Correspondence June 26, 1987 (letter - part 2)

This is the second part of a scan and transcript of a 5-page letter that I wrote to T from my workplace. The first two pages can be read here.  

In retrospect, some of what I say and how I say it is a little embarrassing, especially the typos and misspellings, but those were days when checking a word's spelling meant finding a book that may or may not have included that word. Things like "meniscus" weren't exactly something that you'd necessarily find in an abridged version of Webster's Dictionary and I'm not even sure a dictionary was kept in the office that I worked in at that time. 

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 Transcript:

...most of my pen pals was that he was able to write about things other than KISS. This was about as common as a rabbit giving birth to an only child when it comes to the pen pal world. Even rarer yet was intelligent male pen pals... perhaps one of the reasons I had low expectations of you as a pen pal was that the track record with males was quite bad. I say "the" and not "my" track record because so many females will concur with me on this. If that were one of my, admittedly, sexist reasons then it was totally unconscious.

By the way, this is all being typed on the back of an instruction form for re-application for welfare funds. We are pretty into conservation of almost everything here. Not a scrap of paper escapes this office without it being written on as much as it possibly can. Just think of paper as a glass of water whose meniscus (spelling?) doesn't fall below the lip of the glass and you'll understand the degree to which a scrap must be utilized before we're supposed to dispose of it. If Webster does a new edition in the near future, he'll put "T.L." after the word "thrifty."

At this point, I have realized the true limitations of taping over writing... that is that you can write almost anywhere under almost any circumstances. After all, Francis Scott Key composed by the rockets red glare, Watson wrote in the sterility of his lab, Freud scrawled in the comfort of his office as one of his hysterical females (hysterical, of course, because of their "wandering uterurses"), and one can only ponder under what conditions Kinsey got in the mood to discuss his subject matter (or for that matter, how many Chippendales playing cares Shere Hite had to have on her desk for any edition of the Hite report). The circumstances under which one writes tend to filter into subject matter and therefore create new points to ponder. In my case, the surroundings tend to permeate all I say. Maybe one of the reasons why I'm incapable of spontaneous conversational babbling is that I need certain stimuli to help me think of certain topics. I guess you can file that under one of those things you might think about if it were more interesting, but you probably won't because it's not all that interesting. 

My sister called me and told me that the plural of uterus is "uteri"... that sounds very, very odd to me, but you can't fight Mr. Webster. That reminds me of a resident we once had here. She was involved in the program for the first two months of my employment here. This woman actually had two sets of reproductive organs. I kid you not! That is, two vaginas, two uteri, two sets of fallopian tubes, etc. I guess she could have been in a pornographic Doublemint gum commercial if Playboy had been interested. "Double your pleasure, double your fun...| I supposed that someone her age (she was in her fifties) wouldn't have made a great model and it would have been too early for an appearance on the Playboy channel when she was of a more photogenic age.

Let me tell you about my plans for tomorrow... I am going to meet a pregnant girl and take her shopping at the most pedestrian of shopping centers. We have discount stores here called "Big Lots". the name says it all ("quality" through size). They get in huge crates of products that won't sell anywhere else and sell them to yobbos here that someone on a $1 a week allowance could afford. The products are far from being famous name brands so you're always "at risk" (of your health) when you buy. Mainly, they deal in polyester fashions, irregular linens, and junk food of dubious origin. For instance, there's a type of chip that tastes like seasoned sawdust called "De-Lites". Any product that touts lower calories and uses the word "lite" in any way, shape or form should be AVOIDED). They have "75% fewer calories per bite than conventional chips." They neglect to say that they also have 75% less taste and 75% more carcinogens. I must admit that I can get some of the more mundane products for daily life there for fewer greenbacks... like makeup remover, shampoo, and cleaning products for the household (I'm big into cleaning products, sort of a pseudo-Joan-Crawford complex). However, one should truly avoid sampling too many of their hair care products since there are such things as "curl removers" and shampoos with idiotic French-sounding names that make your head feel like a hundred lice are loose partying it up on your scalp. Such products smell like the water closet of a brothel.

