I met my gorgeous man Steve, on the last day of his visit to my city, and was instantly drawn to him. There was definitely no romantic notions from either him or I on this first meeting, but there was a definite chemistry between us that I had not experienced before.

I managed to have myself invited out to dinner with him that night by his host, and we all had a fantastic casual evening talking about so many subjects that we found we were all interested in. By the time we said our goodbye’s we had swapped phone numbers and agreed that when we were in each others’ cities we would definitely catch up for a coffee.

I went to bed that night excited that I had found a new friend – someone I knew I could have a fascinating and entertaining conversation with, and with whom I could develop a new social network. I had been separated for almost 2 years, and had not had any interest in trying to resurrect a social network. I was too tired both emotionally and physically from the fallout of the separation, and being a single parent, to even think about socializing, let alone a new romantic interest.

Steve had only been officially separated for 8 months, so he was still getting over the realization that his life was ‘over’ as he put it.

We had both been married for 20 years, and as he put it ‘had never got married to get divorced’.

I woke the next morning happy in the knowledge that when I went to his city next time, I was going to be able to enjoy some new and interesting company, and got on with my daily routine. I was rather surprised, and a little pleased however, when my phone rang later that afternoon, and I saw his name come up on the screen. He had rung to thank me for my company and to let me know how much he had enjoyed the previous evening. We chatted for a few minutes about getting back into work after the break, and hung up agreeing to meet the next time I was down his way. During the week, I sent him a text message (my children had educated me on how to do this), wishing him a good start back to work, and was a little surprised not to hear back from him. (I found out later that he didn’t know how to retrieve text messages!)

It was ten days later, just as I was serving dinner, that his name appeared on my phone again. I looked at it, and quickly told everyone to help themselves as I had an important call to take. I really wanted to talk to him, and I couldn’t understand why I had to take it and not just ring back later! I answered as though I had no idea who was calling me, and his deep voice greeted me. We chatted for about 15 minutes this time – which I found out later was a record for him as he usually said what he needed to and hung up very quickly after that – and we swapped email addresses so that we could communicate again. By the time I had hung up, I was very confused about how I feeling, but happier than I had been for a long time. That night before I went to bed I went into my emails and there was already an email there from him! I emailed back, and so started a morning and night email relationship.

Over the next few weeks I would wake every morning to a greeting from him, and jump out of bed energized. This was quite something for me, because I had been feeling very depressed and lethargic for months, and struggled to get up and into the daily grind.

We talked about mostly about general things we were both doing for a while, but slowly little pieces of personal information were woven in to our conversations which started to create more interest than just friendly chit-chat. I think it was much easier to ask a personal question via email, because if you didn’t want to delve any deeper you could just ignore the question or gently evade it, or if you did there was plenty of thinking time to prepare a considered answer.

We found that we were astoundingly alike in our thinking, and that we had very similar ethical and moral views, and I really enjoyed being able to discuss these things with space between us. At one stage I told him a joke that was rather cheeky, and had to email him 10 minutes later to make sure I hadn’t offended him! That was much better than getting caught out in person and having to think on my feet! He actually enjoyed the joke, and in a funny way (pardon the pun!) my worry about his reaction helped us to venture into deeper areas of personal opinion.

Within a few days we were hooked! We were discussing very personal issues openly, and the only problem was that now we wanted to have the personal touch added to it. I knew that I had never felt this comfortable talking to anyone, but how would we go face to face?

We decided that we needed to have a few days together to really get to know each other, and so we booked a unit on the Gold Coast for a 3 day stay! We met at the airport in Queensland and travelled together to our accommodation. We were both so nervous before we met, but as soon as we saw each other we relaxed and went back to being the same as we were on the internet! One of the funnier things we had to cope with, was sharing a bathroom! You can learn a lot from someone’s bathroom habits!

The few days we had together were really wonderful and, as we suspected, confirmed how compatible we were. It was really rather hard having to go off in different directions knowing that we would not be able to see each other for quite a while. But the email relationship was taken to the next level, and over the ensuing months we had some very deep and meaningful discussions via email. When you have to write your feelings down, there is a tendency to think a little more deeply about how you want it to come out, whereas when you are conversing, there is very little time to consider your words. Funnily enough, Steve went away on a trip to Central Australia in a light aircraft for a week, and we weren’t able to communicate even on the phone for a couple of days, and I really missed him, and felt just as miserable as if I had been waiting at home for him!

As I had originally come from the same city as Steve, we decided after about 4 months that it was time for me to move back home. This took another few months to organize, but I made it!

Steve and I have been together now for 3 years, and our relationship is getting stronger still, quite often, even now, we communicate things to each other through email! It’s still fun!