A True Account by Eileen Rush
Like many other Gen-Y-ers my love life has always been permeated with technology. I met my first boyfriend on the school bus in sixth grade. We would play our Gameboy Colors next to each other sitting side by side battling our Pokemon. The next one in eighth grade was too shy to talk to me in person, yet just bold enough to sit next to me in English Honors and he would oh so bravely message me on AOL when he got home. It only makes sense that 10 years of school and a salaried position later, technology would be my wingman.
My friends recognized the signs instantly. I was getting text messages that made me LOL, literally. I’d blush during a phone call and giddily trot out of the bar, pace the sidewalk, and talk for half an hour while my friends waited inside, babysitting my beer. In the words of Bambi and Thumper, I was “twitterpated.” But the recipient of my flirtations and affection, the first person who made my heart hammer and my cheeks flush after seven months of being single, was 800 miles away. We had never met face-to-face.
I feel like I have to clear the air first, and say that this man and I did not meet on a dating website. This man—let’s call him James—and I didn’t “wink” at each other on Zoomsk. Neil Clark Warren didn’t magically match our personalities and values together while Natalie Cole crooned, “This will be an everlasting love.” Most techno-romance isn’t that clear cut, mine being no exception.
Even though we shared the same job titles; Social Media Marketing and Public Relations; were both AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, and went through the same training (he finished just as I was starting), it would be a simple Tweet that would bring us together.
To be honest, I immediately thought the picture of him in his Gravatar (the online representation of the user or the user’s alter ego) was cute. We Tweeted @ each other a few times, sharing work resources, interesting links and shout outs. We became Facebook friends. We exchanged Facebook messages over our mutual love of travel, but it wasn’t until he commented on my blog that I swooned. His writing was clear, vivid, and complimentary. He made me a video postcard on YouTube. We swapped emails. There were drunken voice mails and text messages. Finally it progressed to Skype, three-hour phone calls and the kind of sweet, spring-fevery words, often something as simple as “I love your green eyes and your freckles,” that melt one’s insides like chocolate chip cookies straight from the oven.
At first, maybe I was just thrilled to be talking to someone who was intelligent, funny and who didn’t seem put off by the fact that I’m a total nerd. James was very funny. Perhaps quick-witted people have an advantage on the internet playing field. On our first “Skype date,” he had me laughing for hours. I could blabber on about poetry, my fascination with infectious diseases, the latest science fiction novel I was reading or my love of banjo music. He showed his webcam limited editions of his favorite comic books. One of them was pulled from release because a panel in it showed Peter Parker’s pecker, twisted and amalgamated by radiation. He joked that one day when he had children, Spiderman’s penis was going to put them through college.
He was a gifted storyteller, and like me he could compartmentalize the world into humorous stories. I was glad to connect with someone on a journalistic level again; it brought me back to the camaraderie of my college newspaper glory days. He joked that he’d majored in Ultimate Frisbee in school, and I laughed until I cried when he told story after story that involved victory and alcohol.
Perhaps most importantly, he cared about the world in a way that I hadn’t found anyone else did in a long time. He was a “bleeding heart” like me. We were after many of the same causes. We both have a passion for helping children and want to become foster parents. I could talk to him about travel, about people I want to help and about things I want to do in life.
These connections are what draw people together, online or off—values, passions, communication and physical attraction. I had never met him in real life, but I instantly liked his beard, his big eyes, his broad shoulders.
My friends seemed pretty accepting of my internet romance. They laughed, shook their heads and pledged their support, but I could sense some underlying skepticism. The unspoken words were, “Eileen, why not find someone you want to date here, in real life (IRL)?”
IRL. There’s the paradox in the paradigm of young people all over the world. We still seem to be under the impression that who we are on the internet, in front of our computers, or even in text messaging, is dramatically different from who we are when face-to-face with another human being. Maybe that’s true. The internet is rife with antisocial behavior, with people who feel free to recreate themselves and do whatever they like.
Yet here was someone I could connect with, on a heart-to-heart level, even though we were 800 miles apart. There are a million horror stories of kidnappings, sex trafficking and all-around creepsters from the depths of the Interswamp, and women should certainly use caution. But for me, in a way, the separation of all that distance and two computer screens made me feel very safe.
Safe, because in relationships, flings and dates—“IRL”—I’d become bitter and jaded. Safe, because I’d had months of being single to learn many things about myself and about being alone, but I still wasn’t ready for anything serious. Safe, because even though I wanted nothing serious, I was also tired of being treated like I was only worth as much as my body was to a man. With James, I had someone I could connect with through music or art. I had someone who liked my writing and supported it—an instant bonus missing in many previous relationships. Since he couldn’t get sex from me, here was someone taking the time to talk to me because it was what he really wanted.
I understand the dangers of idealizing someone you meet online. For most of my life, my “whole world has existed between my ears,” as one of my mom’s close friends told me recently. It’s true. I let my imagination fill in the gaps. It doesn’t help that I’m a born “feeler,” and not so interested in analysis or, sometimes, in logic.
I had someone who took the time to send me nice things about how I was wanted, and even though he wasn’t a part of my day-to-day life, I was happy.
The difficulties of this arrangement didn’t hit me until one night when I needed someone there, and he wasn’t around. He couldn’t be around. He was on a road trip, and a thousand miles out of reach. Alone in my apartment, I realized that I messed up on a major project at work and missed an important deadline. I was hysterical, the kind of snot-nosed ugly crying that seems to be ripped out of you. I sent James a text message, unwilling to call and interrupt his trip. It’s impossible to explain despair and seek solace in 160 characters.
With no response from James, I phoned a friend in town. She soothed me from the other end of the line, and calmed me down. I went to bed, and awoke to the sound of a message on my phone. In letters and characters that seemed cold to me, James offered a solution to the situation, but no comfort.
This might be a common theme in heterosexual relationship problems: in bad moments, women want comfort, a shoulder to lean on, someone to hold them while they cry. Men want to be Winston Wolf at the end of Pulp Fiction, sweeping in and fixing everything.
Here I was, sailing along the sweet winds of a Techno-romance, and my ship ran ashore on a common problem: Technomiscommunication. It brought me back to awareness, a little bit. Being single has taught me this valuable lesson: it’s good to date the kind of people you want to rely on, but whether they are online or in “real” life, don’t make them your only source of comfort. Give thanks for your friends.
I’m going to meet James in person in one week. I’m nervous, thrilled, and very curious. I have read dozens of articles offering advice on meeting someone from the Internet in person. Even though we’ve been talking seriously for weeks, I have first-date jitters: what if he doesn’t smell good? What if our teeth click when he tries to kiss me? What if it turns out that we’re completely incompatible and I can’t stand him?
Or, maybe even more anxiety-inducing, what if we’re perfect for each other, but we can’t figure out how to cover the distance?
Yes, I have thought and over-thought hundreds of scenarios, and I’ve determined that I’m not going to worry about it. If it’s going to work, then it will. If it’s not, then it won’t. If it doesn’t, I’ll be O.K. I have friends, a life, a job in a beautiful city that I love, and this is just one more opportunity to learn something.
One day, we (as a society) will have many things to answer for when it comes to our children and our children’s children. They will ask us what we said, why we said it, and why we thought it was funny. They might ask us what life was like before hover cars, renewable energy, cookies that never harden or cool, or even The Robot Apocalypse. They will giggle at the arcane words like “Twitter,” and “Panera Bread,” as foreign to them as drive-in theaters, sock hops and poodle skirts are to Generation Y. But one thing will stay the same: when two people love each other for decades, younger generations will still ask, “How did you meet?”
They will forget to ask, “How did you manage to stay together?”