Michael

The day my separation was final, I met Michael online. He was a year younger than me. I was bowled over by his wit and intelligence. Something about intelligent men is sooooooooo attractive to me. Michael was literally a genius. He had set fire to his high school swimming pool and had gone to college at 16. He had a myriad of funny tales to tell.

I like to think that I am not shallow and that looks aren’t important to me. However, I have met men online in the past with attractive personalities but that attraction has ended when I saw their photograph. Michael sent me a photo of himself. He was fat and balding, not very well kempt and on top of that he was the same height as me. There was nothing physically going for him at all. Such was his personality and wit that none of this mattered to me. I fell under his spell from day one.

Michael told me his sadness over the death of his wife, who had died of cancer, leaving him with 2 small children to care for. His mother had recently died. He made a living working at home with computers and as a travelling speaker for a software company.
When Michael told me what he did in life I was surprised not to find a reference to him on the internet. I told him and he explained that he used his mother’s surname sometimes. After that I had no trouble finding references to him and even footage of some talks he had given.

I should have suspected something immediately. I had had problems in the past with people not being who they said they were. I have no idea why the surname thing didn’t click. He had lied to me and would continue to do so.

The next day we exchanged a few brief witty emails. The emails became longer, as did the chats. Two and a half weeks later we told each other how much we loved one another. We couldn’t wait to meet. Michael gave me his home phone number and occasionally I would call and we would talk. It was always wonderful. The connection between us was amazing. He once wrote the most beautifully romantic yet erotic tale of how it would be when we made love. It wasn’t tacky or sordid, just wonderful. He sent me pictures of his two adorable children and shared the problems and adventures that they had. I dreamed of us all being together in the tree lined street in the photos.

Michael lived in New Jersey, I was in England. He often travelled to Europe to speak so our meeting was just a matter of time. 10 weeks after we met online I was on a plane to Amsterdam. When he met me at the airport I just fell into his arms. We snuggled up close all the way to the hotel. I have very strict moral boundaries about sex before marriage so that weekend we didn’t make love (as much as we both wanted to). We did spend some wonderful hours together walking the streets and just lying in each others arms talking and kissing. Michael only took one picture of me and it was from a distance. We did talk about maybe getting married. As he did have to talk at the conference, we only had time to visit one museum. He left the choice to me and I chose the Jewish museum. I have always been fascinated with Judaism and really enjoyed teaching Michael, who is catholic, all I knew. I also have a thing for Jewish men! On Sunday night we stayed up for ages talking. Michael told me about when his wife died of cancer. He cried in my arms. However, alarm bells went off because when I asked him how long ago it happened he gave a year sooner than the one he’d given the first time we chatted. I have a very good memory. Something else was wrong. There was some lack of solid commitment to me. I didn’t understand. I put it all to the back of my mind. When we said goodbye on the Monday to catch our respective planes, I wept. It was so hard leaving him. The one thing I had left was that we would meet again in March in Prague, where he would be talking again.

We carried on as usual after that meeting. Emails, chats, which were often interrupted by his kids coming downstairs and him having to put them back to bed. We had occasional phone calls. It was nice to have his phone number and his cell.

One night in February I called him when he was driving back from a conference. He pulled over to the side of the road and we talked for maybe 20 minutes. We finished with our usual I love you’s and our desire to be together in Prague the following month. Neither of us knew that this was to be our last talk.

The next morning I woke up and checked my emails before leaving for work to see if there was something from Michael. There was an email entitled “Dave is a liar and a cheat”. I opened it. It was from his wife. I couldn’t believe it. I emailed back asking if it was true. At lunchtime I got a reply from her. Yes it was.