It's 10:00 p.m. and high time that I make up my bed for the night. I don't anticipate sleep in the near future (as I've already stated), but the closer I get to Mr. Sandman, the easier my transition to sleep waves will be. There's nothing worse than being dead tired and having to make the bed, brush my teeth, and clean my contacts so I try to do these things as early as possible. I might as well explain the work area to you. There's a big desk in the middle of the left side of the room and a set of ugly light grey file cabinets against the right wall. There's a day bed at the end of the far left side and a dresser behind the desk where I am now seated. The typewriter this is being done on was lifted from the secretary's office. I hope that no one will be perturbed that I brought it up here for the weekend (I'll carry it back down to the office it came from when I return on Monday). The "day bed" is where I sleep. It's got an ugly blue and white cover on it that's about as soft as a rose stem and would leave a print like a waffle iron on your body if you decided to sleep on top of it. Actually, the room itself, though rather small, has potential. There's a lovely mantle with a marble (white) hearth beneath an old boarded -up fireplace in here. In fact, the house is quite old and has several old fireplaces. The entire office was remodeled by one of the staff (former coworker's name... I spoke of her on tape) less than 2 months ago. She papered, scrubbed, and begged to have it the way she wanted and did a great job. The "begging" was to get the marble hearth unearthed. She cleaned it with a toothbrush in order to convince them to cut the new carpet around the marble.

Anyway, if sleeping in a house with 8 crazy people weren't enough to spook the average person out of getting sleep, the fact that this place was a funeral parlor before we (Transitional Living, Inc. aka T.L.) inhabited it 15 years ago would do the trick. Believe me, it has the look for it! At least I know this room was too small to be a showing place... it was probably an embalming room. 

This is the end for I have lack of sleep to achieve (rather than "no sleep at all"). Excuse the typos, tape soon!

Cheers,

S

Correspondence June 26, 1987 (letter - part 1)

I sometimes wrote to my pen pals from my office. This was back in the days when PCs were not common and I had to use a typewriter. When I look back at such letters, I cringe at the typing mistakes and skipped words, but such was the risk when you could not go back and change something here or there in a message. My writing has, hopefully, gotten a bit better over the years, but I was still a fairly good writer for my age (22) at the time.

Though I taped to T, I chose to write on occasion because I couldn't easily tape to him from work. This allowed me to be in touch with him any time he was on my mind. By the time this letter was written, I was spending no small amount of time thinking about him.

Note: If you click on the pictures, a larger version will load that should be at a readable size.

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Transcription:

Dear T,

Since you have never been graced with the undeniable wit of my written word, and because I have an incredible urge to communicate with someone intelligent, I am typing to you live from my place of employment. How's that for a long sentence?

I'm not sincerely bored... merely tired and unable to go to sleep. You see (or "ya see", as Bill Cosby says), it's only 8:15 and all of the natives are quietly restless, but not the least bit tired. I had a substantial amount of insomnia last night so I'm already beat and I know these lovely individuals are going to keep me up until 1:00 a.m. (which is their Friday night curfew).

Let me attempt to entertain you with my musings of the evening. This is a day that began with a makeup kit that cost $8.40. We (the illustrious staff here at T.L.) put on of the clients on a true behavior modification program (that means there was a specific target behavior, a monitoring mechanism, and a tangible reward). We wanted to see if behaviorism was as lovely in practice as in theory. The subject was a 42-year-old white female with the I.Q. of a throat lozenge. To give you some idea of how this woman functions, I'll give you a brief case history. 

Norma flunked 1st grade 6 times. At that point, her family and the American educational system called it a day and let her stay at home with Mommy for the rest of her mother's days. When tested for functional level, Norma hit the 6th month of 1st grade as her level. When Norma entered our program, she drew her eyebrows on with a blue liner pencil, wore more base make-up than all 4 KISS members combined, took speed (aka diet pills), ate prunes to help her "lose weight", and would not drink water because it would make her gain weight. If the crystal beauty of Behaviorism's principles can work on her, they can work on almost anyone who comes into the program.

