by Stella Grey
It’s easy to fall for someone over email. What’s difficult is following through into life. The closer email conversation brought us, the greater the risk that a real encounter, in a café after a train journey, would be the beginning of a big let-down. I might not like him. It might be mutual. He might take against my middle-aged body on sight (this has happened, after all; it is not imaginary). In person, he might dominate the conversation, in a teacherish way. He might not be used to being interrupted unless I put up my hand. He might be accustomed to being right. He might be pompous and given to monologuing. He might think that I was. It might turn out that beneath the veneer of amiability there was a vicious temper and a short fuse: it was possible after all. We might find we’d said everything we were ever going to, in typed words. We might have an instant, chemical hormonal realization that it would only ever be a sibling sort of love.
I could see that it would be easy to put off meeting indefinitely, so I suggested seeing each other at the weekend. In effect I was asking him out; I gave myself props for this. He said he was going climbing with friends, but yes, soon. Next week. Meanwhile we continued messaging. Emailing took us into our childhoods, our student days, our marriages and our sad stories. Martin had only been married a couple of years when the relationship broke down. They were separated but not yet divorced, it turned out.
This isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Like lots of people, I started dating before I was (technically) divorced, because the divorce wasn’t finalized until over two years after separating. There are people who say, “Never date the separated but not yet divorced,” but in truth there is no fixed rule and it varies a lot. In my own case, the split with my ex was absolute and uncompromising, rather than dragging on; in reality we were divorced from that first day, from the moment of his announcement that he wanted out of the marriage. I didn’t wait two and a half years to start dating, although you could argue that I began too soon. Martin was coy about the exact timing of his separation. “I’m afraid I initiated it, the split,” he wrote. “We wanted different things.”
“Oh, you’re not divorced yet?” I asked him. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, for meeting someone new?”
“I couldn’t be more ready,” he said.
He went on his climbing trip and was silent, as he’d warned me he would be, and I was twitchy and stayed quiet; it’s important to know when to be quiet. I heard from him at 7 a.m. on Monday. There was a text at lunch, and then in the evening he wrote about his weekend, and I told him about mine. “I feel like I’m falling in love with you,” he replied. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you, at the cottage. Couldn’t stop myself rereading your messages. Never experienced anything like this. Caught up, caught up in it. Can’t wait to meet you: shall we meet this weekend? I can come to you, or you to me. Don’t mind. Can barely even wait until then.”
Now, our emailing became a continual conversation, and I was writing three or four long messages a day. They were beyond the usual scope of email. They were letters. He wrote back typically ninety minutes after receiving one of mine, at similar length. In other words, it was pretty much all either of us were doing or thinking about. Life was put aside. In addition, Martin had turned out to be an adept player of Q and A, the text game. He answered with verve and asked his own good questions. Should trifle have jelly in it? Did I believe in sea monsters? Were there books I was embarrassed about loving? Were there words that offended me? What country in the world that I hadn’t yet visited did I imagine I might want to live in? Did I still have any of my childhood ambitions? Good questions, all.
We didn’t talk, but the written word grew more and more intimate, without being remotely erotic. Instead, there was a dizzying deepening of friendship. Virtual romance budded and blossomed. At night we had typed conversations that had the quality of a long phone call, like those in the days before the internet, sleepily pillow to pillow. I’d done this before and it had gone horribly wrong, but this was different; this was different (I told myself). We found we had similar likes and dislikes, some of the same favorite books, music and films. We liked the same kind of travel, the same kind of art, the same kind of whisky. He said he’d never encountered anyone to whom he felt so immediately attracted. I said I felt the same; I said that we really must meet soon. Martin appeared to agree. “Let’s make sure to do that this weekend,” he wrote the next morning. “Though I’ll be quiet tonight as I have to go to a birthday party, and the likelihood is that it will turn into an epic.” Then there was a second message. It said: “Before I go, I have a last question for today: what’s the most unexpected sex you’ve ever had?”
