By Jessica Lanyadoo
Hello, Jessica.
I’ve been getting to know a fella for 10 months, and we haven’t met in person. We mostly text and have an occasional call. The odd part is that he lives in the same town. He is making grand plans for us together but still won’t go on a date. I actually have a lot of feelings for him, and if all the plans are true, I’ll be very happy. Our not meeting is a point of contention, and we’ve argued about it in the past.
At times I’ve wanted to call it off, but he always checks in and seems as interested as ever. I’m probably crazy for waiting this long with nada to show for it, but we do seem well suited, at least in text form. Mind you I’ve been dating this entire time, so it’s not like I’ve been saving myself. Will we actually ever be together in the flesh? — JMW
JMW, it doesn’t take a psychic to know that if you meet a guy online who lives in the same town as you and he doesn’t want to meet up after more than a week or two of flirting, then that guy is married. Or perhaps he’s trapped under a large piece of furniture. The point is that he has no intention of meeting up, and no matter what he tells you his reasons are for dragging this out for almost a whole year, they boil down to him being unavailable. The question that you’re asking me — “Will I ever meet IRL?” — is not the right question, JMW. What you should be asking is why you’re willing to give your heart and so much of your time to a fake person?
Never let a person fill a meaningful portion of your time — or worse, take up real estate in your heart — unless you know away from your devices. What you’ve been doing with this guy is not how intimacy is developed; it’s how fantasies of intimacy are developed.
This is the thing that I cannot stress enough: texting, e-mailing and even talking on the phone are not nuanced enough to develop true intimacy. We humans need physical contact (I mean being in physical proximity, although touching ain’t bad if you can get it) and emotional exchange for that to happen. In a word, presence. Ideas and words are beautiful, but when that’s all you’ve got, there’s too much room for you to infer whatever you want from your dynamic. It’s easy enough to spin crazy romantic notions about a person under the most mundane of circumstances, but when all you have are words, it’s damn near impossible to avoid doing so. If you don’t know how a person moves, whether or not they can make direct eye contact when they’re talking, how they smell, whether they keep their fingernails clean or how they treat the person who serves them coffee, how can you really know them?
I think Internet dating is awesome in this modern world, where meeting people can be such a pain in the ass, but there are also dangers in going digital with love. Never let a person fill a meaningful portion of your time — or worse, take up real estate in your heart — unless you know them away from your devices, for reals and in the real world. What you’ve been doing with this guy is not how intimacy is developed; it’s how fantasies of intimacy are developed.
Respect yourself enough to fire this guy from your man roster, JMW. If you just wanted to keep him as a fun waste of time, there’d be no problem here. But here you are writing to me. I’m sure he’s very interested in you, but that’s not enough; after this much time, he should be more than a collection of texts and voice-mails to you. The role he’s playing in your life is like an energetic cock block to meeting a real boy in the real world, so quit his ass and find a fella who wants something real.
XO
The Mission’s resident advisor gets booked months in advance by San Franciscans seeking help with all kinds of relationship issues. So we asked Jessica if she’d come on board to do a weekly advice column, Truth Talk, for The Bold Italic. If you have a burning question for Truth Talk with Jessica Lanyadoo, you can post your question anonymously here or e-mail her at truthtalkwithjessica@gmail.com, and check back on Wednesdays to see if she has an answer for you.
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