The target behavior was taking medications without reminder. She takes an antipsychotic drug called Trilafon. It is meant to help organize her thoughts. She needs a low dosage because there isn't a Hell of a lot to be organized. Anyway, the monitoring mechanism was a calendar that we put stickers on when she took the medication each day without reminder. By the way, she chose her own reward from a list that included a wallet, dinner with a staff member, a makeup kit, and going to a movie with a staff person. We were quite flattered that she picked makeup over us.

The pristine qualities of Behaviorism worked like a charm for Norma. She is now happily taking her medicine and can go back to painting on her eyebrows in a wide assortment of colors. Actually, I broke her of the blue brows... they're now brown. The one thing I can't seem to break her of is completely shaving her entire face (!).

I wonder what you would have thought about me had we written before we had taped. I am much more fond of writing to people than talking to them for the most part and feel that it is a better form of communication for me. When I'm sharp at it, I'm pretty good. However, I'm not nearly at sarcastic wit as I used to be because of disuse. I had a pen pal in Canada named Clifford to whom I used to compose 10-page novellas rife with cynicism, sarcasm, and innuendo of the rudest sort. He was equally good at returning such types of letters. For reasons unknown to me, he quit writing to me entirely around August of last year. This was after I had sent the dear boy an "Asylum"* promo poster for his birthday. I never even received an acknowledgment that it reached his P.O. box, despite a few attempts on my part to re-open communication after his silence. It also happened after I sent him a picture of my (newer) self. Talk about a blow to the ego... I think I was angrier at the lack of acknowledgement of the gift.

Oddly enough, Clifford was one of the few male pen pals I had ever come to admire enough to even consider some sort of long distance relationship with. He wasn't educated, but he was bright. In fact, he worked in a butcher shop and liked to splatter fake blood on the walls of his house and spray fake cobwebs around his Gene Simmons pictures. Maybe he never wrote back because he ended up getting committed... one can only ponder.

Another thing Dear Clifford (capital "D" intended) had over...

*****

*Asylum was an album made by KISS in 1985.

The second part of this letter is posted here.

Being a "Nevermet"

Since my long distance relationship took place so long ago, there are a lot of terms that I'm only now learning about. One of them is "nevermet(s)". I didn't know that there was a way to talk about people who fall in love without having seen one another face to face. It feel like it is so much more of a mainstream thing when a label is created for a situation and I wonder if having a word that neatly describes your relationship makes it feel less strange to be in such a situation.

I was, at one time, a "nevermet". Of course, I assume that every "nevermet" hopes one day to change his or her status to "met". It took me 10 months to change my situation and that time carried with it unique insecurities and potent fears. It is one thing to be emotionally and psychologically accepted by someone who knows you at a distance. It is quite another to be accepted physically when you finally meet. The 10 months leading up to my being a "met" were some of the most difficult of my life. Fear of rejection gnawed at me every single day.

Beyond the fear of rejection, one of the hardest things about being a nevermet is that people have grave doubts about the legitimacy of your relationship. If you already knew each other face to face and had to separate due to life circumstances, people aren't concerned that the person you've fallen in love with might be an axe murderer or have plans to sell you into some form of slavery. Nevermets not only get constant streams of negativity as people who have never been in their shoes inflict their fears on them, but they also are accused of living in a delusional state.

Because nevermets face a particular type of resistance when they talk about their relationships, many of us choose not to talk about them at all—especially with family. I hid my relationship for as long as possible because my family was emotionally and verbally abusive. If they had known the truth, I was certain they would have used that information as a cudgel to hammer at me every single day until I abandoned the relationship. There was already enough pressure on me as I endured the difficulties of the distance. I didn't need their resistance to boot.

