Lovers and other Strangers

My girlfriends and I are out there single and floundering in the online dating world (ODW). Most of us feel that in today's ODW there is a such a struggle with our basic biological instinct to respect a man enough to let him choose whether or not to chase us, to allow a man the space to lead the courtship process and to remain feminine enough not to "out-man" or "be a better man" than the man we're beginning to converse with. We ask ourselves how to respond to a wink, a note of an indication of interest with no further follow-up, "what's up?" text messages or offers to "hang out". In a world where men's attention in a woman is as short as the next pretty picture on the list and a click of a mouse to the next hook up we ask ourselves can real or lasting intimacy happen?

My first answer would be a resounding yes. I have friends and family members that have met, married or are actively involved in long term relationships that began online....and then I remember Joshua and my lesson learned. I've heard that a full 40% of online men claiming to be single are actually married. I'm posting an instant messaged conversation between us that happened a couple of years ago.

him: Meet me at the E 49/Lex next Tuesday night at 8pm in the bar
him: Yes
me: hello
him: I am enchanted
me: I am too
me: I changed my profile tonight just little
him: Tell me how
me: talked more about my forever love and waking up spooned
him: Spooned after a night of lovemaking
me: optimally
me: but I love being held that way all of the time
me: it makes me feel safe and warm and protected
him: Our bodies enmeshed
me: yes
me: our bodies and our souls
him: Yes
me: I’ve missed you
him: Next Tuesday night
me: what?
him: Meet me at the E 49/Lex next Tuesday night at 8pm in the bar
me: honey I can't--I broke my ankle 3 weeks ago--I’m not ambulatory yet
him: Then I'll come to you
me: I’d love that
me: the place is a mess with boxes everywhere because I’m moving--but there's room for you to sit on the couch with me
me: if you'd like to
him: Yes I would
me: are you in NY or LA
him: London until Tuesday
me: London again---it all begins in London
him: And it all ends Tuesday night
me: does it end or just begin?
him: begin darling
me: there is something between us that doesn't go away
me: I’ve looked at your photo a million times
him: and what will you do with the real man
me: truthfully? I’ve wanted to cup your face in my hands and kiss you forever
him: I expect nothing less
me: lol
me: I’ve never known a man who has touched my soul the way that you have in the little bits of time we've written
me: and I don't think that it's instinct that you know how to love me
me: nothing would make me happier
him: Tuesday we will begin
(edited... i've left out some, ahem, far too personal things between us)
me: and Jeremiah?
him: My middle name
me: Ok thank you--I know it took you time to trust me enough to tell me
me: and I appreciate it
me: were you really a psychiatrist?
him: Yes
me: and you work now as a TV producer?
him: I'm now semi retired
me: how old are you really?
him: How old do you think I am?
me: lol
me: I think you're in your 50's
him: 45
me: k
me: why didn't you trust me enough to tell me the truth about you from the beginning?
him: What does it matter now?
me: because from the very beginning I fell in love with you
him: And love is always tested until it unfolds
me: and I had opened my heart, I wasn't sure of why you wouldn't open yours
him: Are you really ready for that
me: I know nothing about you except that I know that I want to know everything
him: Tuesday you will show me
me: have not shown you until this point?
him: When I take you in my arms it will be real
me: I’ve longed for that
him: Then you will show me
me: I had always thought that you were in another relationship
me: but perhaps unhappy
me: and that was why we had never me
thim: The time was not right. Will you be able to look ahead and not back?
me: yes, of course
him: Will you show me your love
me: I will
me: I will show you that if you want me, I’m ready to give you my heart and soul
him: I want all of you
me: I’m yours
him: How will you give yourself to me
me: will you tell me about your castle?
him: Tuesday
me: OK me: I’d love to see it through your eyes and watch you light up when you tell me
him: After we've loved each other completely
me: I’m not sure I could love you any more than I do right now
him: Tuesday we will surrender to that love
me: I surrender
me: you have won my love
him: I need all of it...heart...body and soul
him: I am yours
me: as I have been from the beginning of time
him: And I will love you deeply
me: nothing would make me happier
him: Make room in your bed for me
me: there has been room for you in our bed from the beginning
me: you sleep on my right side
him: I will sleep inside of you
me: I’d love that
me: inside of me loving you in a new place
me: not just my heart
him: yes
him: I need to please you
me: I know thatme: you will
him: how do you know
me: not sure of how to explain it but it's the way that I told you that I know you without knowing you
me: it's like you are a part of me that I’ve always known
him: but I am so many other things as well
him: you'll teach me
me: yes lover
me: and I’ll learn
him: In one week
me: one very long week
him: What will you wear
me: something that goes with a scar
me: yuk
him: I will kiss and caress it
me: awwww
him: what will you wear
me: not sure--what would you like me to wear
him: close your eyes and tell me
me: well, my fantasies go off in different places depending on how well we would know each other
me: but in a perfect world, it might be snowing and we're dancing slowly barefoot in the living room in front of a fire place
me: I’m wearing black silk
me: soft music
me: we longingly look into each other’s eyes without saying a word
me: and dance...me: champagne bubbles tickles our noses
me: you love my perfume
me: you undress me
me: caress me:
me: we lay on the rug in front of the fire place
me: fall deeper in love
me: I am yours in a way no man has ever had me
me: totally completely your woman
him: Tuesday night
me: lol
him: that's funny?
me: can you order the snow?
me: yes its funny
me: We don't need props
me: can't dance
me: non weight bearing for another 2 weeks
him: yes we will dance
me: I adore you for the thought
me: and your fantasy?
him: I don't need them anymore
me: why
him: because on Tuesday you will be mine
me: I am yours now
him: Tuesday it will be real
me: I’d love that him: I want the black satin
me: but you haven't seen me in other colors--I’m beautiful in winter white too
me: it's my favorite on me
me: I think I look like an angel when I wear it
him: I will undress my angel slowly
him: you will see the hunger in my eyes
me: I love the part of you that is a hunter
him: I am ready to take my prey
me: I promise not to run to quickly
him: good
me: it's funny that you called me an angel--my mom used to call me that
him: my angel
me: yes, her angel
me: now yours
him: email me I have to run
me: sleep tight

