Dear April,
He found me on Facebook. He lives on the other side of the world and he is quite a bit younger than me. He has been very intense from the beginning and it’s been scary how fast he has appeared to fall in love with me, based purely on a couple of pictures and online chat sessions. Regardless of how much I tried to deter him, suggesting we stay friends, he kept persisting, calling me his soulmate, telling me I was the one he’d been searching for all his life and basically declaring his undying love…..all completely overwhelming. He’s lured me into an online romance and has absolutely inundated me with declarations of his undying love and devotion and promises of how happy he’ll make me when we’re together, blah, blah, blah. I tried to stay grounded, but got swept away by all this attention. No matter what objection I threw at him (age difference, physical distance, cultural differences), he always went to extreme lengths to erase my fears. I found myself starting to become obsessive about the entire thing & started spending time trawling through his Facebook account, where I discovered that he’d done this previously with his other Facebook contacts. This gave me the dose of reality which I was seeking and I promptly blocked him on Facebook (more for my own sanity than anything else) and sent him and e-mail where I tried (in vain) to explain that I was so overwhelmed by the attention, felt it was too much too soon, was confused, unsure of my feelings for him, hoped we could stay friends for now, felt I was living a lie, couldn’t take it seriously because it was just an online romance.
Soon after, I received a message which read: ‘I read your email – Amazement, Astonishment..u tear my heart out..u cut my heart in half, I’m feeling hard pain in my heart. For me is more gentle to shoot me and die on your shoulder than that letter you wrote. Babe, why did u do that? Plz darling, regain my heart, I give u my hand plz. I am broken, I love you…..your sorrowfully’.
So I emailed him a second time, again trying to make my point that the whole online thing isn’t working for me, but now I’m feeling guilty for wounding him so deeply………..Please help!
Signed,
Online Romance
Dear Online Romance,
Guilty?! THAT’S what you feel?
This guy is playing you and tons of other women on Facebook — and you feel (wait for it….) GUILTY?!
I really wasn’t expecting that. You really need to check yourself because what you should be feeling is annoyance that this guy misled you and irritation at yourself for being the drama queen who bought into his lies.
Think logically for a moment: How can a normal person profess undying love for you when they’ve never met you? They can’t. But that’s why the internet is fodder for predatory emotional bandits. Men like your guy like playing with vulnerable women and they seek them out. Someone with no interest in a stranger would never have responded, but there is something about you that needed the attention and liked the manufactured drama that was never real.
What I advise you to do is to stop spending so much time on the internet and make sure you have a balance in your life between real life and cyber life. The internet is a great way to meet people, but it’s not a place to conduct an entire relationship. If a guy is halfway across the world and he doesn’t own a Gulf Stream jet or have frequent flyer miles stashed away in the six figures, you shouldn’t be talking to him as a “date”. He’s not compatible. He’s never going to be a real life boyfriend. And you should be suspicious of his motives.
Stick to guys in your own area code and use the internet to meet them, but then date them in real life at real movie theaters and real restaurants.
As for your question: Is there any hope of this relationship surviving:
Answer: Are you kidding me? NO!!