I wonder how many people who fall for someone at a distance eventually meet and how many break up having never met the object of their desire. I have somewhat intimate knowledge of two other distance relationships other than mine which began as "nevermets". One was a college friend of mine who carried on a phone and mail (written printed letters) relationship with a man and she broke it off when he finally told her what he looked like. Another was an acquaintance in a forum devoted to gaming who eventually met and formed a long-lasting partnership with another person from that same forum. In one case, the pairing was a dismal failure that ended with very hurt feelings and an embarrassing paper trail. In the other case, it ended with both parties being together physically and seemingly quite happy.

There are, of course, hundreds of distance relationships talked about in various places on the web, including Reddit's popular LDR subreddit. It's difficult to track how many are nevermets and how many are those who have separated after knowing one another face to face as the posts are infrequent and  scattershot, and user names change. My guess is that more of them trail away into nothing than change status, but I have no way of knowing.

There is something intensely romantic about the idea of two people who have never met falling in love, at least up until the point that they meet. At that moment, the road forks and one leads down the path to happily ever after. The other leads to disappointment and disillusion.

Correspondence May 23, 1987 (cassette tape)

My second tape to T was the first one in which I was fully emotionally invested in building a good relationship with him. I talked more and in greater detail. It also included a lot of talk about other pen pal relationships that he knew either because of shared pen pals (J) or those with whom he had a passing familiarity due to the cross connections between our group of KISS fans. In this tape, I talked about H, who was a pen pal of J's as well. I had recently broken off my pen pal relationship with H and T had asked me why I had done so.

This tape was entirely created while I was driving to and from my job. At that time, I was working in a small city about 45 minutes from my rural home. The length of the drive was notable because I could complete almost exactly one side of a standard 90-minute cassette tape during each leg of my journey. Many such tapes were done with various pen pals throughout my two years working at a transitional living facility for the seriously mentally ill.

When reading the content of any of my tapes from that time, it is important to keep in mind that my work was made up of 24-hour shifts in which I spent an entire day (and night) living in the same house as people who had been hospitalized for their condition. These were not people who were capable of functioning in the world at large. They had hallucinations or delusions. Many had tried to kill themselves. Some had tried to harm others. No small number had been functionally impaired either by their substance use or their life circumstances. They were much more damaged, dangerous, and difficult to manage than the average person on Prozac who struggles to get through his or her day-to-day life.

It was my essentially "living" with such people that informed a lot of the comments I made about my job on tape to T in my distant past. It was a life experience that few people have had or ever will have, and it may be hard to fully imagine how difficult it was to work in such a situation. In this day and age, I would not refer to the people I worked with as "crazy" because it would be politically incorrect and insensitive. At that time, however, I was 22 years old and the world had not yet discovered a need for an ever-mutating kaleidoscope of euphemisms in order to de-stigmatize certain conditions. I leave the offensive terms that I used intact because this is a transcript and I do not wish to change the way in which my history is reflected to suit a modern mentality. It should be sufficient to say that I wouldn't speak in this fashion at this time were I to refer to these situations in the present.

Select transcript of May 23, 1987 tape:

When I have something that I want to say, some feeling, I want to say, "I feel this way." The problem is that sometimes when you say "I feel this way, the other person takes it as, "You feel this way and it's my fault, you're blaming me because you feel this way," and that's not necessarily true. And one of my big struggles in life is that I say these things and I try to make people understand at the time that there is no blame to the situation. What I'm feeling may be as the result of a mis-perception, but, "I feel this way." I feel they should know that I feel this way so that the whole circumstance is out in the open.

...

One thing you said was that, if you knew someone obviously couldn't handle what you had to say, then you wouldn't say it. H obviously couldn't handle that. One of the things about the relationship that I had with her was that it was so confined and that was one of the reasons why it was so boring. It became very mundane because there were so many things that we could not discuss for many different reasons. She didn't like conflict so we couldn't discuss religion or politics. If I would bring them up, she'd say, "Well let's not discuss it." 