After work I called Michael’s home number and Louise replied. She told me how she had met Michael online and how he had left his first wife for her. She said she knew this would happen some day. Michael had had about ten online affairs in the ten years they had been together. Usually she found out from a card that came through the post. This time she had needed to contact Michael whilst he was away and had looked through his computer. There she had found a file labelled “DOG”. In it were over 200 emails we had exchanged. She had read many of them, she knew me. She had also known I’d call. Michael had given me the number of the fax machine and had told her not to plug it in as he was fixing it. She had plugged it in. She was afraid I would be angry and abusive. Instead we were two sisters united in the pain caused us by a selfish man. Michael had lied about so many things. He wasn’t even Catholic but Jewish. There was some irony in me having taught him everything I knew about Judaism in Amsterdam! His mother had died of cancer and they were living on her money as he wasn’t employed. He did speak at conferences but for an open source software organisation for expenses. She had spoken to him on the phone the night before and asked him why he did it. He replied, “I hate to travel alone”. She told me she would make Michael apologise to me. She also said that he was to go into therapy as this was the last straw and she’d leave him if it happened again. She was loathe to leave because Michael was such a great father. She said that at least she had the children but that I was left with nothing. We chatted until I ran out of credit. Although I never spoke to her again, I made a friend that day.

I did receive a written apology from Michael, as Louise had promised. I never saw him online again. Later in the channel that I met him on, I found out that he was notorious for this sort of thing, rumour had it that he had got one girl pregnant.

I guess I had a lucky escape. Every experience in life brings a lesson with it. This taught me to trust gut instinct on the internet. If a person lies about one thing, he may be lying about everything. If something feels wrong, it probably is.

Dick/Shah

I was 38 when I met Dick online. I was the mother of seven and very new to chat. We had downloaded a chat programme for my oldest son’s jamboree on the air with scouts. Afterwards we had kept it. I would sit beside my son and daughter as they chatted, aware of the horror stories about the internet, determined to protect them. Little did I know that I was the one who needed protection? Before long I began chatting myself after they were in bed. Kids would tell me their problems and I would offer comfort and advice. I felt valued and needed. It was great.

Dick was a 21 year old computer science student from LA who was working and studying in New York. I found him really interesting and a great listener. He was the first person I ever gave my email to. He was hardworking, devoted to his parents and determined to do well in his studies and pay his own way, despite the fact that they were wealthy. He’d recently left his girlfriend, having found her with his best friend. Friendship and loyalty were important to him. We chatted once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more. He was always in a hurry. He was always understanding and mature beyond his years. Before long we began to email every week. Each Sunday, sometime after church, his email would arrive, and each Monday I would spend the afternoon typing my reply. I was a one fingered typist back then!

For a long time my marriage had been lacking in affection. Having done a lot of reading I now know that affection is a woman’s primary need. We need to be hugged and told we are special each day of our lives. We need little cards and gifts, our hands to be held in the street. These are the things that make a woman feel loved and needed and sexually responsive. My husband had been failing in this department for many years. Each time we talked about it he said he would try harder, which he would, for a few days…I felt he only gave me affection when he was horny. I felt unloved and used. I didn’t understand his need for sex, he didn’t understand my need for affection. Now I know this is very common. Back then I felt unloved. I craved the affection I had had during our courtship and engagement.

Now I had Dick assuring me that I was a wonderful woman, attractive, valuable, and special. He would send me e-cards telling me what a good friend I was and how much he appreciated me. Within weeks I was in love with him. I couldn’t wait to check my inbox every day to see if there was a card or a letter from him. I couldn’t dream, with the age difference, that he would ever feel the same. I was an obese, rather plain woman with glasses. I had seen his photo. He had model type looks; in fact he often did modelling shoots for his friends. I resigned myself to admiring him from afar. The guys I chatted with often fell for me. I am articulate and witty and a good listener. I mentioned this to him in one of my emails.

His reply threw me. He said that he also felt like that. It hit me for 6. (Editors note: a British expression somewhat similar to “knocked me for a loop” a term derived from the game of cricket… a home run of sorts) I could never dream that things could be that way. He asked me to meet him that night online. I will never forget the intensity of that chat, to finally know that he loved me as much as I loved him. I was on cloud 9 for a week. My diet started immediately, I needed to be the best I could be if I was to spend the rest of my life with this man. Off went the glasses and on went the contact lenses, I started dying my hair again. I felt fabulous. The pain of not physically being with him was as intense as the joy I felt. Many a day I would cry over the kitchen sink.

