It has been proclaimed that one in five relationships start online. Mathematically speaking that means that four of five relationships ... do not start online. Consider that. When you are in the four fifths category, that 1 in 5 ratio makes it seem that you have been left out of the sandbox.
Without any statistical proof (although I am working on it) I would venture to say that two out of five online relationships are dating scams.
Come on, the pickings are easy. Lonely, seeking, vulnerable men and women converging within the nexus of the internet. The anonymity and guise in a worldwide casting of a romance net by anyone and I mean ... anyone, anywhere, anyplace, in any country offering what you need to hear and what your heart craves, a chance at connecting fully with another human being.
So, with millions of seekers of love and relationships surely there has to be ONE for me (one lid for this pot). Out of millions? I cannot that much of a loser! WTF, even Stephen Hawking can get laid - well, somewhat.
So ...
In 2011, I experienced the love of my life.
In 2011, that love, or rather the object of my love in full was ... an illusion.
I fell madly in love with someone ...
who did not exist.
My love was real.
He was not.
I can without hesitation say, that for the first time in my adult life, after twenty years of a second marriage (let's not even consider the first marriage) I WAS IN LOVE.
There is no vocabulary to explain the thorough emotional joy, excitement, happiness, beaming, and all the other great adjectives for how I felt with my online love. Nor, the gutwrenching, suicidal, middle passage pain and devastation I experienced after learning of his deceit. I came to the edge of myself. A place I had never and ever been before.
My humor, my ability to laugh (albeit weakly and within a torrent of tears) in the darkest moment of my life ... saved me.
The cliff notes version (do people still use cliff notes?): my husband of twenty years whom I did not love even when I married him, had been having an affair or affairs. I did not care. I was travelling a lot for business. I simply retained the social currency of marriage. No happiness, no connection, just ... the currency: I am married, I have a man. That kind of superficial social currency.
Yet, when the husband finally told me point blank that he had moved on (intellectually I already knew this) something snapped within me (no, I did not go for a gun or pills). I just realized 'out loud' that my social currency had dried up. I was a middle aged woman entering the statistical arena of ... middle aged divorced women (which is comparable to entering a Roman arena with it's quintessential thumbs down to the social loser).
In a tiny spot of my mind (where cultural stereotypes and poison barbs of thought reside) I became one of those women that women are socialized to fear becoming (um, no cats ... yet) alone, undesirable, therefore unattractive, and subject to literally fall ("I've fallen and I can't get up") and have no one around to help. Hey, it could happen. So you better have a partner. (Imagine those cats getting hungry after you being on the floor for a week)!
Lazily and impulsively I gave this ... husband twenty years of my younger life (I thought I could just ride the marriage out as I figured I was wearing him out) my best years (firmer breasts, tighter tummy, a discernible waist, ability to dance, not as cynical).
Now, I was ... alone (imagine that inner voiceover voice saying, This time it's for real).
That was/is a fucking scary prospect.
Even for someone with ovaries and/or balls like me.
My online boyfriend (I nicknamed him Cutie) came at a time when I felt like an island of myself. As a matter of fact, a few days before I met him online I was in a fetal position on my bed wondering what to do next with and in my life. I thought he was a Godsend, a timely gift from the Universe.
Cutie was to be my ultimate lesson(s).
This is my story.
Stay tuned (shit happened that you will not believe)!
hemehadhadmehe ...
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