"Getting divorced is like stepping out of a time machine. But it's a really shitty time machine. It's the kind of time machine that takes the real amount of time to take you to the future." -- Louis C.K.
If marriage is experienced in real time (and unhappy marriage in excruciatingly slow time), then online dating is experienced at a much greater velocity than real time. A week in online dating can feel like a month or two in real time, especially during the time before you actually meet up in person.
A while ago, I was contacted via the dating website by an "age appropriate" guy in NY who is moving back to LA at the end of the year. Since then we've been writing back and forth like two hopelessly single characters kept apart by cruel circumstance in a Jane Austen novel. No texting. No phone calls. No Skyping or Facetiming. Just good old fashioned words, the comfort of the familiar to an analog girl adrift in a digital world.
It seems like I've known Age Appropriate for months, but I haven't even met him in the flesh yet. In fact, we've only been writing to each other for a mere *three weeks*. It's all very You've Got Mail, minus the Nora Ephron dialogue and the Upper West Side travelogue.
I'm not sure how it will all play out with my unexpected new penpal. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll even meet, a thought which may merely reflect my impatience with delayed gratification and not really mean anything at all. However, as a writer I have to guard against "talking an idea to death." Instead of pursuing an inspiring idea by writing about it, sometimes a writer will pursue the idea by telling everyone about it, and then lose interest in it without ever writing a single word. I wonder if that same thing happens in online dating if there is a lot of email before a first date. Maybe we're emailing to death the possibility of dating before we even go out.
We'll see. In the meantime, I'm rediscovering my long dormant love of writing an engaging letter. Instead of being able to rely on a sexy dress or a smile, I take the time to write something thoughtful or funny. On the other hand, it's a lot of f*cking work, this epistolary seduction. So I'm hoping he just moves here already and we get the first date over with.
See? I told you I was bad with delayed gratification.
Long-distance courtship is a powerful thing. I highly recommend it, and for once I'm not kidding. I would do it even if the guy lives right here in the same city. It allows the players to fall in "like" with one another without kicking in the self-defeating criticism of liking him only for his smile or how well she looks in that dress, etc. Letters are inherently monologues, but the power balance is equal, so no one feels slighted. They are also inherently generous. It takes time to write a letter. And most of us only use those particular fine motor muscles to sign our debit receipts. Plus, letters reveal (if its there) humor, empathy, vocabulary, whether he writes like a girl, and whether he knows how to use a semicolon. These are important; maybe even deal breakers.
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