Falling in Love Through My Thumbs, Pt 2

The life and death of my virtual romance with a delightful yet distant suitor.

The Fool. Photo Wikipedia Public Domain.

(Read Falling In Love Through My Thumbs, Pt 1.)

In nearly every relationship I’ve had, from the most fleeting to the one I married, we’ve met online.

It’s strange, as I’m super social and know loads of people in my community. If anyone were to meet someone in real life, you’d think it would be me. But, no. I’ve had to seek them via online dating, every time.

When my last relationship ended, I questioned the wisdom of trying again. I was so content to be alone. But a tarot reading from a friend made me question, was I just numb? By my age, it’s pretty easy to slip to romantic and sexual complacency, and by that I mean — to simply stop seeking (and therefore, stop having) those sorts of relationships. Is that what I wanted for myself? Did I want to be done? Did I even remember how to flirt?

I decided to test these questions — and the bounds of my heart, hope, and libido — and posted a profile to Facebook Dating.

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And it was… fine. It took almost no effort to set up, and I got the results I expected for my level of effort — that’s to say, very little. Most men are just so boring.

“hi beautiful”

“hi Dana”

“how you?”

How me?? Bored and disinterested, that’s how.

But then I got a message that sparked my interest. It came from a tall, dark, and handsome man, well-dressed, age-appropriate. Good with words. No, more than good; he was an author and professor. He dazzled me with his words, his responsiveness, his openness, his kindness.

There was one catch, though. He lived in another country.

Turns out, when you live in Seattle, the default distance span for Facebook Dating hops over the Canadian border and in my case, into the inbox of a distant man. But he was dreamy, and came with an initial rush of checking off so many boxes, quickly followed by some serious wish-fulfillment kinds of heart and mind connections.

I was enthralled. Deeply, impractically enthralled.

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In the dozen years since my marriage ended, I’ve yet to find a relationship that felt like a partnership, a merging of our lives. And I get why. We GenX folks tend to be pretty entrenched with our families, careers, friends, and homes. How to merge two full lives in-progress in any meaningful way has long been a question unanswered for me. None of my boyfriends have ever felt a part of my home; hell, for one reason or another, I’ve barely had a boyfriend spend the night at my place. Yes, in nearly 12 years.

I’ve always been the one to extend myself, to spend my nights at their places, or to forego overnight stays altogether.

I’ve pretty well concluded I may never have that sort of partnership again, someone who both feels like home and who is literally sharing a home with me, and the burdens and joy that involves. Even as I — at least theoretically — still super want that sort of partner.

Obviously, Mr. Canada made any expectations around merging lives implausible. It seemed highly unlikely an online connection could result in a willingness to uproot and start a new life elsewhere.

But for now, I wanted to crack the numbness. I wanted to flirt with this man, to see where it led us. I figured a little distance wouldn’t hurt. My heart felt hungry, courageous, infallible.

It was all of those things — and I came to find out, it most definitely could hurt, distance be damned.

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Our geographic situation shut down all my guards and changed the rules. Ordinarily, I won’t engage with an online suitor for long before insisting on an in-person meeting. I know my imagination is far too good at filling in blanks, and I learned long ago how painful meetups can be when said suitor doesn’t live up to my (very high, imagined) expectations.

But with this one, all we had was virtual. We went all in, hard and fast.

We were both newly out of relationships — me, a six-year “little r” relationship where my needs were met but my heart remained out-of-reach, and him, a 20-year marriage that had lost its sexual spark. We’d each ended our relationships in summer; we were both still accustomed to a level of daily familiarity and intimacy and we spent the autumn filling those gaps for each other beautifully. We texted to say good morning, with others messages sent throughout the day as we moved through our respective lives. Then came a concentrated nightly text barrage well into the wee hours. Like, way too late.

I kinda mostly stopped sleeping.

He’s an even bigger night owl than I am, and late night was the only time we were both free from work and parenting obligations so we could delve into each other via our iPhones and thumbs. Our chats were heady and sweet and sexy and vulnerable and silly and brainy and meaningful and fun, too much fun to stop in the name of practical concerns like sleep.

I wanted to meet him; I didn’t want to meet him for fear the real him wouldn’t be as appealing as the him I’d filled in with my verdant erotic imagination. I wanted him; I was scared to want for fear of losing and I knew the immense impracticality of long-distance dating, especially on opposite sides of a border crossing, even one as amiable as the U.S. and Canada. I knew we were both raw from recent loss and hungry for this sort of intimate connection.