Later, I wished I hadn’t answered the question at all. Possibly my answer overstepped somehow; perhaps he had fixed ideas about femininity or some such, some complication, some agenda. But why had he asked the question, if he didn’t want to know the answer? Was I supposed to respond, “I haven’t had unexpected sex, not yet; are you planning on surprising me?” Instead I told him about an afternoon in a meadow with an old boyfriend. I also told him that I once had sex on a desk in an office after hours. He got two for the price of one, as they’d been unexpected in differing ways. I thought we had gone into another gear, a pre-meeting, pre-dating gear, and were daring to tell our secrets to one another. Martin’s question had, I thought, the beginnings of erotic possibility; he was sounding out a sexual component to our friendship, reminding us where this was going to lead. Or so I thought. Later, I wondered about the use of the word unexpected. Perhaps I misinterpreted the question. I’m still wondering.
So, he went off to his party, and just as he’d warned me, was not in touch that night. But then there wasn’t a message in the morning either, or at lunchtime, or the next evening. Finally I texted him. “Martin? I’m missing you. Missing our contact and conversation. Hope all is well. Is all well?” There was no response. In the late evening, still not having heard from him, I read my candid email a dozen times, becoming increasingly regretful about sending it. I’d told him my secrets—he’d invited me to—and now he’d clammed up. I felt increasingly vulnerable. What I wanted to ask was “Did you hook up with someone at the party? Why aren’t you talking?” Instead I asked “Have you died of alcohol poisoning?” Texts are easier to answer if you haven’t time or can’t be bothered. They only require one line.
“Sorry,” his text reply said. “Still fighting massive hangover, and backed up with work.” The disingenuousness of this was crushing. It wasn’t really an apology at all; it was the cold shoulder. The open, affectionate pen-pal and prospective lover had become, overnight, a person who was neither open nor affectionate. After a sustained period of near-hourly communications (after “I’m falling in love with you; caught up, caught up in it”) it was all too likely that “backed up with work” was a form of obituary. When a man tells you he’s overwhelmed with admin and that’s why he isn’t talking, he isn’t interested in you anymore. When a man tells you, in different words, that he doesn’t want to see you, it’s best to take him at his word. Work is never more important than love; not really. A five-minute pause can be found, inside most days, no matter how pressured, for a loving, apologetic note, a quick phone call, an airborne kiss, a “missing you.” He hadn’t missed me or he would have said so. He would have added that he couldn’t wait to get home, to email, to call. If a man doesn’t rank you higher than work commitments, you are about to be toast. His ardor is cooling fast, but he doesn’t say that. Instead he says how busy he is.
Determined to meet him, to ride over this unhappy blip, I wrote that I’d looked at trains for Saturday, and listed suggested timings. “We can do this first date entirely alcohol free,” I said, “so as not to punish your liver further; I’m sure we’re up to that stark sobriety.” We hadn’t spoken yet on the phone, and it seemed imperative, now, that we did. “I want to hear your voice,” I told him. “I’m ringing you.” The call went straight to message.
In terms of the timing, it seemed as if it started at the
party—what happened at the party? Or perhaps it started during the hill-walking weekend with his buddies. Perhaps one of them pointed out that Martin didn’t really know me, that he wasn’t even divorced yet, that he should slow it all down. Perhaps they looked at my profile together. Perhaps another of the friends thought I was too old. Perhaps Martin showed them the unexpected-sex email and one of them was horrified by it. Perhaps a little doubt was sown. Did he think sex in a field (or on a desk) was somehow disgusting? Was I going to shack up with a man who—it turned out—could only do it with the lights off and under a duvet? And why didn’t I know that about him? I knew all about his favorite cheese.
When he asked the sex question, I’d responded, “I have a deadline, but will reply in about three hours. Three hours, and then sex.” He’d fired back immediately with: “I want to hear you say those last five words aloud.” What had happened to this intimacy? It had gone. It had vanished. “I had this mad idea, in bed this morning, that I want to grow old with you,” he’d written, just three days ago.
