Someone asked in the requests "Is it possible to fall in love with someone you have never met?" Yes, it is very possible, given the right set of circumstances. I was introduced to a man in september of 2008 by my mom who lived 600 miles away. The man (I'll just call him T) and I conversed daily via text messages or phone calls, with no intent in mind other than to gain a friend in whom we could each confide.

Then the day came that I didn't hear from him. And a second. And a third. And I realized that my life was shattered. I panicked, called my mom, and sat by the phone anxiously chain-smoking and biting my fingernails down to the quick. My friend. Was he hurt? Lost? Dead? What had I done that he would simply abandon me like this?

As it turns out, his phone had been disconnected. Simple. Yet, so upsetting for me. So we continued on as we had been and he finally sent me some pictures. He was really attractive to me. But, as I said, we were friends. So we kept talking talking talking talking, and eventually I went to see my mom.

Since I was in the area, I had to stop and see him. We talked for hours and actually made love on that first physical meeting. People have criticized me for this, but the moment moved me and besides, I had been talking to him for so long that I knew him, it didn't seem like the first time we had talked. Shortly after that physical encounter, we decided that we both wanted more from the other than friendship, so we are now a couple, I have moved closer, and we have plans to move together and get married in the near future.

If you break it down, we have only seen each other twice in our lives, but the fact remains that we are so in love that it doesn't matter. I wish everyone could have what we have. It's truly amazing....mind blowing....I'm not the type to believe in love, but it made a believer out of me!

I now live about 70 miles away from my boyfriend, and I work about 20 miles from where he lives and works.  So, I see him about two to three times each week.  We never go anywhere, we just spend the time in each others arms, enjoying one anothers company.  I cherish those moments that we can spend together.  They seem far too few and far between sometimes.  I think of the torture that I endure each day that I don't see him, and I wonder how I coped before when there were 600 miles separating us. 

It seems that time is passing at an incredibly slow rate, and yet too quickly for words.  He says that we will only have to endure this for a year, and then we will have enough money saved up to make the move that he wants to make and have a house of our own.  That year seems to be dragging by.  It has only been a month, and yet there are times that I feel as though it has been a lifetime.  Everytime I have to leave the haven that is his comforting embrace to face the long drive home, I cry and ask how much longer I must endure this agony. 

But then, I see him again, and I realize that this last month has flown by!  It seems that I just arrived yesterday, bone-weary and trying to shake off the road.  I now have a job, and several interviews a week besides, and I don't have to work nearly as hard as I once did.  I want to, simply to shorten the time I must be away from him, and to give my mind something else to focus on.  But, it's not necessary as it once was.

He is coming over today, and I will have the pleasure of meeting his son.  I am excited, as I adore children, but nervous, as he is quite protective of his son.  Things will all turn out for the best, I have faith in this.

Relationships are all tested at one point or another. Relationships such as these are no exception. The last month or so has been one test after another. First, he was involved in a car wreck, then spent some time incarcerated for something he did not do, then he had plans to move to Iowa, but that changed, now he's looking into going to school for a profession I disagree with on the basis that it is quite simply not profitable or probable, and it pushes our cohabitation plans back another year or two, and he has had a death in his family (quite sad, she was only two months old...RIP Daishanae), and I think I may be pregnant. I'm going to buy a pregnancy test tomorrow. Times like these are hard on us all, and the only way to get through it is together. Supporting one another is CRUCIAL to the relationship. Speak your mind, but remember to use "I" statements and remember the golden rule!

For me, the hardest part about moving so far for him is what I left behind.  I left an amazing job, some truly amazing friends, a group of towns/cities that I know well and love dearly.  For what?  For him.  For what I hope to achieve in our relationship.  I get lost nearly every day (I wound up in tears today looking for the library), I have no social life (I tried to go out dancing last weekend and wound up driving around hopelessly lost for two hours and never did get to dance), no friends.  My world revolves around him, my two jobs, and my cell phone, which I view as my only remaining link to the things I left behind.  It's hard, and I often question whether or not I made the right decision.  Then I think about how much it hurts to be away from him, even at the current 70 mile distance, and I can't stand the thought of not being able to drive up and see him whenever I want to.  Was it worth it?  I think only time will tell that.