The fact that I was married didn’t matter; nothing mattered except me and him. I didn’t even feel guilty, despite being profoundly religious. I was planning on visiting him just as soon as I lost enough weight to feel comfortable doing so, though he said he didn’t care what I looked like, that it was me as a person that he loved. He was in my thoughts from the moment I woke up till I went to bed. I would read and reread his emails and e-cards. I had visions of marrying him in a quiet ceremony in the park.

After a week in this blissful state, my husband found out. He simply asked me if I was in love with Dick, not expecting the reply that he was to get. Suddenly he realised what he stood to miss. I had before craved any drop of affection I could squeeze from him and now he began to drown me in it. Gifts, cards, letters, hugs; all were wasted on me. I felt so sorry for him but it was all too late. He was stifling me.

Then he did something I found very hard to forgive, he spoke to Dick online. Dick asked me to try to fix things with my husband. I couldn’t even think about it. My husband was like a brother to me and Dick was the love of my life; the man who made me whole and complete. Dick suggested we cool things for a while. He said he loved me but that I needed space to try to fix my marriage. He said he’d always be there for me as a friend. Maybe if things hadn’t worked out in a year or so ……

I was so angry with my husband for doing that and spoiling my happiness. It was such a hard time for both of us. He would alternate between intense waves of anger and then of all the affection that I had begged for over the years. The poor guy just didn’t know how to handle the situation.

Dick then just disappeared. Two weeks later I met Shah online. Shah was an Indian. He was so much like Dick in writing style that I thought he was him. We chatted for a few hours and he eventually admitted to being a close friend of Dick. He wanted to know if I really loved Dick or if I was just pretending. I left him in no doubt about that! After that I started chatting with Shah regularly. It was like Dick had sent him to keep an eye on me, make sure I was ok. I still suspected he was Dick though. He always denied it, seemed taken aback that I would ask. Some weeks after we met, Shah told me that Dick had had a car accident and was in hospital. He said that Dick’s hands were injured and he couldn’t type. He said he had spoken to Dick on the phone. Eventually he told me Dick was back recuperating in LA with his parents. Looking back I was in denial. I was naïve. I loved Dick, he was my life.

I don’t know how I learned that you could trace emails. Some guy I met online traced both Dick and Shah’s yahoo emails to the same place, same IP number. Shah made and excuse about it, saying that Dick was a computer genius and it must have been some tDick of his. Then a friend told me that he was convinced that my pic of Dick had a small crease down like middle, like it was a scanned magazine picture. Then one day I was chatting with an Indian friend online and he used a phrase I had only ever heard Dick use “for your kind information”. Suddenly the penny dropped. There was no Dick, only Shah and who knows who he really was? Looking back I remember Dick warning me in an early email that I needed to be careful online because for some people it was just fantasy.

I finally confronted Shah. He denied everything as usual. We almost stopped chatting completely. Then about a year later we had a chat and got the nearest he ever did to a confession. He was telling me that I was the only person who had always been there for him online, the best online friend he ever had. Then he used the words, “You knew me when I was another person”. He never did admit to what he had done.

In the meantime my marriage never did recover from that time. 18 months later I left my husband and moved away to train to be a teacher. I knew that somewhere out there was someone who would give me the love and affection that I had once had from Dick.

Then I came across the book His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage which taught me that my own husband could fulfill this need. I went back with him to try again. Sadly, he had been too hurt and could never get over my betrayal. In the 18 months I was away he too had undertaken an online life and had explored his latent bisexuality, had an online affair and fallen out of love with me. For three years I stayed and put in 100% every day, rarely getting anything back.

Now I’m on my own again with my children. I never did stop chatting. Last year I wrote to Shah. I’m not sure why, maybe I wanted closure. He wrote back hurt by my accusations of his having lied to me. I don’t now what became of him but I feel sorry for him. He has never admitted his own lies to himself. I don’t know how he can live like that. I have never been less than fully honest online.

I regret the pain I caused my husband. He is the real victim of all this. His life has been turned upside down and inside out because of my choices. We are still the very best of friends but he says that too much water has gone under the bridge to go back.

