.

3

Years long online conversations, only to end when the discussion turns to meeting in real life over a missed phone call? Textbook case of somebody who’s profile photo was 20 years and/or kilograms ago. Other possibilites include already married or living with the 'rents past 30.

It’s easy to read the chatlogs and let your imagination fill in the blanks, but it still sucks when someone pulls that stunt on you. Feel bad for awhile & move on is all I can suggest.

4

I take your point Kalhoun. But I do think they’re real to a point…it’s a conversation. I didn’t think he was my boyfriend. But I thought we had a connection…certainly a friendship. It’s a mental connection but it’s real in some sense.

So it can still hurt.

And actually I do have a real guy (who I met online! But who I also lived with…and would be now if it weren’t for visa problems.) Anyway I do know the difference…but like i said it can stil hurt.

And Cynical, that occured to me…particualy when he’d go back and forth from intense to ambivelent…married! (As for older of fatter i don’t care about that…we just had (i thought) similar minds.

And as for the advice, best dvice there is…what I intend to do but I have to feel bad for a bit…hence the vent here. The better to get over it.

Thanks

5

It might feel like a conversation, but it really isn’t. There’s no way to pick up visual cues the way you do when you are face to face, or even the inflection of a voice in a phone conversation. I’m not suggesting that you can’t begin a relationship over the internet, but I would say that you can only go so far. It’s certainly a limited medium.

And then there’s the real kicker: far too many people forget that there are real people starting all those electrons moving about. They probably forget for the same reasons I mentioned above – you are removed from a lot of the interaction that takes place in more traditional social situations. You or I might endeavor to be the same person over the net we are in person, but I honestly don’t think that is the case for most people.

6

Of course it can be real. The existence of scammers on the internet doesn’t make relationships unreal any more than the existence of scammers in physical space makes “traditional” relationships unreal.

7

I wasn’t even referring to the scammer aspect. As I said, for friendship relationships, no biggie. For relationships that traditionally have a physical element to them, i.e., romantic love and sex with someone other than yourself and your imagination, it’s not real. If you’re not looking for a real relationship, it’s the perfect answer.

8

So did you send him any noody shots?

Also, what does this mean:

If I’m reading that right, you were waiting for him to call, the phone rang, and instead of answering it, you went to the computer to ask him if that was him calling? And while you were doing that he hung up and the relationship was over? I’m confused.

9

I understand very well how real online relationships can be. That is how my relationship with my husband of twenty years began. It was good to have the words with no distractions to judge him by. But that lasted only a month before we began talking on the phone for the next two months. And then we met.

I have had friendships of several years that endured over the internet. And when they ended, even that was painful.

No one can tell you what your feelings should be. You feel what you feel.

It sounds to me like he is giving you more than one story. It sounds to me like the conversations were for real, but that he had to find a reason to back out of meeting. That’s just a guess.

I’m sorry that you are hurting. The day will come when it’s not the first thing that you think of in the morning. Then you will know that you have begun to get over him. Let yourself feel some of the anger at him too. He deserves it, you know. You are worth better treatment than that.

10

[hijack]
Wow… I didn’t know that the 'net existed 20 years ago.
[/hijack]

11

I was going to say the same thing.
Put me in the camp that says that online “relationships” are no relationships at all. Sure, you can meet people that way but don’t kid yourself that it’s a real relationship until you’re actually…you know…in the same room with them at some point. A conversation with a faceless name on a computer monitor might be amusing for awhile but it’s also going to invariably involve an element of idealization and fantasy. I would offer the OP’s own experience as exhibit one. She thought she knew the guy. She was wrong.

12

Yes, it did.

The WWW didn’t exist, but the internet (archie, gopher, ftp, email, bbs’s, AOL, Prodigy, etc) was “out there.” It just wouldn’t reach critical mass until 1993-95.

13

Interesting, I had no idea… thanks for fighting some of my ignorance, I guess I’ve got some research to do.

14

Fuck everybody who says you can’t have “real” friendships – and if you can’t have real relationships, I don’t see how you could have real friendships – online. I admit I have a hard time seeing not at least talking on the phone, if not meeting in person eventually. But online and meatside are equally R-E-A-L. “But you can’t see the person!” Yeah, well, in the flesh you can’t review the conversational log, and that’s one of the most useful tools I’ve encountered for understanding another person. I guess that means fleshly interactions aren’t “real”.

I don’t even feel like putting forth an argument, so let me do your part for you: *Oh, is that all you can say, just fuck you, well I’m going to ignore you and claim victory over you because you don’t care enough to argue with my ignorant generalized bullshit.
*
There, now we’re all on the same page.

15

And when I met the man who would become my husband I found out that all of my impressions of that person were spot on. He’s exactly the same person online that he is standing in front of me. I don’t need to “kid myself” about it at all. I lived it.

Sometimes I wonder if people would like to believe the internets aren’t real so they don’t have to hold themselves responsible for the things they say here.

16

At any rate, don’t feel “stupid;” his bailing with no warning is his own fault. Face-to-face friendships have been known to end the same way, even after years. Your intelligence and credulousness (not in a bad way) are in no way responsible for his assholishness.

17

SO unclear. What I mean is, you’re not stupid for not knowing he was a dick. There.

18

To a degree that’s the God’s honest truth.
And to a degree that’s impossible.

The very nature of an online interaction makes it different from meatspace. Even with an IM chat, you can re-type and revise something far more than you could in person. You can sit down to respond to an email at four in the morning and take hours to get the wording just right where, in a face to face conversation, doing anything like that would be not just rude, but creepy. You cannot get certain sense data, like seeing someone’s eyes widen, or hearing their breath quicken, if you’re only talking online. Memory also plays much less of a role as someone can simply scroll up and see old text.

Etc…

All in all, interacting online doesn’t have to be totally different from interacting with someone in meatspace. But it also can’t be totally the same.

Caveat: Simply to make it totally clear, I’m not saying that your impressions of your husband are/were incorrect, or that you don’t know him well, or that you didn’t have a ‘real’ interaction with him online. Simply that the two mediums of interaction have a different dynamic.

19

It still wasn’t a relationship until you actually met him.

20

Yes, of course. Mighty Diogenes hath spoken, and his word is law.

As I said, people who think online isn’t real are probably just embarrassed by what they say here. If it isn’t a real relationship, they don’t have to be ashamed for their fuckheadedness.

Wouldn’t hold true for you, of course. You’d defend your fuckheadedness proudly, as you have done so often in the past.