T decided to enroll in school.  Again.  He already has a degree in IT but, he has decided to follow his "dream" (that he never mentioned until like a month ago) of being a radio broadcaster.  Try as I might to dissuade him, he persisted, and he started classes this morning.  This pushed our cohabitation plans back.  I am not happy, but I am being the supportive girlfriend that I am and dealing with it silently.

I have a possible opportunity with my current employer to move back home to Chicago and have my own store.  I hope that all goes through with this and if it does, I will be moving back.  Even if it does not, I will be moving back sometime in the next year or two, simply because this place is pure, unaduterated evil and I hate it and I am miserable.  T agreed to go with me, so long as things could be worked out so that he would not miss out on too much of his son's life.  Understandable.

Out of the clear blue, he calls me one day and tells me that he may be the father of one year old twins.  He also informs me that if he is, he will NOT be relocating EVER.  I am at a loss for words.  He takes the test and it comes back positive.  The twins are his.  I am overjoyed for a bit.  TWINS!!!  I have always wanted twins as far back as I can remember thinking of the possiblity of reproducing.  This is so cool!  He's got twins which means I get to help raise them and further more that means that there's a greater chance of my having twins with him.  YAY!!!  Then I start to think logistics.  He's not moving.  I am....this is a problem.  I stew it over for a day or so, then I decide to talk to him about it.

There's a small problem with talking...when I get upset about something, I CAN'T TALK.  I can write like nobody's business, but I quite simply can't talk.  So, I write him a two page letter and I sit behind him rubbing his back while he reads.  I feel the muscles in his back and shoulders progressively tighten as he reads.  He puts the notebook down, sits for a moment, cracks his shoulder (a very annoying but also kind of endearing habit he has especially when he's upset about something), and stands, turning to look at me.  He starts talking, and I grab the notebook and pull a pen from my pocket.  I start to write.  He gets flustered, saying he's not going to write back and forth.  I write "I can't talk, it's just the way I am, I'm sorry."  He stares at the ground for a moment, sighs, and continues. 

By the end of the almost hour long discussion, the only thing that we have established is that he doesn't want to break up with me.  In his words, "Do you know how many n*ggas would kill and die for a ride or die chick like you?  Maybe not that many admit it, but I'm a big enough man to say you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.  When everybody else was against me and downing me and turned on me, you were there, and for why I don't know, but I love you and I'm very much in love with you, so no, we're not done yet.  I don't know what's going to happen, but when you go to Chicago, either one of two things is gonna happen...either a, our relationship is gonna get stronger and I'll eventually decide to move down there, or b, it'll end and that'll be it.  But I'm not trying to let you go yet."

All of this has been very emotionally draining on me....I cried for the first time in I don't know how long.  I mean real, honest to goodness tears from my heart from sadness.  Tears of frustration cuz I'm lost or pissed off or whatever don't count.  I mean real tears from real pain.  I don't remember the last time that happened.

When it was all said and done, I was gathering my things...my pen, my notebook, my phone, my charger (yes, leave it to me to be there with a dead phone), and I heard him move behind me.  I didn't think anything of it.  Assumed he was pacing as he is prone to do when upset (so cute, I do the same thing).  But, no, next thing I know, he's behind me, arms wrapped tightly around my waist, lowering his head to mine.  He held me like I was going to disappear if he let me go, and he rubbed his face against my neck, my cheek, my hair.  He buried his face in my hair, my neck, my shoulder, smelling (so very endearing, such animal instincts, how I DO adore that). 

But, being the fire sign that I am, I see the good in this...

• He was willing to talk to me, on my terms.  It's hard to communicate effectively with someone who is incapable of talking.  I know this.  And I don't know why I have to write, but when I try to talk when I'm upset, I just blurt out the first thing to my mind and I try to cut the other person as deeply as possible with my words for hurting me.  Besides which, in a situation like that, where I know I'm going to cry, I also know that I can't talk around the lump in my throat.  When I write, I don't have to worry about any of that.  The pen won't let me write hurtful things, and I don't have to worry about how big that lump in my throat gets, because it doesn't in any way interfere with my hand.
• He didn't walk away.  I gave him all the opportunity in the world to say "F*ck it" and turn around and walk away.  But he didn't take it.  So many would have.  Shit, I would have if I were him.  I'm crazy and I know that, and I don't mean to be, but there it is.  He made a very conscious choice to stay with me, to continue to be my partner.
• The physical proximity at the end, and the animalistic gesture of taking in my scent...Obviously the physical proximity was a way of showing me his love.  The scenting though is really special.  I always wear a leather jacket, and he usually hates it, but it's a trademark...I always smell like leather and minkoil in that jacket because I am very anal about my leather.  I always use the same products in my hair, and on my skin, and they are mostly gender-neutral products, so I wind up with a very neutral scent if I don't wear perfeume, which I wasn't today.  He usually hates when I don't wear perfeume because I don't smell ultra feminine, but once again, it's a trademark.  So, today, I smelled like cocoa butter, wax, mink oil, and sweat.  Smelling me, holding me close like that, he was accepting me, loving me at my worst.  For that, he deserves my best.

