How to Fall in Love on The Internet

So it happened.

I'm a cliche. A statistic. An Oprah show.

Or am i just needy?
Needy of love? Needy of a feeling of connection beyond the cold war that has raged in my loveless marriage for years?

Too scared to get out, too far gone to ever feel love for him again.

I had long ago resided myself and my marriage to apathy, indifference, erractic bursts of resentment and disdain, and the occassional drunken sexual encounter. This would be my life.

Fine, I thought. I have good friends, good family, a great child. I'm happy with those things. There is no need for a storybook marriage, or even love, to fulfill me.

And so it went.

Until one warm May evening when i came home from a night out with friends. A few cocktails, a husband out of town, (hence the empty bed and a laptop perched across my legs in the queen size) and a restlessness that often accompanies the balmy, spring air.

Bored, curious, and a bit adventurous thanks to the martinis, I'm surfing the net, fishing the vast waters of the information highway. What's out there? i think. Who's out there? i wonder.

I search a couple of people I haven't heard from in years. I pop in a few names to see what comes up. My own version of "Where are they Now?".
Who's next? What about her? What about him? And just like that, -he popped into my head.

Him.
The sports guy. The writer guy. The boyfriend from sophomore year who broke my heart. The him who I haven't thought of in years.

The closed chapter. The "love" that was obviously a gross over-exaggeration of my young heart, and a girl who didn't know better. He did and he'd broken my heart.

But then it had been 20 years and I'd had a lot more heartbreak than James. Shit, marriage number two wasn't panning out so well.

Where in the hell was he?

I type the letters to his name in the white space search bar, expecting nothing. Expecting to keep him right where he's been, in ex-boyfriend oblivion.
Turns out he's in Wisconcin.

And still fucking hot. Damn. The profile page says married, kids. And clearly still cocky, with that smirky half-smile staring at me from the page.
Well, good for him. Somebody made it. Happy life, happy wife, beautiful kids. I let the martinis be my guide and i think "What the fuck?" so i hit the "send an email" option and compose a message, subject line "Are you my ex?".

I'm feeling witty, sarcastic and genuinely platonic and curious about my old friend. I write a clever little note because hey, we were friends once.

So I click the send button before I can over think it and i shut off the computer.

It's two days before I check the email to see that he's responded.

He's shocked to hear from me. Stunned, really and I can sense it from the response. I get a little giddy to see he's written me back. Twice actually. In the second message he nervously apologizes for a sarcastic and funny comment he's written in the first message. Clearly, he's forgotten I have a sense of humor. I smile as I type the response.

Two decades later, he's polite, he's funny, he's kind. He wants to know about me, my life, my whereabouts after college. He's charming. He's hot.

I write him back.

I become more and more interested in his repsonses, checking daily now, to see if he has sent me an email.

He never disappoints and soon we are emailing "real time" exchanging rapid fire messages back and forth, as though we are having a real conversation.

Within a few more exchanges, he confesses to marital misery as do I. It's not hard to talk about the disappointment with another fellow "club member". Once you exchange the secret handshake and admit it's not at all what you had hoped, it's pretty easy. We both had it pretty bad.

He confesses to staring at my profile pictures, professing his attraction to me and how beautiful he thinks I still am. He confesses to never being over me.

Really?
I'm the one that got away, he says. I'm the one he's thought about over the years, I'm the one he's fantasized about. I'm the girl he measured all others against.....his standard.

What? I was someone's standard girl? Damn I wish I'd known that. I mean, that would have kept a girl warm during those cold nights in bed with her loveless husband.

He recalls stories with such detail that I'm blown away someone remembers this much about me. I don't even remember some of the things he tells me. Bits and pieces and fragments of our life come back to me as we walk down memory lane.

I admit to having closed the door pretty hard on him and on our relationship when it was over, deeming myself a fool for having thought i had loved him. Clearly it hadn't been love.

Clearly he'd blown off that summer after sophomore year because it didn't mean anything. Clearly I had trusted my heart and been wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

I came back to school junior year with a new boyfriend.
He came back to school looking for me and thinking we'd reconnect. The stubborn and tough girl that I was back then wasn't about to lose her pride. Too late. I acted disinterested and unaffected when he came to see me at the sorority house.

He acted sheepish. Secretly, I had been devasted but I wouldn't let him know that back then, particularly with those cute shorts on and his boyishly handsome good looks. Fucker!!!

Now it's two weeks into our correspondence and the emails get longer and eventually we take our "reconnection" and slight flirting to the phone lines, agreeing to talk.

I'm schocked at how familiar his voice is during that first phone call. His inflections, his laughter.

He apologizes for being an asshole and blowing it with someone he now knows was perfect for him, someone he thinks he loved. I tell him we were 19 and 20 and to let it go because I have. He can't stop apologizing for hurting me.

I am taken with how open he is, twenty years later. So sensitive, so caring and loving. This is a far cry from the 20 year old who didn't want anyone to know we were dating.

We plan to talk again. I have a million questions, I want to know him more. I want to see his face as he says such distinctively "him" things like "Ya' think?".

I promise to call on my way to dinner with a friend. I can get out early and park at the restaurant to make my phone call.
We make a date to finish our talk, to flirt, to laugh, and find out exactly what the hell happened to our love twenty years ago.