In the meantime it’s been a massive learning curve for me. I now know what I want in a man. I know what I need to do and the sacrifices that need to be made to have a truly successful marriage. So often I come across guys online who are thinking of having online affairs because their wives are unresponsive. I always refer them to the His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage book and tell then it’s never too late to get the sizzle back into their marriages. I learned the hard way that the best person to have an affair with is your own spouse!

"You've Got Mail" (I know it's a chick flick!!!)

OK... so it's a chick flick. I was flipping through the channels on television last night and "You've Got Mail" was on HBO... weird... I thought that movie was way beyond pay channels, but I guess they had some time to fill.


The story of Christy and her reply have been posted and may not be a "feel good" online relationship story. Now, I don't expect a storyline as unbelievable as the movie, but I sure would like to add one here that has a GREAT ending.


As I've said before, this can be totally anonymous, the nicks can be completely fictitious and I certainly would never reveal email addresses or the like. I have other stories that I've heard about, but I would rather get some first hand experiences.


If you want a rewrite... I'll try and do that... but if you want to submit as you have written, I'll do that too.


At any rate... thanks for looking!!!

Christy's Response!!!

Believe it or not, "Christy" responded to my email and request and has written a brief article which I am including below. I did absolutely no material editing, but have added a bit of formatting to make it more readable depending on browser and/or reader.

This is my goal... to hear/read BOTH sides of the story.... and I would love GREAT stories to put up as well. I know there are a lot of wonderful, successful relationships that are rooted online. I would love to hear from you....



And I was Christy. I loved ‘being’ Christy. It was a part of myself that was deep inside and it didn’t take much to bring it to the surface in the context of the playful IRC. I actually remember meeting Joe. I was very new to chat. Joe used to hang out with a friend and the 3 of us started talking. It didn’t seem to matter though whether we were in a large chat room, or a smaller room with his friend – there was electricity between Joe and I that was inexplicable. He had the wit and intelligence that seemed to be lacking in so many of the men I chatted with. We shared the same energy and sense of humour and softness of heart. I don’t remember if I knew he was married. None of that seemed to matter….when we chatted we were in a little bubble and more connected than I could remember ever feeling before.

I fell in love. What I only realized much later is it wasn’t Joe I was falling in love with as much as it was Christy. I loved this part of me that was living so large with this man. I was flirty, and fun and sexy and though I was not the blonde young adorable chickie that I described myself to be, nor was I living the kind of life that I referred to – I felt like her! Probably for the first time in my life.

The internet is the best place to live out different parts of yourself. That’s the good news/bad news snapshot of this technology…. It was an introduction to exploring more of me. I just didn’t realize how unsafe it would be. When I say unsafe….I mean how addictive and connected I would became to this part of me and of course to Joe. The longer we talked, the more unwilling I was to let go of the fantasy. The night we had our last phone call. I think it had been going on at that point for over a year…or longer. I had told Joe that I needed to be by myself and was going to Europe. It’s not that I wasn’t courageous enough to tell him the truth. It’s just that I couldn’t bear the thought of him not loving me or minimally remember me with loving thoughts. It was, of course the ultimate selfishness. I am not proud of it….but I understand it. We talked on the phone for hours – his mother was ill and it was unbearable feeling that I was leaving him at a time when he needed me most. But I knew this ‘relationship’ had to come to an end and at that time didn’t know how else to do it.

I remember the night I finally realized I needed to come clean to Joe…it was months after we’d said good-bye….and it was through an email in the middle of a very dark night. It was an epiphany. I came to understand through a gift of clarity that standing up and taking responsibility for all the parts of me would be part of my healing. I wrote the email in about 20 minutes and clicked on ‘send’. The sense of relief was almost immediate. A year later I got on a plane and visited Joe despite the profound concerns raised by my friends and family. They all thought I needed to leave it behind – I knew I needed to stand in front of him, touch his face, own who I was and then say goodbye.

It was a pivotal point of change in my life and I’m happy to say one that moved into a period of profound emotional and spiritual growth and health.