We couldn't discuss anything personal if we had a conflict because she didn't want to discuss that either. She always took it as a very deep, personal insult if I brought up any conflict we may be having—no matter how carefully I tried to word it. I'm not saying that I had insults and I was disguising them. I'm saying that I had feelings that I needed to convey and she got very, very angry and resentful when I conveyed them. I was resricted in that I had to handle her with kid gloves which is hard for me to begin with.  We had so many things that are out of bounds in the relationship that there wasn't enough in bounds to keep it interesting. That's why it was boring, because there were things that I could not talk about... there were so many of them.

...

What I want out of relationships, and I did write this in the card that I sent, is that they be open. I want them to be interesting, but "interesting" has to be loosely defined. It doesn't mean that you have to have four years of college and be a KISS fan. It doesn't mean you have to be those things. It means it doesn't hurt, but I have a pen pal who is 18 years old and I've been writing to her since she was 15 and she's the sweetest creature. She is so sweet that we have mostly KISS in common, but she's so funny and I love her so much that the whole thing is very, very interesting to me even though we don't discuss theories. We don't even discuss mutual relationships. She also writes to J. It's not that she's not intelligent. It's just that she hasn't had the extra years to mature that I have. Every year—every day—makes a difference in your maturity. You'll never be as mature as you are now. You'll always look back and say, 'That was a really immature thing that I did. I hope I don't do it again. I can't believe I did it in the first place.'

There aren't certain characteristics that I need for it to be interesting, but I need free communication. It's not so I can hurt somebody or say, "Well, there is a problem and I'm going to throw it in your face," but just so that things can grow. If you put a restriction on something, it's going to stagnate and it stagnated with H. That's pretty much what I want and what I didn't get (from H).

...

In my experience, my problem is not getting people to talk about themselves, but trying to get them to stop for a minute so that I can interject a thought, or even stick a question in there to help the topic proceed... to help it develop and move on. But, that's my (work), and in my business, people are always talking at you. I once wrote in our staff log books—we do daily logs where we record what (clients)do and what's coming up in any specific behavioral problems—we had a part for staff in the back of the book and I once wrote that I felt like the listening box for humanity where I had to keep listening and listening and listening and it gets to the point where it is very frustrating. 

I don't mind it, as I'm sure most people don't mind, because by listening to others, you get these new... perceptions... new perspectives on life. It's a different vantage point so it's very valuable, but when you sit there and listen to crazy people talk for hours, which is not all I do everyday—but I bet you I get in a good four hours of listening to crazy people talk a day—it gets to the point where I think, "Please give my mind a rest. Let me talk to someone who I can have an exchange with instead of everybody feeding off of me." 

It's funny because they're filling you up, but they're sucking you dry. I don't know if you can understand this or not, but it's like by talking to you, they're draining you of all of your life. They're filling you with their troubles and you're pumping them up with your energy. As they say, "I want to kill myself. I don't feel that I'm a worthwhile human being. I feel like I'm a crazy person." You're sitting there and saying, "No, no, no, you shouldn't feel that way. You're worthwhile." You send all of your energy into them and they fill you up with their illness and it's very hard sometimes. It just gets to the point where you can't deal with it.

*****

At the time, I didn't realize it, but the way in which both T and I talked about our relationships with others revealed important information about how we regarded relationships in general as well as provided a wealth of information about each other's personalities.What I wanted from relationships was not something that I necessarily demanded of him, but relayed through the failed relationships that I had had with other friends.

Correspondence May 21, 1987 (greeting card)

When I was younger, I was very much into impressionist art and would go out of my way to acquire cards or pictures with the paintings of painters such as Monet. My enthusiasm for said artists waned a bit as time went by, but I had a stash of cards with pictures that I especially treasured. The cards were small, less than the size of a postcard, but they had glossy fronts and high quality color printing. The card stock was sturdy and I can even remember the smell of them as the higher quality cards enclosed in the contained space of the box they were stored in retained a distinctive bouquet of printing fluids and wood pulp.

I used those impressionist cards only on occasions that mattered to me in some way. They were not "throwaways" like some of the more mundane and cheap, flimsy cards that I kept on hand. It's no shock then that I used one of these cards to get back to T after I'd fallen in love with him as a result of his second set of tapes to me. He had no idea that there was any significance to the card nor that I'd suddenly gone from being ready to abandon him after his first correspondence to being passionate about him.