We spoke of our longing to meet, to touch, to do so much more. I told him I was ready; I made suggestions for how we could meet. He sounded excited, but only in words, not action. I could tell he wasn’t ready, and decided not to put weight onto something so lovely and new and fragile. I couldn’t risk it breaking.

So our late-night chats — and my self-induced near-sleeplessness — continued on.

“Your friends are going to hate me for depriving you of sleep,” he said to me once around 2:15am, concerned. “Cult leaders do this — they deprive their followers of sleep. I don’t want your friends to think I’m a cult leader.”

Maybe it was the rush of the oxytocin and endorphins and the exhaustion talking, but if he were a cult leader, that was fine by me.

I already knew I’d follow him anywhere.

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My heart will always play the fool, will always rush in, angels and where they may or may not tread, be damned.

He asked me one late-night if I’d answer the Proust Questionnaire with him and yes, our conversations really were this word-nerdy; I told you, he’s a professor, and yes, I loved every brainy word of it.

Of course I said yes.

We texted our way through the questions. One of the final ones he asked me was, “What is your greatest triumph?”

“Still having a vulnerable, happy heart,” I answered, without thought. Turns out, after 1am is not great for introspective answers but is great for spontaneous ones. He put a little heart by my response.

“What did you mean by that response?” he asked me a bit later.

I told him it meant that in spite of many, many heartaches, my heart remains open to love, always. It’s hard work to let one’s heart lead the way, despite knowing how much she will ache in the aftermath if things don’t work, and especially as the wisdom of age recounts how things 100% haven’t worked out every single other time.

My heart willingly races forward, rushes up to the highest branch and out onto the farthest limb, every goddamn time like the expectant, ridiculous, hopeful little fool it is.

A part of me knew even as I answered the question, even as he reacted with that little red heart, that my own heart was up too high and out too far, loving the rush of this virtual romance too much in relation to what he was able to give in return.

I didn’t care.

I never care enough for my own heart to protect it. It loves love too much to let any other organ shelter it.

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Can I even call it love?

It was words on a screen and spoken into voice memos into my phone, sight mostly unseen. It was a connection I could feel deep down in my mind and heart, which spread all throughout my body and lingers there still, once as an ache to be released and now just as a sad, heavy heartache.

In my past relationship, I didn’t feel a sense of I can’t live without you and instead I went with I choose to be with you. It was stabilizing and good, for a long time. But it didn’t make my heart sing. And my heart loves music so much.

I knew this budding virtual romance couldn’t survive with anything less than I can’t live without you. We had too many hurdles to overcome to feel anything less than a fuck yes. If there was even an ounce of a chance this could grow to that, how could I not explore it — me, who knows how rare those connections are?

So I accepted it, even knowing how the longing (and the sleep deprivation) were destabilizing. But what is love for, if not to stimulate us out of our routines, to set us aflame and dizzy us a bit to feel the world whirling?

We had a courtship system that worked. We stayed up half the night falling deeper into one another. I sacrificed sleep. His voice set my heart racing. I became a Pavlovian beast for the chime notifications from Facebook Messenger, slightly feral for the rush of yet another message. He told me he felt the same way.

Then weeks passed and it became clear our system was failing us.

I got sick. He got anxious. It became clear we were both having issues managing the fallout of our former relationships, albeit very different ones, but both in ways that the other couldn’t support or help.

He needed a few days alone in his head. I needed a few days more after that because I was too fragile to take on a conversation that likely meant it was all over.

And what was “it,” anyways?

Were we lovers?

Was it even real?

If it wasn’t real, then why does my heart ache so much?

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We were supposed to talk today, but talking has never been our primary mode of communication. I couldn’t bear the weight of a breakup call, especially as our week-long hiatus put an ever-so-slight salve on my heart.

So we ended as we began, over text.

I’m super sad.

I don’t care if it’s foolish to be so sad over someone I technically never met.

I feel what’s in my heart. And virtual or not, he moved mine.

At least now I know. My vulnerable heart and I tested the bounds of love and desire and found — unsurprisingly, perhaps — we’re not numb. We’re still here, feeling pangs but still as steadfast and brave and foolish as ever.

May this fool heart of mine always rush in.

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Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?
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A Portrait of the Writer as a Not-So-Young Fool. Photo is a selfie.