I don’t chat anymore…. I am fully rooted in my day-to-day responsibilities, friends, family, business…etc. I wouldn’t have given up knowing Joe for the world. He was a gift in my life. Through him I found me!

Christy

It was February 1996.

I was 38 years old and hating life. I was in a horrible marriage to a woman who had totally emasculated me, taken away everything that made me a man. I was also living the American dream, at least on the outside. We had a three bedroom house with two mortgages, a new Volvo for the wife and a new Honda for me. Two children perfectly spaced at three years apart and even the dog was a purebred German Shorthaired Pointer. I owned my own business with an office on the 27th floor of a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper, paying more monthly in parking fees than most Americans paid in rent.

The computer at home was so that I could work there as well as the office. Being self-employed with two very young children, it was nice to be able to hang around the house every morning until after traffic died down. I spent time with my daughters, took them to daycare, did chores and a bit of this and that. Of course, with the computer came the internet. Fairly new in a lot of ways and when I signed up for service, part of the software package that was supplied was a chat program called mIRC. What a life changer that turned out to be.

Thousands of people online at any one time from all over the world, able to chat and converse freely from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world as long as you both had access to irc (internet relay chat). Adding the three major server groups, undernet, dalnet and efnet, there usually nearly 100,000 people or more online, chatting at any one time. On each of the networks, hundreds of channels and topics to choose from covering just about any interest you could imagine from the most wholesome and worthwhile to the most prurient and tawdry.

And so I was online. Horribly unhappy. Zero self worth or esteem. Dying to find conversation and companionship but perhaps most of all validation among the thousands of strangers out there... online. Somehow, among all the random possibilities, of all the people in and out of all those channels...

...I found Christy.

She was everything that a man in the middle of his mid-life crisis could want. Nineteen years old, from Canada, a college student, she was "about 5' 3" tall, around 105 pounds, kind of dirty blonde hair, 34b - 25 - 35, with a small tattoo on her hip of a purple flower." What more could an out of shape, 39 year old, unhappily married man want? Despite the obvious differences, she seemed to like me. Those of you reading this who have been in online relationships will understand this next statement. "Something clicked!" What it is, how it happens, is unknown, but somehow over the vast array of servers and computers, it happens... you just know... there's something special there.

We became VERY close, VERY quickly. It seems silly to make such an intimate connection over such a distance, but it seems that such connections are even easier online. The fact that you can remain anonymous seems to allow for a greater openness. You learn of someone from the inside out rather than from the outside in. First impressions are not so much the visual appearance, but more the inner person as he or she is revealed online. And this seems to allow for even more intimacy than "real life" (I hate that term, actually) affords most of us. In those days, there were few .jpg's or photos of any kind. It was more about who you were and not how you looked.

Christy and I became everything to each other. It's funny, we both knew that we would never meet in real life. She was 19 and in Canada. I was 38 and in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Things like that just don't work. Yet, we continued to grow closer. Chats turned into all night affairs. Telephone calls soon followed. We shared anything and everything about each of our lives. I learned about her best friend Carrie, Carrie's boyfriend, Christy's boyfriend, her parents, her pet cat, Henry, down to the most minor detail, we shared everything. It seemed a lot of the stories were sexual in nature which interested an old man like me even more.

We laughed about good times, cried about bad. She told me stories about all her escapades, detailing many of them with Carrie and the others as sexual in nature. Again, here's a guy in the throes of a mid-life crisis who has the affections of a horny 19 year old. How much better could it get. But it wasn't just about physical attraction and sex. I had never felt so completely open and intimate in every way with anyone in my life. We shared it all.

Her parents surprised her on her 20th birthday with a party. She ran upstairs and called me wishing I was there to share it with her. A month later I turned 39. There was a party and the expected revelry. I found out later that she contacted one of my friends by email and discussed the possibility of coming down to surprise me. But, I was still married and that would not have been a good thing at all.

I knew about all her thoughts and fears and she in turn knew mine. One night I found her online and later by phone after she had been "date raped." She cried and told me that she "deserved it" because she was flirting and then accepted a ride from this guy. I cried too but eventually convinced her that she had to go to a crisis center at the very least. She may not have to turn the guy in but she must get some help, counseling and an examination.