Card front and back:

Card interior:

Transcript:

 Dear T,
    Hi! I’m through w/three sides of your tapes and working on the fourth side. I was sooo impressed at this point that I felt compelled to drop a second note to say:
1.    I was such an idiot for waiting so long to listen to your tapes.
2.    I’m even sorrier for taking so long to get back to you.
3.    I have to work my nifty little 24-hour shift tomorrow so the earliest you’ll hear from me is the week of the 25th... though I am literally DYING to reply to you.
4.    Here are the things I want out of a penpalship (I will expand on this on tape) – a meaningful exchange of interesting conversation, preferably intelligent conversation... which you supplied beautifully.
    Once more I’m very sorry for taking so long to reply. I was terribly impressed by your tapes & hope to get back very soon.
    Take care,
    S

*****

Though I mentioned this in previous posts about correspondence, there was a more than two month gap between my listening to his first tape and his second one. I was trying very hard with this card to repair any damage I may have done to his impression of me by being emphatic in my appreciation of his second set of tapes. It was my fervent hope that he'd give me a second chance despite my slack response.

Correspondence March 3, 1987 ( cassette tape)

The date on this tape is an approximation based on the fact that T received it on March 9, 1987 and my best guess was that it took six days to reach the West coast from the East coast. You can see that the tape has been passed around a bit. The torn off parts of the factory label on the first side happened because each recipient would tear off the original labels at the top and replace them with their own. This tape was T's first tape to me that I recorded over after receiving it. If I could extract the old recording from it, I would love to have it. Unfortunately, that is not possible. However, I can know to a great extent what he talked about based on what I said as I repeated back many of his topics and commented on them.

Some context for the excerpts from this tape are that T and I connected via mutual pen pals (A & J). A, J, and I were all fans of the rock group KISS and all of my pen pals to date were also KISS fans. I sought out pen pals to talk about the band and T was the first person who I'd corresponded with who was not a KISS fan.

I'm posting this out of order. This is the tape that T replied to and pre-dated the tape that I offered a bit of in this post. 

Transcript (select portions):

I can't say that this is the best time for me to be taping, because I'd really say it's the worst time, but, I have the time and privacy now so I'd better seize it. What you're gonna find out is that, for me, the big issue with taping now is getting the privacy to do it. I have this real hang-up about taping anywhere where anybody can hear me because my family is extremely nosy. (In) some families you (can) tape and they don't really pay much attention to you, but mine always think this is kind of bizarre, so I don't like to do it anywhere where I think they may hear me. So, right now, they're all gone. Wow! Usually, extraordinary circumstances have to occur before I can get the house to myself.
...
Like you — you said that you were very organized and very precise — I'm very organized. I'm not sure of how precise I am. It's not something that I ever pay attention to. I think I'm fairly precise also, and also like you, as J and A indicated, I'm very straightforward. Unlike you, I don't really try to taper that too much when I present it because I don't like to beat around the bush. I really dislike it because I think that you're not doing anybody a favor by dancing around the truth. In reality, if you're not being straightforward, that's what you're doing. You're not really "lying," but you're pushing what you really feel aside for a little while so you can save their feelings. When it comes to me, I don't want people trying to do me any favors. I would rather they were just forthright with me, and said, "Hey, I think this about you." And, just get it over with. Don't be mean or vicious. I'm not mean or vicious about it either, but a lot of people can't tolerate that. A lot of them perceive that as being cruel. They either learn to live with it or ultimately they dump you.
....
It's wonderful talking about yourself. It's rare for me to get to talk about myself so I just eat up any opportunity to do so. In my sort of... it isn't really a profession... in the kind of work that I get involved in, you do a lot of listening and very little talking because people mainly need a shoulder to cry on and an ear to talk into which is fine, but when your friendships become counselor/patient friendships, too.
.....
The (pen pal relationships) that exist at present are pretty old, strong sort of ties. They've been around for awhile. That's really rather good because we really are beyond the superficiality of being KISS fans. We can continue to tape for the rest of our lives. Maybe taping you will give me a good enough experience in dealing with that so that when the band breaks up, we'll all be fine. We'll all be able to carry on.
.....
About being a KISS fan, it's just another facet of me. It's just there and it's been there for so long that I think that I only hold onto it because of its familiarity. It's lost a lot of its initial excitement and value. It really has, but I'm sure J has explained this to you, too. She sort of feels the same way. We just all hold onto it, just like it's a little teddy bear that we keep with us and it makes us feel secure because it's an icon. It's just always been there. It's like you look out and there is a tree there and it has been there since you were born and it makes you feel safe and secure because it's always been there. It doesn't matter if it is human and important. It just matters that it is there.

