(Written by Jer)
There’s no easy way to explain how we fought when the boredom came. Neither of us was very happy with the situation we were in, and there was no real future for us as long as I didn’t have a job. I was a bum, in the worst sense of the word, leeching off my family to take care of me while I sat around on the internet all day and got fat. I can only say that now with so much ease because I can honestly say I’m not a bum now. But that comes much later. The reason I was a bum is not because I really wanted to sit around all day long, but because I honestly believed I couldn’t work. That there was something wrong with me. I’ve always been an intelligent guy but I had decided that the tradeoff for that was that I was physically worthless. Even geniuses can be complete morons, especially when their self-esteem amounts to zero.
Well, as it turns out, Aly is every bit the intellectual I am. Boy, does she know how to fight with logic which is, of course, how I fight. And for all the love we shared, we didn’t have a hope in hell of making things work unless I got a job. But I was an introvert who was terrified of people. Nevertheless I did try, and I did manage to get a job at a gas station, but I gave it up because the manager always changed his mind on how things were supposed to be done (and wouldn’t tell me why). I got frustrated and it was generally horrible – everyone who worked there was talking about how nobody lasted very long and those who did were only there because they didn’t have a choice. I talked to Aly about it, and she told me that if things were really as bad as I said they were to just quit and find another job. So I did… and I didn’t find another job.
Internet relationships are hard – the hardest sort of relationship you can have because you’re always in contact and yet remain severely limited in the type of contact you can have. It would have been easier not to see each other at all, at least then you don’t have to constantly work at the relationship while wondering if there’s any point to it. And if things don’t work out then you don’t feel as if you’ve put so much energy into it. It is truly so lonely to see someone online 3-5 days a week (and the rest!) and to feel lonelier every time for the fact that you can’t actually do anything together unless it’s sat in front of a computer or with a costly phone attached to your ear.
So one day Aly decided she couldn’t do it anymore. Actually about 20 days she decided she couldn’t do it anymore, and I talked her out of it 19 times. Rough estimate and probably vastly conservative. The point is that things went downhill fast. Aly’s former fiancé moved back into town, she saw there was no future with me and wanted to give things another go with him – she still loved him very much.
I didn’t take it well. I found myself condemning her for her decision and being generally cruel while trying very hard not to be. Aly never wanted to hurt anyone yet at the end of the day someone was going to be. Aly stayed with me for a long time, and helped me through a lot of it. She felt terrible for the decision, and she wanted very much to remain friends with me, as much as I wanted to remain friends with her, but I couldn’t let my love for her go. In the end her fiancé asked her not to see me anymore and she agreed that it was probably for the best. She had decided by weighing up the pros and cons that she could try and rebuild the relationship with her fiancé that seemed much more credible than this “online romance” with someone she had never met and who, as mentioned before, had no direction in life and seemingly no desire to pursue one.
Aly never wanted to cut off complete contact and tried to argue against it at first, saying that she wasn’t expected to cut off contact with any other friends. However because of the nature of our relationship, her fiancé felt uncomfortable with us remaining in contact at all. She said we might be able to be friends again later on, that she’d really like that and wished me all the best, but not to e-mail her or look for her online anymore. And so that was the end. It had lasted about 8 months.