As often happens, I am the total antithesis of all good advice.
I had been divorced for several years and was really having a lot of fun. I had just ended an engagement and was dating two other men who wanted to marry me so I wasn't really lonely, but I needed to make some decisions when I happened onto a local chatline to ask for advice from a man who was seeking advice about ending a relationshnip of his own.
There was a place to post a photo and we both did so. I thought he was a doll and he said he thought the same.
We chatted once and exchanged advice. He never left my mind, but we went our way for a few weeks. We both ended relationships and returned to find each other again.
The second time we chatted online, we discovered that he lived only a few miles from me and we both had tickets to the same outdoor concert. We decided to meet at a restaurant outside the amphitheater for dinner and sit by each other at the concert. He still did not have my full name, my home phone number, or any other contact information about me. And I did not ask for it about him.
When I drove into the parking lot of the restaurant, he was waiting by a light pole. I knew him immediately and I smiled. I parked the car and walked toward him. He smiled and held out his hand, but on instinct, I walked into his arms.
It rained at the concert and I had an umbrella that we snuggled under. We exchanged a wonderful, but brief kiss and talked until they threw us out of the park.
It turned out that he had grown up a few miles from where I was raised and we had a lot in common including a strong faith.
After a week of being together every possible moment, but only in public places, I went away for a vacation and he called me on my cell phone every day. When I returned, I gave him my home number and we dated every evening. He took me to meet his family and he met mine. The next week, he took me to a wonderful restaurant where a musician played our favorite songs.
Over a candlelight dinner, he took my hands and told me he loved me. I told him I loved him too. We were both surprised at what we were saying, but we just knew and we had from the first.
When the restaurant closed, we stood on the curb and he asked me to marry him. Withoug a single thought, I accepted. We were married a few days later without ever having been sexually intimate.
We have been married now for almost two years and they have been the happiest years of my life. I know marriages end and things go wrong, and I am half afraid to trust, but either way we are making beautiful memories and it seems as if we have always been, and will always be - together.

So eventhough I was half afraid to communicate with anyone online, I believe internet relationships, like any other, can work or not depending on what you put into them.
My kids were terrified when they heard what I was doing and insisted on knowing where I was every moment. I told them it was definitely better than meeting someone in a bar where they were already across the table from you and you have to make decisions under the influence of alcohol. And the men I had met at church were such weirdos. Most of the men I had dated previously, I met through work, but I didn't really know them either.
I told the kids, it's not like they're going to put "Axe murderer" on the appointment book or in their personnnel files or something. But the girls called on my cell phone several times when I was out to see if I was okay and threatened to call the police if they couldn't reach me or I wasn't home when I said I would be.
Of course when they met Dan, they felt as comfortable with him as I had so they slowed down on the surveilance somewhat.
I think caution is very important in any new relationship and I believe men respect that. If I were a man I would think a woman too desperate if she threw caution to the wind too quickly.
I was lucky and blessed and I don't advise anyone else to do what I did. But I would hope that everyone else can find someone as special as Dan in any way they can.
smile

[ May 02, 2005, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: smilinize ]