*****

My tendency to be blunt muted as the years went by. One of my coworkers at the time that this tape was made told me that I had a lot of rough edges that needed to be filed off, but that he could see that I had a lot going for me. He was right. Filing off those rough edges took some pretty painful life experiences, however, but I did learn that "blunt" and "straightforward" aren't necessarily the same thing.

The Absence of Touch

In this day and age, the main thing that most people in a LDR cannot have is physical contact. I used to think that this was a trivial and base issue and that, if your relationship is based on loftier things such as communication, personality, and even a sense of energetic (or "spiritual") unity, then the physical part was the cherry on the relationship sundae. When I looked at what I endured back in 1987 with postal delays, prohibitively expensive phone calls, and higher cost travel, I used to think that free long distance calls and video computer calling (like Skype) made the only thing you were missing a relatively trivial loss. I was wrong.

My opinion stemmed from a very basic problem that many people have when it comes to their sense of self. We see our bodies and our minds as two separate things and that the "real" person is the character, the soul, or the personality. We should not tether our value to our bodies nor should others do so. The body ages, falters, and can be broken, but the mind and the soul that it represents, is perceived as "eternal."*

My mother raised me to believe that I was not equivalent to my body, and, perhaps, that was for the best. What she didn't do, however, was to help me make any connection between my body's reactions to the environment and how it shaped my mind. This was less a failure and more a reflection of a lack of understanding on her part. The mind and body work together to create reality. They are not two separate entities interacting on separate tracks.

In relationships, this is particularly so and I'm not talking about sex primarily, though that is a part of it. There is a chemical in our bodies, a hormone, called oxytocin, that is very important in bonding with others. While we may like to think that the mind operates on its own despite the body, the chemicals that mill about in our body influence behavior. You don't have to see it as the chemicals creating the behavior, but you can see it as the behavior releasing the chemicals and nudging us more toward certain feelings and actions.

For women, oxytocin is a complex thing. It's released during childbirth. It's also released when people touch even if it's just a caress or a held hand. It's released during social interaction. This is probably one of the reasons women bond more closely and rapidly as well as why they bond more tightly to their children in most cases. They are getting more chemical nudges more often in these directions.

Since women get oxytocin from more actions than men do, there is a difference in what they need in order to feel bonded with a partner. Men, primarily, get oxytocin from orgasm. That's one reason why men tend to value sex more than woman and why they often demand it more in relationships. Fewer orgasms means less oxytocin and a sense of a weakening bond. So, yeah, your guy has to have sex to love you the way he feels he should. Sex may, indeed, "equal" love in the eyes of some men.

Incidentally, oxytocin also increases empathy. If someone is given a drink spiked with it, they feel more deeply and are more sympathetic to others. If you're in a distance relationship and your partner seems to understand how you feel less well, it may be more than simply not being with you and seeing your body language or facial expressions. It could also be less oxytocin because of the lack of touch.

In distance relationships, less touch means fewer chances to reinforce a sense of bonding. This cannot be helped to some extent, but it can in others. If you know what is missing, you can attempt to pursue other means to release oxytocin. It might not be a bad idea to think about your partner while doing some of these things to help pair their image or your sense of him or her with the hormone's release. It also means that you can provide experiences for one another which link oxytocin to each other. If laughing releases oxytocin, then send your partner something that makes him or her laugh. Be the source of that hormonal bonding chemical release.

