It started out as an online confidante.  Prodigy had excellent bulletin boards.  There were no chat rooms, but e-mail and board postings provided a worthy substitute.  I found someone looking for a guy to talk to, and I didn't mind helping her out.  She needed someone to help her work out things in her personal life.  How easy it was for her to tell me all about her problems, and I was able to reply with the same ease.  She was experiencing the usual teenage conflicts with her mother, and I was there to console her.  The words hit the screen as if they were directly from my mind.  They would say what I felt, as if I were writing a letter and not holding a virtual conversation.

I finally met her after about a year of that, but things didn't work out.  I already had a steady girlfriend.  Several months later, she received an e-mail asking for some help.  This time the tables had turned, and I was the one looking for comfort.  We exchanged pictures and wrote a couple letters on real paper.  It became apparent that the online relationship was based in reality.  Another problem we faced was our physical proximity.  She lived about 45 minutes from me, but I could drive so it did not seem like a problem.  It then turned into a real relationship, but we only saw each other three times in three months, and probably had as many e-mails.  Her reality was simple - she was bombing in school and not allowed much of a social life.  Leave it to parents to push a child even further downhill.  Beyond that, the online relationship died as soon as the off-line relationship started.  The occasional phone call was our only communication.  With the quick demise of the off-line relationship, the connection was terminated.

This displays the all too often harsh reality of online relationships turned off-line.  I really do think ours was different, but it provides a good example.  The Internet is free from barriers.  You usually cannot find out too much about the person on the other end, and most times don't care.  Who the other person is now and maybe for the last year is all that matters.  But real people are the sum of their experiences, and sometimes the online relationship is too much in the "here and now" and not in consideration of the whole person.