It can’t have been the sex email, I reasoned—that’s not going to be it; it must have been something that happened at the party. I couldn’t ask. I had to give the blip time to smooth out; I had to give him a little space. I stopped emailing but sent a one-line text message. “Let’s have this lunch,” I wrote. “Saturday, yes?” Martin said he was sorry but he couldn’t. He was going to see his parents and wouldn’t be back till Monday night. I asked if we could arrange for the weekend after.
“Unlikely, I’m afraid,” he replied (I’m afraid is a red flag). “Going to be really busy, but I’ll email when I can. Might not be frequently.”
Don’t, please, start using I’m afraid on me, I wanted to tell him; don’t say that the best you can do is email infrequently; don’t make me feel the weight of the obligation.
Enthusing to someone that you’re falling in love, then going cold on them and turning your back: I’m sorry to say that it’s well-documented online dating behavior, though it usually happens after sex and not before. I looked back at the messages we’d sent each other before the day of the party. He’d been giddy with optimism, then. He’d written about our spending a weekend together in a cottage in the autumn; he was distracted from work by the vision of the two of us by a log fire with books and a bottle of wine. He’d written that he was missing someone he hadn’t even met yet, and how was that possible? But all that euphoria was gone now, dissolved. It was gone but he wasn’t admitting to it. He’d begun to treat me as if I were an embarrassment. It wasn’t even that (because perhaps I was; that wasn’t my call)—it was his preferring to wound someone with silence and with euphemisms: that was enough for me, in beginning to acclimatize to the loss of him. I’d already hemorrhaged far too much faith. I looked at his profile again, seeing its skillful, comical rendering of his life with new eyes. I wanted to tell him that he should be ashamed of himself. Instead I demanded that he call me. I told him that no matter how late he got back on Monday night, he had to call me. We had to talk. He said he thought it would be too late, and he’d be tired, but he’d try. (No, in other words. It’s such a telltale thing, when people begin to be consistently too tired for you.)
He went off to his parents, and I had a tough weekend. It seemed clear that it was over, this promising thing that never got the chance to start. The abruptness of it was a physical shock. I felt fluey and ached, and didn’t sleep well. I’d failed to learn both Lesson One—men I had an instant attraction to, and who sounded like thoroughly decent people, could actually be arseholes—and also Lesson Two—email relationships aren’t really relationships. I hadn’t even got past Lessons One and Two, but seemed to be caught in a loop of wishful thinking. Don’t get over-invested before meeting someone: I should have learned this but I’d been an idiot. Again. The trouble is that it’s intoxicating, the process of becoming over-invested.
The evening after Martin got home there was an email from him, and my heart thumped as I opened it. It was six lines, enthusing about the books he’d bought, a lovely pub lunch, the local beer. Unusually, it wasn’t signed. Writing his name would have meant adding kisses or not adding them, and either way that would have been political. He’d had a lovely weekend! And now there was a six-line impersonal update; evidently he was winding things down. He could turn it off, our intimacy, and had. He’d made a decision not to be that person with me anymore; I was to be denied him, that infatuated version of Martin.
But still, even now, there were mixed messages. Even now he didn’t say, “I don’t want to meet you after all; I’ve had a change of heart.” He’d try to call soon, he added. “So glad to hear from you,” I wrote. “Thought you’d read the sex email and had a change of heart. I’ve been reading signs and omens. My confidence isn’t great these days. Looking forward to talking to you when you call.”
He didn’t reply to this. Nor did he phone. When I tried to ring him, the call went straight to message. I hadn’t actually managed to speak to him at all; not once throughout the span of this whole brief episode.
