This started as a comment to someone else's entry about a long-distance internet-based relationship, and I liked writing it so much I decided to post it on its own.
Not every relationship becomes living together happily ever after, but that doesn't mean it's failed. One of the most satisfying, joyous relationships I have is with a man 4151 miles away, who I'm 99% certain I'll never meet in the flesh as long as I live and who I communicate with roughly every three or four months. He'll appear online, we'll have a day (several if I'm lucky) of intense online interaction and then he vanishes again. It's been like this for more than two years now.
I've had a few spells of regret and pain at the gap between us, but eventually I settled into it and accepted it as part of the way things are. We hit each other's lives like comets at intervals, brighten up the sky and then move out of each other's orbits again. It became better when I stopped angsting about the absences and simply gloried in the presences and got on with my life in the times between them - and in fact, that's the basic pattern of all my best relationships now. I'm like rich dark chocolate ice cream, you'd get sick of me fast if you had me for every meal. I'd rather be looked forward to as a treat.
He won't see this entry, but the fanciful side of me likes to think he'll hear me thinking of him. Or perhaps this was all inspired by me hearing him thinking of me?
..in other news, am exchanging emails with a man who saw my profile at the naked sauna website. I've made it clear that I'm out of the swing of that sort of thing for the time being, but I won't be dogsitterless and hip-deep in kittens forever. Like the comet, the other side of me will come around again sooner or later, and it'll be useful to have some contacts - I don't want a repeat of the time I turned up looking for action and there wasn't anyone else there. Rawr!
and in other other news, Cassie is having one of her Siamese days, walking round the flat yelling her head off and only shutting up when her belly is rubbed. Why did I ever imagine any cat of mine would be any less noisy, annoying, demanding and in my face than my dogs?