The twins turned out to not be his...some kind of mistake in the labs with test results getting mixed up or something.  He was torn apart for a couple of weeks.  Absolutely inconsolable.  But, he realized in the end that he isn't capable presently of providing them the kind of life that he wants for them, so he is relieved to have that responsibility lifted from his shoulders.  I was pissed at the lab.  I mean these people are responsible for putting criminals behind bars, determining which child belongs to which man....there is absolutely no room for error there.  I realize that everyone is human, but if you're in that profession then you quite simply can not be human.  There is no room for mistakes or errors like that.  He calmed me down, I comforted him, and we moved onward.

I've since been fired from the company that was talking about moving me back to Chicago, so that's one worry off my neck for a little bit anyway.  I still want to move back to Chicago eventually, but when is the big question and the answer to that question relies heavily on finances, which are generally fucked right now.  He is open to relocation as soon as he finishes school, though, so that is good.

His phone and internet access are cut off and that is hard to deal with.  I have gone for as much as a month at a time without seeing or hearing from him.  That is very difficult, but I find ways to make it easier.  As time passes, it seems that I'm almost getting accustomed to his absence, and although it still hurts that he is not around, the pain is less intense than it was at first.  I have reverted back to thinking of our relationship as a long distance relationship.  Sure he lives all of 20 miles from where I work, but I can't just show up because he has work and school and his parents are freaks when it comes to people showing up on their doorstep so I can't just pop in whenever I want to.  Kind of like a long-distance relationship, only for other reasons.  Thinking in those terms makes it easier, although it is still hard to cope with not hearing from him at all for a week or more at a time. 

I just keep trying to find the silver lining.  (I love being a Sagittarius - we always see the best in people and situations.)  I still cherish every moment we have together and I see that as a positive sign because all my other relationships I felt at some point during the relationship that I wished the other person would just go away for a while, and I never feel that way with T.  Every second we have together is precious for me, and I would trade my next breath for just one more second with him.  We rarely argue and when we do it's not like arguments that I have had in prior relationships.  In the past, my partner and I would yell and scream and name-call and throw things at each other.  With T we sit there and we talk like adults are supposed to and we hear each other out and resolve the issue accordingly.  No screaming, no yelling, no name calling, nothing broken by the time the argument is over, and no mess to clean up!

I think the thing that I love and appreciate about T the most is that he always wants whatever is best for me.  I have a possibility of getting a job in Houston.  I fly out for the face-to-face interview next month.  I wasn't going to take it because it would be so far from him, but he wants me to take it if the interview goes well.  In his words, "Just don't leave me hanging.  Don't forget where your heart truely lies."  I could have cried it was so sweet.

1. First you have to know of one anothers' existance. Maybe you meet online. Maybe it's your third cousin's wife's second cousin, twice removed. Maybe it's a friend of a friend of a friend. Whatever the circumstance, you must discover some how that the other person lives and breathes.
2. You must live far apart (or be in a situation, such as online dating, that would somehow inhibit your meeting in person immediately).
3. Get to know each other! Talk on the phone, e-mail or instant message, text, write letters, send up smoke signals, whatever it takes to figure out who the other person is, and what they're about, and to let them figure out who you are and what you're about. Send pictures, so that if/when you do meet, you know who you're looking for. The "I'm wearing a red rose," thing is romantic, but not at all practical.
4. If it's right, if it's love, you will know it.
5. At some point, you have to meet each other. Face-to-face, live and in the flesh meeting. No pointers here, sorry, you're on your own there. Best advice - do what you feel is right. In the end, your opinions and feelings towards the person are all that matters anyway, not other peoples' opinions and feelings.
6. Make plans for a change. Who is going to move? Meet somewhere in the middle? What will the living situation be? What is expected of you and the relationship? What do you expect of your partner and the relationship?
7. Be supportive of one another and be prepared to make compromises.  This is true of all relationships, but especially of long-distance relationships because of all the changes that could potentially be involved for one or both partners.
8. Make it happen. "By hook or by crook," as the saying goes. "Where there's a will, there's a way."

