One Click and a Life Changes (Have you found love on the internet?)

Member Name: The Operator

Product:	Have you found love on the internet?
Date:	28/05/02 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Oh, what do you think?

Disadvantages: It's not for everyone, is it

This is long. I've tried but I can't really shorten it so you'll just have to come along for the ride. These things don't really lend themselves to being glossed over anyway. It'll arouse emotions, I know. Feelings of sympathy in some, probably anger in others. Maybe you've been there, maybe you're experiencing the same thing. Whatever, it's my story and I can't change it.
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My car blew up. Not blew to bits but still pretty spectacularly, though. Huge clouds of white smoke and a sudden loss of power. At 5.15 am in the morning, too. The garage said it was fatal. Oh well. That's that then, I needed a new car.

It was one of those serendipitous moments. Little did I suspect that my car dying on the A206 at 5.15 on a cold March morning in 2000 would lead to to my life changing irrevocably. These incidents have a habit of setting a train of events in motion that can sweep you along; you're still in control but you're able to let your emotions run free and take you towards your dreams. And so it was...

I was broke. I couldn't afford a new car. Enter my friend and neighbour, a salesman for a reputable financial services company. He told me I could remortgage, save some dosh and afford a new motor into the bargain. Great! We hurried it through and the upshot was that I now had a redundant PEP from a previous remortgage. Yippee - more spare money and now I could afford that sparkly new iMac I'd seen beckoning me towards it in the Bluewater branch of John Lewis. We'd not had a proper computer before except for some scraggy old 286 given by a relative. The internet? Not a mystery but something I'd wanted to get into and now was my chance.

It got connected and and off I went exploring. I'm not into that chatroom thing; it doesn't appeal to me at all. Some people get off on the anonymity, I prefer to know who I'm talking to
so I went off looking for other things. Research, discovering new ideas, finding humour everywhere and meeting the odd (some very odd) person here and there. Then one day in April, the following year, while on a free offers site, I spotted a link to a site where they'd pay you to write about things. This one. Sounded like fun to me so I poked my head around the door and explored. It was great! Here were people having a laugh, writing - some very well - and also getting a bit of pocket money into the bargain. I hung about, wrote something which seemed to go down pretty well and acquired some new friends.

It was good. I was having fun and I was being taken away from the droll shifts and away from the day to day drudgery of an increasingly boring marriage. I won't go into detail but things weren't as they should be and that's a long story. Muddling along for over twenty years was getting the better of me and we'd lost the plot as to what a relationship should be all about. We certainly weren't friends, we never had been. We'd just had our first holiday together for ages as a family without the interference of in-laws and what was meant to be a revitalising experience turned into a bit of a damp squib. Every difference of opinion turned into a spat, usually followed by me getting a "well leave then". Each time you hear that you wonder "what if I did?". I'd just turned 40, too. That magic age when you realise you're over the biblical halfway point by a good few years and that life holds nothing more than a slow inevitable trudge towards retirement, struggling with the Flymo and opening insurance offers from Saga. I'd decided it wasn't what I wanted at all, if that was what being married was about. I'd tried to leave before a couple of times at various points but always got sucked back in for one more go. Better the devil you know, eh?

Then, in mid July just as I was at my lowest, s
omething happened. I read an opinion on bullying and it touched a nerve. I looked at the photo on the member's profile page and saw a beautiful, cheerful woman with an amazingly alluring smile. I'd read her stuff before and it had always seemed interesting and I'd even posted the odd comment but this time I'd seen the picture - it hadn't been there before. I can't really describe how I felt, she was gorgeous and shouldn't have had to exprience the kind of things she'd written about. Quite appalling really, no-one should, regardless of whether they're gorgeous or not but that picture stuck in my head. Then she wrote an opinion on something contentious and someone had a pop at her in the comment section. I emailed her and asked whether she'd like a bit of a laugh at his expense and to my amazement, she mailed me back almost by return and said that she was up for it. We did have a laugh. Blimey, she was fun, too! More to the point, she was fun and intelligent with it, which is such an attractive and alluring combination. Despite that, I never thought about striking up anything more than a friendship. Most of my closest friends have been women. I love women; they're so much more interesting than blokes and even though I never had a relationship with any of my friends, there was always that flirty aspect to the friendships that was good fun and never dangerous. Anyway, as much as I was finding it disagreeable, I was still married.

Very soon, we were exchanging e-mails and planting private jokes on each other's comments boxes. I began to tear home from work and sit down in front of the computer, crossing my fingers hoping that the Outlook Express boing would herald another message from this wonderfully enigmatic woman.
She moved house and was offline for a while and I missed her! I was like a big kid when she came back online after a week or so and we carried on as before, just laughing with each other and talk
ing about ourselves. I sent her a picture of me and was surprised by her comment - she thought I was good looking! OK, I'm not a minger but I still didn't expect that! I was going on holiday for three weeks soon and I wanted desperately for her to be there when I got back. I was terrified that I'd lose her to some other faceless surfer, I was having fun and I wanted it to continue.
We were in no way concerned about trust either. So strange, I could have been anyone; she too. She'd even given me her phone number as a sign of that trust and I felt so honoured that she'd done it. I trusted her too but as for giving my number - well, I knew she wouldn't have rung it deliberately but I had a wife and children there who might have got completely the wrong impression if by chance or mistake, a strange woman phoned asking for me. We were after all still only friends and although my marriage was going off the boil, I didn't need the added bother of being accused of having a cyber-affair. She understood this so I gave her my work number and if she was in any doubt as to whether I was real, she could ring and ask them if I existed. Doubly safe from the trust point of view as I don't work in an office so I don't answer the phone. She never rang, she told me she didn't need to.

