Now look at this, me being a very bad girl and breaking my habit the third day in!
Bad tigerslut!
To make up for this, I will write about INTERNET BOYFRIENDS.
During the beginning of University I led a somewhat lonely existence. I would commute to school – which would take hours – go to my classes – more hours – sleep in the library on my three hour class breaks – take another class – then come home.
Time with my friends was usually Friday or Saturday night. It would be difficult to meet any other day during the week. I spent majority of my evening – hours again – working on assignments for the next day. Any other spare time during the week was spent at work.
Somewhere during this time the movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin” came out. It was a man who had made it to 40 without having sex. Once it gets out at work, his co workers – who become his friends – help him find the one.
Why the big delay? It just didn’t happen. Due to awkwardness and mishaps – circumstances prevented the main character from swiping his Vcard. I loved the movie.
The movie was an entertaining comedy but it hit a little too close to home. Everyone I knew had already had sex. I was 20, (which I didn’t think was that old!) but it surprised anyone that found out that I hadn’t. The response usually was, “Really?!!? Oh My God!!” I did not think that it was THAT strange. I wasn’t scouring the streets, looking for a warm body to play toesies with and continuously striking out. I just hadn’t clicked with anyone yet. Nobody made me feel the overwhelming urge to HAVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. And I am certain a little bit of anxiety played a part as well.
There wasn’t a lot of time to date. If I did meet someone, it would end rather quickly. It was a repeating cycle of loneliness. I would be with someone - we would start to become close – a feeling of unpreparedness would set in and I would delay having sex. I would believe I was ready then want to stop and feel like I wasn’t. The word tease was thrown around like a frisbee on a hot summer day. I didn’t understand what was happening and soon became fed up and frustrated. I decided to forget trying to date and focused on school.
This meant A LOT of isolation. I was hanging out at home, exploring the internet. I had enough time to write and research an animal book, as well as get a better understanding of all the musical talent that was out there in the world. Most people discover music as they grow up, I had a small interest in it that EXPLODED during the first couple years of University. The main thing I did was listen to as many different artists as possible and type type type on my computer.
In momentum with this, time was a wasting. I wasn’t gathering any kind of understanding of relationships by hanging out at home. I was not meeting new people. I was fueling my naivety when it came to creating a relationship. I didn’t realize any of this because I was only doing what felt safer.
Luckily, I made a friend on the internet. Let’s call him Dan.
Dan was the same age as myself and lived in a small town that was about four hours away. He spent his time working at Home Hardware and drinking. Those were the only two things he did. Dan was going through a rough patch. He had been in school and then dropped out. As a result, he also spent a lot of time hanging out at home on his computer type type typing away.
As I listened to music/did homework/looked at animal pictures, Dan would make snacks/probably play video games/drink and we would converse through typing to each other on MSN. It began with short conversations everyday, that soon turned into 3 hour chats late into the night. We would make fun of the fact we spent so much time typing to each other when we hadn’t met.
The internet has a different set of rules. You can ask someone you meet online whatever you want with little to no risk. It began slowly, but I started to talk to Dan about some issues I was having. I discussed the shortness of relationships and Dan was brutally honest but considerate is his explanation of why the people I would date would react the way they did. He told me:
“You tell them you’re a virgin and they get that - But they’re also into it because they see it as a challenge - They’ll start dating you -hoping you will want to/they can seduce you into having sex -Because you’re older, odds are they have had sex before – they expect it sooner than you do and it becomes more difficult for them to wait - Because they are frustrated they are calling you a tease - Because you don’t eventually fuck them - you have to dump them when they start behaving in a way you can’t handle. It’s nobodys fault. Even if you tell them your situation from the get go, it won’t mean they don’t want it.”
This saved me a lot of grief. It seems like a fairly straight forward explanation but when you have ZERO understanding of how the other people will feel, sometimes you need someone to tell you in the plainest way possible. Dan became my guide. He helped explain why people behaved the way they did. He honestly answered a tonne of sex questions, which I could ask him without shame or scaredy cat ness because I hadn’t met him. I started to trust him. Conversations would never enter the creepy zone, he would never say anything inappropriate that would make me uncomfortable. He was a good friend, who was a guy, who I had never met. He could ask me anything, I could ask him anything, it was an excellent relationship. I had the Boy-relationship-understanding-friend without the Boy-wanting-to-engage-in-penis-jabbingness-friend.
Dan was the ‘safety net’ I needed at the time. We were able to honestly talk about a lot of things – especially sex – and I was able to ask a lot of questions I did not want to ask my girlfriends or my MaMa. This helped prepare me for a lifetime of difficult situations. Many of my friends had to learn the same things different ways and sometimes it was a lot more difficult for them.
This was a fairly well working set up until the one year mark. At this point, we were scheduling our conversations. We would set time aside specifically to talk/we knew each others schedules. Topics like people we were dating/seeing became off limits. We would flirt. We would not so jokinglyjoke about meeting.
A few months later, we were planning to meet. We both wanted to do it safely in case one of us was not who we thought. I would bring a friend, we would meet in the closest city and we would pick a public place. We would see what would happen and we were both very excited.
When I finally did tell one friend about this, she teased me that I had an “Internet Boyfriend.” Then she grew very very concerned when I said I wanted to meet him. She kept pushing the fact that I did not know for sure that Dan was actually Dan.
A couple months before Dan and I were planning to meet I met my first long term partner. I told Dan, he was upset, and it felt like breaking up with someone. Which was double strange because it was someone I had never met in person. We did not end up meeting and stopped out internet talkfests shortly after.
