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You get to this point where dating is more than the work it really is anyway and despite the fact that you are creating new definitions for the word lonely on a hourly basis, you just quit. But the need to connect with someone of the opposite gender is not one that is easily vanquished so you end up in these rather odd friendships with widowerers. You message with them on the YWBB site or you move into emails or IMing.

And there is nothing romantic about it but it is not entirely innocent either because neither of you is used to playing coy or being circumspect anymore and it isn’t long until you are looking too forward to the time you “spend” with this other person.

I had two such friendships. One that is over by mutual agreement.

The second is becoming something else. By mutual agreement.

And I have to admit that I am happy about that. I should be frightened really and sometimes I want to just tell him that. That this is really scary and that I would rather just be “just friends” again, but I don’t. Don’t tell him that. Don’t want to be just his friend. Don’t have any idea of what is propelling me onward in this aside from a need to know him.

Since the week before Christmas when we first began to communicate, I have received 128 emails from him. We IM every night now and talk for hours past the late night into the early morning hours on the weekends.

Two weeks from tomorrow I will see him in person for the first time. It is strange to have these overwhelming feelings for someone I have never been in the same room with. Not even the same country with. There are all these questions. Like why would anyone so wonderful be so concerned about me? Will I get shy and tongue-tied when I see him? Will it be as easy to talk to him when I am looking in his eyes? What will his arms around me feel like? How will I ever be able to hold everything I think and feel back when there is nothing in between us anymore? When does more than friends become more than that?