Heartsick

by EmptyInside 13 Replies latest jw friends

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  lisavegas420

  

  lisa
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  EmptyInside

  Thanks all for your kind words. I just found out a good friend of mine's mother died early this morning. So that puts things in perspective right now.
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  jamiebowers

  Maybe he just didn't know how to end it, so he chose to do nothing. Please check your pms.
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  cognizant dissident

  I had the same thing happen to me twice with men who contacted me on this forum. Talked for a year and a half with the first one and met the second one a number of times and talked on the phone daily (long distance). Then they just stopped writing and talking and phoning with no explanation. I was very hurt too, especially with the second one who claimed to love me and want to be with me forever.

  I discussed this with a friend of mine who is a relationship counselor and he told me that internet relationships are basically fantasy. They feel real and intimate, but they aren't intimate and hence not sustainable unless both agree to take the next step and make them flesh and blood relationships.

  If you think about how we as humans know anything, for real, it is through our senses, not through words on a page. That is just stories people tell about themselves, it is not the people themselves. We see a person and we are attracted to how they look. We hear a person and we are attracted to how they sound. We shake their hands or hug them and enjoy the feeling of touch. We get close enough to smell them and are attracted or repulsed. Much is chemistry. Our other sense is "taste" and this is reserved for the most intimate sexual knowing of another person, (kissing, oral sex).

  Talking on the phone does allow you to hear the other's voice, so is more intimate than the internet, but still it is only one out of five ways of being intimate and probably the least so. The internet provides psuedo-intimacy. It is the equivalent of reading a book, maybe with a few pictures for illustrations and thinking we "know" the author or have a relationship with them.

  I've come to realize that the first relationship had no where to go, unless we were to meet in person. We had said everything we had to say to each other and were down to talking about the mundane day to day stuff that married people do, but without any of the benefits of such a close relationship to sustain it. This would require huge changes in our lives neither of us were prepared for. Hence, a fantasy that had run its course.

  The second relationship was more serious. We met each other right away, talked on the phone daily, made plans to mesh our lives. But even all of that was mostly fantasy. When I became actually divorced, and actually free to put the plans into the action, the other person became scared to change their life and disappeared off line, off text, and off telephone. The fantasy had suddenly become very real and very immediate and unsustainable once again.

  This is the danger inherent in internet relationships and in telephone relationships. Some people are looking to keep a safe distance and fantasy is more attractive to them the day to day reality of a "real" relationship with a flesh and blood person. The internet and the telephone allow them to maintain that distance. They can project whatever image they want of themselves and project on to you whatever they want you to be.

  I've nothing against the internet for a first introduction. If you want to know how serious the person is about a relationship, ask them to meet right away. If they don't want to spend time enjoying you in person, then it's a fantasy for them.

  My two cents. Live and learn.