Three days after I’d given up on Martin, I had an email from him. It had gnawed at him, evidently, his silence, or else he’d realized he had to put a stop to my expectations that our lunch had only been postponed. He told me more about the weekend with his parents. His wife had been there; a setup job; he hadn’t expected to see her. She’s only thirty-six, he added. She wanted children; the breakup had been about his not wanting children. His parents loved his wife (he no longer called her his ex, I noted) and wanted them to go to counseling, to try again. They’d offered to pay for a lovely holiday, so the two of them could be alone somewhere and talk things through properly. It was evident to me, reading this, that the breakup had been recent, possibly as recent as the day he joined the dating site. His membership, our conversations, had been a survival mechanism, one likely to go nowhere. He hadn’t decided about the holiday offer, he said, but whether it happened or not it was obvious that he wasn’t anything approaching ready for another relationship. He wrote that he would probably regret this, but this was goodbye: he wasn’t going to be in touch with me again. He was taking this step even though he was massively attracted to me, he said; he didn’t want to mess it up and break my heart. Ah yes, the I Am Nobly Going to Dump You so as to Save You maneuver; it was not unknown to me. I considered writing a barbed and magnificent takedown, and began one and then deleted it. Emotional energy should be saved, wherever possible, in no-win scenarios like this.
There were some things he was certainly ready for. I saw him on the dating site that very night, when I was sleepless at 12:30 a.m. and went miserably trawling. I saw the light lit alongside his name. It continued to be lit for much of the weekend. I kept the site tab open while I was doing other things, and watched, fascinated, as he came and went. Perhaps he was entering into another rapturous, manic written intimacy with another substitute woman. I wrote a four-word text: “Go on the holiday!” But then deleted it unsent.
I was hit hard, again, by this evaporation of hopes. I’d hoped hard and extravagantly, and fell a long way from the climb. I spent the day after receiving Martin’s kiss-off watching films back to back, with chocolate and ice cream, with the blinds almost closed to block out the irritating sunshine. I had a midlife DVD binge, watching films that feature fifty-plus love. In order to punish myself a little more, they had to be successful, rich lovers with beautiful homes. I started the binge with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers), which is set in a beach house in the Hamptons. Frances McDormand is in the film too, playing Diane Keaton’s best friend, and at one point she makes an impassioned speech about how her beautiful, clever, 50+ friend can’t get a date, and stays at home night after night, because the men her own age are busy chasing women of her daughter’s age. “Yes! Yes!” I shouted. It was tremendously cathartic.
I went to bed thinking about Diane Keaton’s character’s comment that she hadn’t been kissed in such a long time and
thought it was all over for her. I realized that it was kissing that I was craving. Sexual hunger can be dealt with: it isn’t difficult for a single woman to organize her own orgasm, if it’s an orgasm that’s needed. That’s merely a technical matter. But kissing is something else entirely: kissing can only be done with another. There’s no gadget for kissing, and no means of coming even close, desolate in your bed in the dark. I imagined a lovely man turning to me from his pillow and putting his mouth to mine, and kissing very softly, and then harder, and feeling his tongue at the edge of my lips. I saw his face in the dark, the light from the window catching the light in his eyes, and the look in them, intent on loving me. I imagined extended kissing that gradually became more urgent, probing and then softening again. There was no doubt about it: I wasn’t a woman in need of a shag. I was a woman desperately in need of a SNOG. (Basorexia. An overwhelming desire for kissing. Apparently it’s a thing.)
A few days after this a man I’d written to several months before popped up again. Roger. I’d sent a hello message to him, ages ago, having clocked that he lived along the river from me, suggesting that we might meet. This was during a radical Ask Men Out phase, when I was attempting to be straightforward. “Hi,” I’d said. “Do you fancy a cup of coffee some time?” Roger said that would be lovely, and left it at that. At the time I thought this was either ineptitude or rudeness, and either way I wasn’t going to be the one to say more. Now, seeing his face again, and that he was still single, I thought I’d have another try. It occurred to me that it had been my turn to say something, after he’d said that it’d be lovely, and that he might have taken my silence as a sudden loss of interest.
Roger was lugubrious-looking in the photograph, long-faced and hooded-eyed, his smile tentative, like he’d just said something he’d hoped was funny. He was pictured in his kitchen, and there was stuff behind him from all over the world: an Australian painting, Asian cookware, African bowls, French plates. His profile made no real effort to appeal, but I found the unpolished style of it attractive. This time I was careful to sound interested. “Roger,” I wrote. “Remember me? How about that drink?”