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I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of relationships, romantic and otherwise. I have always experience my strongest relationships through friendship and mutual traumatic experience, AKA work.I have several relationships over the internet. But I fear I must use the word “relationship” lightly in this case. There is a very strong cyber connection when you think the same on TV and politics and fashion. You IM back and forth, feeling as though you are finishing each other’s sentences. There’s a euphoria at finding someone who actually understands, someone you can be yourself with. Someone with whom you feel safe. Between modem and cyber space and back again, it’s simpatico.

Then you arrange to meeting. And the awkwardness of flesh and intonation and demeanor are injected into your perfectly flawless interactions. And it’s completely not the same. And you feel lied to, even though you never were. Even though your cyber buddies standing before you feels the same way. So is the mistake taking the relationship out of context?

I was in exactly that situation this past summer. I traveled across country to see a play. (more on that later, let’s just say I can be impulsive) My beta, someone who proofreads for me, was going to the same play. Her emails sounded enthralled with excitement, so of course, I had to be equally excited to meet her, right? Well I was. I even changed hotels so I wouldn’t be alone in this big bad southern state. Always working to resist the urge to be anti-social, right?

So I call from the hotel to see where she is. She is on the road, on her way and she’s with a friend. I’m hyper and excited to mean a new friend. Excited to have survived the 24 seater plane ride. Elated that there’s a coffee maker in the room. And I have arrived in time for the matinee so I go see the show, knowing I’ll get to see it again that night.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Really well done.

I get back and they have arrived. They are tired, they are young and they are so not on the same wave length as me. I try to be welcoming and open and friendly, And all they can do is look at me like I have three heads. They weren’t hungry, so I had dinner alone. I drove to the show that evening because I was just there a few hours earlier. No biggie, I got to play my music, which I though we had in common. I couldn’t tell by their reaction.

As you can tell by now, as I could, that I was feeling like a piece of furniture, to be acknowledged so you don’t bump into it, maybe even sat on if it looked appealing enough to go near. But basically, they were the dynamic duo and I was, well, not part of it. Essentially, I was alone.

By intermission I figured out what was so horribly wrong with the situation. I was asking all the questions. I was actually interested in her and her answers. She didn’t ask me anything. She wasn’t interested in me. She was the complete opposite of the person I knew online.

So I stopped trying. Stopped asking questions. Stopped trying to be social. It was a two-man team and I wasn’t invited. Literally and figuratively. Dinner was kinda awkward. They picked a really bad restaurant to eat, though it could have happened to any of us. They had school and literature and age in common. I had the story she was proofreading for me, which I now understand was the root of her enthusiasm. I guess she didn’t expect the fiction she grew to love to come from the package it arrived in.

The evening ended fine with them surfing the internet together on the hotel computer and I went to my room. I decided to just let them be kids together. I had a plane to catch in the morning, so that worked out fine. I left something new for her to read, but only because I said I would. I already knew she wouldn’t. As far as I know, she still hasn’t. Which is also fine.

So I ask again, did I break a rule? Should I have left our relationship in cyberspace? Was I wrong to assume a kinship and trust in the things we both agreed we had in common?

She lost interest in being my beta after that. There was never that same excitement in our cyber discourse. The magic was gone. For her. For me.

Fortunately, I don’t miss this cyber-friendship. After all, you can’t really miss what you never had.