I'm infatuated with a girl whom I've never met in person. She lives 3,000 miles away from me and we know each other only through instant messenger, pictures, cam, and telephone. We've spent an inordinate amount of time communicating via these methods - sometimes for several hours a day. We'd talk about anything and everything. We developed a close bond. On occasion the conversations would take on a mutual romantic tone, though it rarely extended beyond playful banter. She'd tell me about dreams she had in which we were married, had children, etc.
During the last year or so, I've found myself becoming increasingly attracted and attached to her. I started organizing my free time in such a way as to maximize my ability to talk to her. I would constantly check my phone for texts and I would log on to my computer to check her profile updates. Because of the time difference, I would make a habit of staying up deep into the night so that I could talk to her, even if it meant short rest for work the next morning.
In the past, when she'd hint at hookups with other people, I didn't really mind. I had other girls in my life too and my curiosity stemmed from a desire to get turned on by her anecdotes, rather than any kind of direct jealousy. For her, it was the other way around. When I described one of my hookups, she would become upset, sometimes even blocking my screen name for a day or two. She later confessed to having a crush on me, an unusual admission on her part because she generally has tremendous difficulty communicating about her feelings. She's very secretive that way.
More recently, the roles have largely reversed. The thought of her hooking up with people no longer amuses me, it kills me. When I find out about it, I press her with questions she doesn't want to answer. I become jealous, possessive and obsessive. Even when she's not hooking up with people, I worry that she is, and I panic - mainly because she's extremely flirtatious, outgoing and popular, while I'm none of those things. I fear losing her, even though I never had her in the first place. Part of me wants to keep the dream, which she started, alive.
From an intellectual perspective, I realize how wrong I am to pry and obsess, to feel and act out this way. After all, she's not my girlfriend, nor has she ever been my girlfriend. She's under no obligation to share or justify any of her romantic/sexual decisions with me. Even if we wanted each other, the vast geographical distance between us would currently render a relationship impossible.
Yet my mind, which understands all this, seems to be divorced from my heart. I can't help feeling betrayed. I can't help feeling depressed and angry. I can't help thinking about her, fantasizing about her, visualizing a future in which I meet her and we live happily ever after. My head knows better, and I wish I could stop indulging these delusions, but my feelings refuse to conform to my logic, and my attraction to her marches on unabated.
The impetus for me posting this story is as follows: A few days ago, after begging her to open up with me, I found out that the girl I like made out at a party with a male friend of her's who already has a girlfriend. This made me extremely depressed. Then a couple days later, I found out that the one person she had a major sexual encounter with moved back to her area. This made me even more depressed. Then I found out that another guy, who she sent explicit photographs to in the past, called her. This too irked me. She claims to want only friendship with the first one, and nothing at all with the other two, but my mind still wanders and I assume the worst.
In selfishly seeking reassurance (which I couch as a desire to see if she's okay), I ask her several questions about these guys, persisting even when she's asked me to drop the subject. This led to a fight where she called me a bunch of insults and asked me to stop talking to her. Thinking that maybe she was right because I didn't like what this situation was doing to me, I blocked her screen name and resolved to cease all contact with her. I figured it would be a hard thing to do but that ultimately it would be good for me and I would be able to move on with real life.
Less than 24 hours later, she texted me with an apology. I was the one who had done wrong but she asked me to excuse her behavior because she's been stessed out. She also blamed an ex-girlfriend of mine for filling her head with bad things about me. Then a few hours after that, she called me on the phone, seeking to understand my position on the situation. I clumsily explained it to her, and she said it was okay, and that she also thinks about a relationship with me at times, but feels uncomfortable talking about it. On a scale of 1 to 100, she ranked her current level of interest a 51, saying that whatever happens in the future will happen, but that we can't put our lives on hold. Then she reiterated, without my asking, that there are currently no guys in her life. From there, the subject changed to other things, and we talked for over four hours. Then she texted me a bunch of times the next morning.
I don't know what to make of this, or how to proceed. Part of me thinks I need to move on because of the unhealthy hold she has over me, and because I can't handle the thought of her being with other guys. The other part of me thinks that if there were truly no interest on her side, she wouldn't have reached back out to me so quickly. Or maybe it's just that she wasn't prepared to lose me as a friend or backup choice and so she concocted the "51 on a 1 to 100" scale thing as a way to rope me back in. I don't know what to think. I just want my normal life back.