On holiday, I couldn't get her out of my head. I thought about her constantly, wondering what she was doing, how she was, what she thought about me. The holiday was a disaster from a relationship point of view. My wife and I hardly spoke, we effectively had separate holidays - we had a huge house and my in-laws were also with us and, although I like them it was very difficult and becoming increasingly strained. There was no physicality left in the marriage by now and I spent most of my time mooning about with the kids or fishing on the beach in the evening. I couldn't wait to get home.

We got back in the early evening of a scorching lat
e August day. When everything had been unpacked and meals eaten I sat down at the computer with the excuse that I wanted to read my mail. The first thing I did was to send a mail to her announcing my return. Back came a reply "Oh, I was hoping that was you..." Fantastic, she was there! We carried on where we left off, just exchanging mails and having a laugh. Her birthday came soon after and I sent her an e-card. The music with the card was from "Peer Gynt", rather apt as she'd visited Grieg's museum in Bergen while living there. Things were moving very quickly now. The mails were becoming ever more intimate, leaving us going to bed feeling breathless with excitement. Very very early on the morning of September 4th last year, after a particularly "emotional" exchange and in very simple but direct fashion, I signed off by telling her that "I think I..." Back came the reply, "Love you".

When I logged on later in the day I saw she'd posted an op about Troldhaugen, Grieg's home and museum, which opened with the lines "It was my birthday recently. I had an e-card. It played Peer Gynt. It was sent by a very special friend, a person who has inspired me in so many ways, and made me smile so many times." I was actually moved to tears and it was obvious things were taking a more serious turn.

We set aside the following Wednesday morning before I set off for work for an "e-date". We were still writing emails to each other, not sure as to whether we wanted to talk yet. Anyway, we were having fun using email; we got off on the tension of waiting for that next one to come in, never knowing what it might contain. We spent four hours that morning really getting to know each other. The mails were also getting...umm...a little racier than "Hi, how are you?" I left for work feeling on top of the world.

Roll forward to September 11th. Memorable to most for anoth
er reason, for me - something else. I got a desperate sounding mail, she was sad. No details here, spare a lady's blushes but she needed cheering up urgently so I said go offline and I'd call. This was it, I was finally going to speak to her. I was going to put a voice to the face in the picture. I had a couple of other pictures but they were fuzzy and not too clear, I still had that original profile picture in my mind as to what she looked like and she'd assured me that it was a good likeness but I was hungry for more detail; I needed the voice. I dialled the number with trembling fingers and a heartbeat of surely dangerous intensity. The wait seemed interminable but it was probably only a couple of rings before she picked up. Crash!!! She dropped the phone! Moment not destroyed but it was a wonderful ice-breaker. Our first words destroyed by the sound of phone hitting floor! Not to worry, we laughed about it. Lots. We talked as if we'd known each other for years; we did in a way because we'd exchanged thousands of mails and there wasn't a lot we didn't know about each other already. But that voice! Sexy sounds corny but sexy it was. I can't remember much of what we talked about, I was away somewhere on that voice, head spinning, completely caught up in the moment and falling ever more in love.

As I sat at work later in the day, watching the events in New York unfold on our rest room
tv, my thoughts were elsewhere. Mixed emotions racing through my head at odds with what was happening on tv. We had to meet now; this had to go one step further. She dug out an old mobile and we started texting each other to kill the time before we could chat in the evening. A few days passed and we finally sorted out a date when we could meet. It would be in London, even though she lived 200 miles away, she'd be visiting anyway and it had to be somewhere suitable, not romantic as such but somewhere memorable, in the middle of the bri
dge in St James' Park on the 11th October at 11 am, for instance. Bridges are good, they bring people together and we thought it would be a suitably idyllic place for our first "tryst". We still had three weeks to kill though. Those three weeks were full of contact. We couldn't stay apart, either on email or by SMS. All we could think about was meeting each other. I was even calling her before I left for home after work even though I'd be chatting to her on the net before long. My mobile bill was horrendous. 14 pages of text messages, £134 in one month alone.