Yep, that's right, it's over.  Everything I've ever wanted right down the drain.  Why you ask?  Because I said something very mean and completely inforgivable, and because a lie by omission is still a lie...once again I'm my own worst enemy.  He says he still loves me and he says maybe possibly in six months he will reconsider us if I go to school and work and blah blah blah.  He says if he has another woman (including me) she has to be strong.  He says one day I will understand.  I did everything in my power to keep him, and I failed.  So much for my happy ending.

Honestly, I'm debating strongly whether to delete this hub or not. I started it as a tribute to my love for my distant lover and his love for me. I intended it to be an inspiration to everyone in a similar situation. But, I see as time goes on, it gets continually more and more uninspiring and infact becomes a testament that the reverse of what I thought was true really is true. There is one last installment in this tragic but true love story. I will share it and then you guys tell me what I should do....keep it or delete it? He no longer gets the honor of having his wishes fulfilled, so therefore I will tell you his name....Torrean S. Bell....and ladies look out for him, he's a dirty rotten lying cheating good for nothing lazy ass bastard and he will sell you all the right lines and make you eat them like candy.

I've spent the last three months agonizing over the breakup, trying and failing to move on with my life. Suddenly, Torrean informs me that he is moving to Europe in order to pursue his "dream" of being a writer. He expects me to believe that he is working for Time Warner, Paramount, and several other big name producers writing scripts, poetry, and short stories. He doesn't know that I'm a writer. He doesn't know how badly his constant lies hurt. He has told me three different stories about why he broke up with me, he lies about everything from the big to the small, important or meaningless, it doesn't matter it's like his lips are set to "lie" mode. Further, he tells me that he will not have any contact with me while he is in Europe, except when he is coming back for me so that we can go live in Europe together and get married and have the life we were supposed to have together. I keep letting him lie to me because, quite frankly, I don't have the energy left to argue. Crying everyday takes a lot of the fight out of you after three months. I don't believe him, but I don't tell him that. Our last conversation was horrible...it was an hour before his supposed fight and it was basically a fight, ending with him saying, "I love you, I have to go now" and me screaming into the dead line, "NO NO NO PLEASE TORREAN NO!!!" before running to the bathroom and power pukeing.

About a week after his supposed flight I decided to look into the international flight patterns out of Minneapolis/St. Paul that morning. Failing that, I googled his name for the millionth time in the year that we have been together. I usually come up with some local basketball league he was involved in, and I sit there and remember going to watch him play and being so happy when he won the game by a landslide, stripped off his shirt and partied with the guys before running to me and hugging me and picking me up, his sweat running all over me. But not this time. This time I come up with his nephew's myspace page, because his nephew published one of his poems on his blog. I love his poetry so I read it over and over and over, and it's such a sad, hopeless tale, all about a girl that says she loves him but he doesn't believe her because he doesn't feel a thing for her, and theres violence and fighting and badness. I wonder why I've never heard it before...I thought he had read me most of his poetry at one time or another. Then I look at the date. It is dated the exact day that I abandoned everything I knew and loved to move to Minnesota to be with him. It struck a chord somewhere in my gut, and my whole body screamed out "SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG HERE!!!" I instantly believed that the poem had been written about me. I argued with myself for a good five minutes, re-reading that poem over and over again, telling myself logical things like, there's no way he could have written that and got it to his cousin in one day, and we had never fought at that point, hell we never fought violently our entire relationship. Our fights were him yelling and me sitting in the corner crying till he felt bad and picked me up and kissed away my tears. I finally decided that whether or not the poem had been written about me was irrelevant, I needed to go see what else I could find.

