What I have learned being online over the past two years

Okay ... this is from a journal entry I posted on another online community ... This is the other side of me that only gets let out occasionally and is under a tight rein. But I seem to be losing control ... hmmm ... yep ... cut them reins ....

Let’s clear something up right away first off ... I have actually been online and had my own web sites and webcasting projects on the Internet since 1996. Google my name and you will find it all over the place. But, two years ago I became separated and later divorced. I spare you the details. But as a newly free bachelor (once held prisoner for decades) I simply didn’t have a clue. Imagine being a MIA-POW released after thirty plus years and facing the reality of a changed world. Yeah ... there is a correlation (for you literalists out there “think metaphor”).

Now I understood the Internet. Besides musician, co-producer, audio mix-down engineer, I am also the IT guy who gets that end of it going here. But, what I had not paid a lot of attention to in all those years doing the Internet is just how much culture was evolving and becoming online savvy. I was still a product of an “off-line” culture and situations being as they were, realizing connections and relations online eventually became my umbilical cord to sanity. Now I realize there may be some who will question the sanity designation or at least my presumption to it, but as I see it, that’s your problem ... not mine.

But graduating out of the “MySpace” nursery into the “real” online world of more defined online communities and adult (not XXX) networks (well ... maybe a little of them), and not having a history of meeting people online to develop relationships, it was learn as you go. If life is a journey, well ... this side trip really was turning into “a trip”. And you really want to know something, except for the distances that separate us, and that drastically impairs the more intimate physical aspects of a relationship, but IF that is not the immediate or primary purpose to connect and develop a relationship, this can be a hell of a lot of fun.

Let’s get this perfectly clear, I LIKE SEX, but I like sex in a relationship that is substantially more than just the sex a lot more. And becoming entangled in a relationship that is primarily “sex” based personally sounds pretty friggin’ boring too me. Not that I wouldn’t, or hadn’t at some time in the past, but ladies ... I want into your heads as much as it might be perceived I might want into your pants. I hope that’s not too blunt.
As I have cruised around these sites, establishing myself here and there, I have made a fair number of friends. I mean real friends. Friends who will help out in times of need and do whatever they can to help. Including opening up their homes and giving financial aid.

What I have found is that as people establish themselves and become real online “It’s just like the real world” ... It is if you can imagine it, a networks of voluntary communities, built on a premise of similar interest’s and likes and realizing bonds of affection and relationship, transcending geopolitical spheres and proximity. I can be interested in and develop a heart connection with other human beings realizing the same human experience and sometimes speaking foreign dialects yet appreciating each other as our national politics and governments rattle swords. And I am finding we like each other.

Now it is true, that you will find as many of the empty headed rabble as you will find off line in “real life”. Which only goes to prove, life online is really NO different than in that other dimension, the misnamed and misconstrued “real” one.

But you want to know what is the best thing about all this online relationship stuff. The ladies ... And it’s not just any ladies, not what I might be limited to by going to (ugh) “church” and picking from the available stock, or cruising the bars to find what may be convenient, but the special ones. The ones that just seem to fit right. The ones that prick the minds interest and cause you to act impulsively ... a little bit out of character ... and take a chance. But not for some “quickie”, but something that can be grown, explored, experimented with. Something that keeps the interest alive.

Have you ever considered, and I write primarily to those desiring and expecting something more than “just sex” (the rest of you can quit here to avoid being offended), that as everything we perceive takes place in our minds, feelings and thought, what you feel with another communicating with them, be it via phone, or keyboard and in person, all is produced in your minds, and is equally as real in the mind. Now, I grant you, the aid of pheromones in live contact will no doubt stimulate the passions of the body and provide the opportunity to ecstasy that will most likely (at least I hope not in my lifetime) never be matched. But if relationships transcending sex is a desirable thing (not eliminating it now), what is online dating other than, chatting and conversing and writing to each other, getting into each other – deeper than into the others pants.

Now I can hear the complaints about not being able to look into each others eyes or holding hands and feeling the embrace of the others arms. I concede ... that part really sucks. But, on the other hand (and as one friend said “there’s always another hand”), I’m talking about meeting that one, or two, or half a dozen, that are out there, and their minds connect with yours, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of twisting and manipulating to make it work.

Yeah ... my situation may be minimal ... but I don’t think I’d change too much. Because I have friends, and they’re all over the world. And there are ladies who really do like me. And we enjoy each other ... and some are very special ... maybe very very special. But it will no doubt prove to be more than just sex ...
Oh ... and one more thing ... there are no rules ...the only rules that exist are those agreed upon between one and the other ... no rules ... no judgment ... But, I do recommend ladies ... play it safe ... (for some, that disclaimer is necessary)