The 11th eventually arrived and I set off for London. I was held up on the tube and was running late. Not to worry, she texted me to say she'd only just left. It's a woman thing, obviously. I sat there on the bench watching the bridge, expecting to see her appear through the Queen Anne's Gate entrance so I could get to the bridge before her. No sign. Text - "I'm lost" Aaargghh! Call, "Where are you?", "St. James' Park tube", "Follow the signs for the Home Office", "Where's that?", "Aaaarggh". No time to think about what she looked like now, I was actively looking for someone getting my running commentary on the phone. There she is! Aaaargh! No! Surely not? Thanks, there is a god, she's turned the wrong way. Then she appeared, I saw her putting her phone away so it must be her and we moved towards the centre of the bridge, me smiling manically and she staring straight ahead and laughing. I couldn't believe how tall she was! As tall as me and I'm 5'11". We briefly said hi, looked momentarily at each other and kissed. I can't actually remember which part of her head I kissed, we were gloriously clumsy but it tasted good. Then we just hugged for about 5 minutes, telling each other that we'd finally made it and that we couldn't believe this was happening before we we
nt and sat down.

My first impressions? She wasn't quite how I'd imagined her. I still only had those couple of dissenting photos, neither of them looked like each other and neither looked like her at first glance but then, neither of them did her justice. She was gorgeous. Her eyes were a shimmering grey-green and they tore into me like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

We sat there for two hours or so. She had texts coming in asking what I was like and we had a bit of fun texting back. We talked and held each other, much to the amusement of all the tourists walking past. What were they thinking? Were we a couple having an illicit lunchtime liaison? Were we man and wife just enjoying each other? What was I thinking? I was totally absorbed in her, I could now see, hear, smell, touch and taste this person who had held me almost spellbound for the last three months. We went for a drink and then on to the Courtauld Galleries as we thought we'd better do something else to remember the day by. We went for a simple meal and sat there just watching each other eat. I ordered an ice cream, she didn't want a whole one but the waiter pre-empted my asking by bringing two spoons. I don't know what the other diners thought as we fed each other and made faces but who cared? We were having fun, we were determined not to forget this day.

We left the restaurant and walked on to Trafalgar Square where we leant against the railings surrounding Nelson's Column and, well...it's suffice to say that the memory of her eyes gazing up at me will stay with me as long as I live. I was experiencing emotions I'd never thought I'd ever feel again, if indeed I ever had felt them before. Here was a woman I knew so well, to the point of almost total intimacy but only through talking on a computer and the phone, acting as if I was a lover she hadn't seen for ages. I felt absolutely no guilt, it seemed so natural and so complet
ely right that we were acting in this way. We eventually went our separate ways and I got home feeling emotionally exhausted but elated.

By this time I'd told my wife that I was definitely moving out and she moved out of the bedroom into my son's room. I was unable to find a flat though and agreed to stay until Christmas for the childrens' sake. She was aware something was happening to me, the computer was in the corner of the living room and I was acting suspiciously every time she walked past. Morevover, some of our mails had found their way into her account. With hindsight, I should have admitted there and then that our friendship was rather more than serious but, not having anywhere yet to stay, I deflected the questioning.

Things between us carried on much as they had been. We were now desperate to see each other again and the opportunity arose in mid-November. We'd had a bit of a tiff which affected me badly. It affected both of us badly, to the point where we were going to call it off. Upset, I told my wife that I needed some space, threw a blanket and some clothes into the car on the pretext that I was going to sleep in it and drove off up the M1. She didn't know I was coming until I texted her from beyond halfway. No way was I going back but still I'd decided on the journey that I was probably going to end it. She met me at a petrol station in Crewe and as she walked towards me, I fell in love again. We embraced and kissed and I followed her back to her house. Oh dear reader, you just don't need to know what happened that evening. Use your imagination if you must, because I'm sure as hell not telling you. I stayed three nights; love was re-affirmed, as strong as ever.

Now? I finally moved out in mid-February. We've both made that journey up and down the motorway so many times now. At the beginning of August I'll go up one final time and the car will stay outside her house. My marriage
is now over, I'm not returning here anymore except to see my children. Purely by chance, I found a woman who answered every need I had. Through our on-line "affair", we discovered each other in ways neither of us thought possible. We found our connections, the things we wanted to do together, the things we had in common and those we didn't. What we found above all else, through all those thousands of emails, MSN chats and texts is an unbelievably deep longing for each other which surmounted the distance between us. That distance finally gave way to love. Maybe the choice of the bridge as our first meeting place was prescient in some way but that distance has now been bridged and we're heading off into a new life together.

Falling in love on the internet is easy. Conducting an internet affair isn't easy, though. We certainly found it hard at times but paradoxically, it brought us closer together. The distance was an obstacle we were determined to beat. I can't say yes or no whether I'd recommend conducting a relationship like this, it just worked out well for us. I can't even tell you what to do if it's an illicit one. The rules make themselves up as you go along as everyone's circumstances are different. Certainly I would have handled it a bit better from my marriage point of view - I hated the lies and have now, rather belatedly, admitted everything. It doesn't assuage any guilt, I had none, my marriage in my eyes already being beyond redemption but it cleans the slate and allows you to think about the future more clearly.

Only one thing left now. Who is this wonderful person who's let me discover a life I'd always hankered after? This gorgeous woman who dominates every waking moment of my life? Some of you know, don't you? Quite a lot don't, though. Sharon, Shazzy, CherryBlossom, you've got me babe.

Wild Thing, I think I love you...

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