On google once again, I find yet another myspace page, this one labeled "Tory's Wifey" and "Torrean Bell" emblazoned in big bold letters in the description. I click and her status update is the day after he supposedly left for europe, saying that she was drinking and feeling sorry for herself, missing Torrean. I emailed her. We talked later that day and we discovered that we had both been seeing the same man. She was very nice, I could not have hoped for a better person to talk to, but the realization hit me hard. I moved to Minnesota in January. He started seeing her in May. He fed us the same lines, word for word, verbatim, and we both ate it up..."Real talk, babygurl, I want to make you Mrs. Bell," "I love you and that's real," "I'm coming back for you, so we can have the life we were supposed to have," ETC ETC and so on and so forth. At least she got a more plausible explanation for his disappearance. He told her that he got fired from work and kicked out of school and had to go away for a while. He said in August he had a school field trip to go to in New York and cell phone reception in the station was horrible. She said he flew to Colorado to see her in August. He didn't wear a condom. I have high risk HPV. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's harmless to men, but causes cervical cancer in women. Roughly 85% of the sexually active population has some strain of HPV. It is common, but the variety that I have is life threatening if not treated properly. So, in the span of an hour, I first have to tell a perfectly lovely stranger that the man that she loves and is waiting for with baited breath for is a lying cheating skank, but also that he intentionally placed her life in danger.

I emailed him. I told him that he had twenty four hours to contact me or I was going to call his father. I got no response, so I called his father today. The phone rang forever but he never picked up. I love his parents, really I do. His mother is the biggest sweet heart in the whole entire world, with the memory of an elephant and the body of a sprite, and his father, though quiet, is very nice. I miss them already. I was excited to be able to call them my future in-laws. I haven't decided exactly what it is that I'm going to tell Mr. Bell when he finally picks up the phone...I think I'll settle for something along the lines of there being an emergency I need to speak with Torrean about and could he please have him call me as soon as possible thank you very much sir.

Now here is the part that I don't understand, and it's kind of two-fold, you have to understand one to understand the other. I told Torrean not long after we had gotten together and I had moved to Minnesota that I had once had a relationship with a man and his wife and how we had all lived together as a family and how I wanted to have that again. I told him to be on the look out for someone that he would like to bring into our family, for a moment or a millenium, it didn't matter to me, so long as he wore a condom when having sex with the other woman until we all felt comfortable with one another to let real truths and feelings be known. Long story short, I encouraged him to have other women in his life, so long as I knew about them in advance and he used protection. So why lie? Lie to her, I kind of understand that, just until she's kinda hooked, then tell her, oh by the way, this is the situation. But why lie to me? The second fold of this is that I have always believed that if a man cheats it is because his main squeeze isn't doing something right. I bailed this man out of jail, bought him expensive phones and shoes and clothes, came running whenever he needed me, drove him to and from work and school, and obviously took care of any and all intimate needs he had (which were few and far between - I had to beg for it more often than not.) So what in the world could I possibly have done wrong to cause him to cheat and be so malicious about it?

So yeah that's that. My whole life for the last year unravelled in a blink of an eye all because I couldn't leave Google alone. At least I know now, I'm thankful for that. I had my suspicions right around the time they got together because he was acting very strangely, but he got mad every time I asked what was wrong or if there was someone else, so I let it drop. I suppose I should be thankful that he did that because I can finally let him go. I don't cry for him anymore, just for my own stupidity and what I thought and wished I had. I hate him and I wish that he were dead, and when I described the cause of death I preferred for him to one of my best friends she called me deranged and said my words were unsettling. I think they'd be great in a muder novel. Opinions vary, I guess.

It's been 72 Hours since this was updated and so far, we have banded together and as a team, except for two of us (one by choice and one because we haven't found her yet), and we have discovered that Torrean was with six women all at once. No wonder he never had time to work or go to school or do anything, he was too busy lying to us all.

I got to talk to his present girlfriend, the one that he left us all for but wasn't man enough to tell us about.  She has children, and I am sorry to see her and them go through this, but when I talked to her she just wanted to be mean to me and basically call me a liar and a weakling and basically everything but a human being.  I tried.  That's the best I can do.

I also got to talk to him.  The bastard had me on speaker the whole time (which is perfectly fine, I wasn't saying anything confidential, just giving him a piece of my mind - but it's still rude) and he had the balls to actually say that he doesn't recall ever being with me.  She wanted me to describe his body to prove to her that I was actually with him, which I did, in the hopes that she would perhaps take a split second to consider the things I had been telling her, but no, she kept on in her blind love for him and her blind hatred for me.

Later on, I will add more pictures, and I will also re-write this so that the format is more in keeping with my personal style and the preferred style of this website.  Until then, this is going to have to be good enough.