Christy was a strict vegetarian. Not so much from a health standpoint, but from the point of view that she would not participate in anything that involved the killing of a living thing. She would not even join the family at Thanksgiving, because the turkey looked so much like a bird that it sickened her and made her sad. She was the type of gal that would pick up a sparrow at the curb and take it to a veterinarian hoping to nurse it back to health. She was a lover of life in all it's forms and I found that to be one of her most admirable qualities.

Another crisis entered the relationship when Christy became pregnant by her boyfriend. She knew she was too young to be a mother, but also had a horrible conscience towards adoption. Of course, with her views on honoring all life, abortion was not even an option. We spent several nights in tears over what to do about it. In the end, she had a miscarriage, another night of tears, but maybe the best that could happen under the circumstances.

I seemed to offer her a bit of maturity and wisdom. She was 19 (later 20) and without a true direction in life. I offered what little advice I could. In return, I was validated by her interest, caring and even love for me despite our age, cultural and geographic differences. As time went on, I gained more and more self respect and self worth. She made me feel like I was worthy and that I could be a whole person again.

Christy really allowed me to grow a great deal. In October 1996, seven months after meeting Christy, I left my marriage and began a new life. I did not leave my wife to be with Christy or even to meet her. As I said, we both knew that the differences between us were far too great. I didn't leave because of Christy, but she surely gave me the confidence that I would be OK when I left.

Within a month, another departure would occur. Christy decided not to return to college that fall, partially due to the pregnancy and miscarriage and partly because she really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. In early November she left to go to South Africa on a missions trip. She was going to help feed the hungry and care for the needy. It seemed a perfect fit for her. Although it's a terrible thing to admit, I missed her more than I missed my marriage.

As we said our goodbyes, we promised to be in touch on her return, but, somehow, we both knew... this was goodbye.

And so... she was gone.

Just a few days later, I was online and received a message from "Carrie." "Are you Christy's Joe?" she asked. Yes, I was... very much so. Carrie was Christy's best friend and was feeling much the same loss as I was. We chatted and laughed and I heard other versions of the same stories that I had previously heard. Carrie and I became fast friends. I figured out pretty quickly that Carrie and Christy may have been even closer than I had previously known. We even joked about setting up a three way household when Christy returned because Carrie and I both agreed that neither of us could keep Christy happy and satisfied on our own. Carrie and I chatted for a few weeks, but then in mid-December, Carrie disappeared without so much as a goodbye. This happens a lot of course online, but I was surprised, nonetheless.

And then... there was no one.

And no communication...

Until April 1997

About 14 months after I first met Christy and 6 months after Christy's departure to South Africa, I received an email. I paraphrase below:

Dear Joe:

I don't know where to start except maybe to say I'm sorry. My name is M***** and I am 8 years your senior, an obese, Jewish woman from Canada. There is no Christy. There is no Carrie. Both were fantasies I lived through you.

Nothing was real. Everything was fake. No birthday party... No rape... No pregnancy... No Carrie... all a lie.

The only thing that was true was Henry the cat and the fact that she was a vegetarian. Nothing else.

To say I was devastated would be a vast understatement. For whatever reason, even though it was irrational and impossible, I loved Christy and believed she loved me. All of that was gone with a single email. We maintained contact for a bit. She thought maybe a relationship might be possible because, as she said it, "Christy's heart is my heart." But, I could never have gotten past the dishonesty.

The very foundation upon which I had based my new life was an illusion.


EPILOGUE:

In the end, you'd think I would have never gone online again... never chatted or met anyone else from online. But, I have met several people from online. I'm sorry to say that many were not who/what they said they were, but some were even better. And in a major surprise, a couple years after that April, I met M*****. She got in touch and told me she would be in California for business and was not going to get this close without meeting me. We met, did the tourist thing in L.A. for a day and a half and she was gone. It was a needed closure though. We still email about every 6 months or so. Just to be sure we're both still OK. I'll probably email her a link to this... maybe she'll comment?