Josh and I never met that Tuesday, although every once in a while I note that he still looks at my profile.... It was a lesson learned not to listen to a man's words but to watch his actions. I've saved other IM's from him...maybe someday I'll post them. People ask me if I think he is a player; I don't. I believe that wherever he is, he is unhappy in a relationship and I'm a softer place for him to him to dream about than the life he's unwilling to change.

Epilogue: I did something that Tuesday night that I had never done before, nor after; but it was the only thing that felt right. I lit a candle and place it in the most east -facing window (which happened to be in my living room) and turned down the lights. I watched it burning hoping that it would light his way home to me and I sat on the couch leaving that space on my right side for him in my life and in my bed. Somewhere the relationship Gods must have been laughing....it snowed.

In the beginning...

When I was about ten years old, my mother began giving me what I called “lessons in womanhood”. I didn’t call it that at the time, but as I recounted those stories to my girlfriends in my 20’s and early 30’s, that was it came to be lovingly called. My mom knew she would die young—she said she “always knew”. Just after my thirteenth birthday, just as I began my cusp of womanhood, just as I began to understand what it meant to have had body change—and all of that attention, just as a rush of sexual hormones began coursing through my veins, just as girlfriends made way for boyfriends, just as I began writing poetry and understand my softness, just as I didn’t ever want to forget the first time a man kissed my hand, my make out sessions and hickeys, just when I needed them most of all; my lessons abruptly stopped.

My older brother headed toward college; my mother took a job working the 3 to 11 shift at the hospital…latch-key kid…I didn’t see her, I was mature for my age, but alone. I was left to fend, to navigate, to make painful mistake after mistake, without understanding the reasons; to want, to yearn for, to hope for more and to be what felt like romantically, unendingly alone.

What I felt was that I wanted men that didn’t want me and the men that wanted me, I didn’t want. That somewhere out there in the world, there had a man who knew, instinctively knew how to love me in a way that was the most meaningful to me. I didn’t find him. I didn’t marry or have offspring. I had children and grandchildren that I didn’t get to meet. That for thousands of years my ancestors knew how to meet, marry, mate and survive; feasts, famine, disease and war. With all of my education, I fucked that up. The end of the line—my genetic pool; survival of the fittest stops with me. I fucked up. Nothing breaks my heart more than that, I don’t know if anything ever will.

I always knew in my soul that what was wrong was that someone, somewhere didn’t teach me something that I should have been taught. More than a handful of years ago, I began my quest to understand where it began going sideways and what needed to be done, if anything. My education continues to evolve; but as I contemplate my own mortality, I began to question, could I pass on to my collective daughters the learned path, the wisdom that women held as true from the beginning of time? An education that I believe was sadly lost to a femininist-embracing society where women were taught they could have it all. That was a lie, they cannot. That is no less a fairy tale than knights on white steed’s and castles ever after. But there can be the happiest of fulfilled lives and loves and therefore I stand before you have chosen to continue my mother’s work and share these moments of inheriting womanhood.

My education would not have begun had it not been for a quest of mentors, teachers, and both men and women I have had the privilege to call friends. For the countless books read, groups, hours of conversation, laughter, tears and my unending process of research fueled only by the strength and courage of conviction that this the clarity from disillusionment is correct; that today, my beliefs allow me to stand on the shoulders and be carried by the men and women that have walked this path before me. I can only look forward if I look back.