Since I fell in love with someone I had never met, and conducted my relationship with him without knowing what it felt like to be touched by him for nearly a year, I didn't know what I was missing (nor did he). In our case, I think that the bond could have been seen as "incomplete", though we didn't really deeply "know" what was missing. This is one of the reasons why I think it's that much harder for people who knew each other face to face and then have to take part in an LDR later on to endure the distance. They know exactly what they are missing and the presence of touch (and the oxytocin that it releases) that helped intensify and maintain their bond is now gone.

*Note: I realize this is a philosophical perspective. Atheists will see things differently, and I'm not inclined to disagree or agree either way. I'm just speaking generally.

Correspondence March 12, 1987 (cassette tape)

This was the second cassette tape that T sent me. It was the first one that was a direct reply to a tape that I had sent him. I was so unimpressed by his first tape that I didn't listen to this one for over two months. This is tape 1 of a set of 2. I no longer have the second tape, much to my chagrin. Cassette tapes were expensive and we did not usually keep them around to reference. We listened to them, took some notes about what was said, and then recorded over them.

I will not be transcribing entire tapes as it would be pointless, relatively uninteresting for people who don't know the context of the conversations, and incredibly time consuming given the volume of taping. I will transcribe select pieces of certain tapes because of what they say about our friendship and how that sort of talk contributed to our future LDR. Note that transcripts will not be utterly verbatim as "ums", "you knows", and other non-essential verbal "tics" will be removed from all such content.

In the case of this piece, it mentions the fact that I had other pen pals, but all of them had been fans of the rock group KISS. In fact, KISS were the reason that I sought out pen pals as I wanted to talk about the band. T was my only pen pal who was not a pen pal and that was part of why I was not especially interested in corresponding with him initially.

Select transcript of March 12, 1987 tape:

Typical to my personality, I got your tape Monday, was it Monday, yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Monday. Monday, I got home from school and I had some things that I had to do. I didn't have any classes that night, but the next day my Fundamental Analysis paper was due and I had things to do for the banking test and all that. But, I got home and I see your tape there and my first reaction was "All right," because I wasn't positive that you would write back. I figured you probably would, but you never get too confidant about those kinds of things. You don't want to be expecting it and then when it doesn't happen, you say, "Gee, you know, I wonder why." I personally don't like to get my hopes up for things. And then, it's just so after they happen, "Oh, good, okay, it did happen." So, I was very happy to see your tape there and I liked the card. I think it's a neat card. It's too bad (name of KISS fan magazine that S. worked for) is now defunct as I understand it is. That was neat.

So, naturally, I've got all these things that I have to do, right? So, what do I do, I go into my room and listen to the tape. I couldn't help it because, I don't know, I was just very curious and also it's part of my personality that whenever I get tapes, I like to listen to them right away. There's some times when that's simply impossible, but generally speaking, I have this impulse to put them in right away.

It's like, "oh, good, I want to hear the latest news, be it from J or A.*" With this tape, it was even more like that because I'd never heard you before. It's like, "Oh, a whole new person. I've got to hear what she sounds like." So, I took the tape into my room and listened to it and I must say that, I was like, "Whoah, this is neat!" I think I'm going to really enjoy talking to you. I think we can have some really interesting conversations because while we're not... our major fields are different and everything, and no, I'm not a KISS fan... you said you never had a successful pen pal relationship with anybody who's not a KISS fan before. My reaction to that, was "Well, there's a first time for everything." I'm not terribly worried about that. 


I think we'll have more than enough to talk about without that. When you were talking about that, you said part of the reason that it hasn't worked before with other non-KISS fans was that, when you're writing letters or making tapes, it facilitates communication a lot quicker, but when you're trying to get beyond the superficiality of just knowing somebody for the first time, then if you didn't have anything to talk about, then you'd fall back on KISS as a way to have something to talk about. You'd get to know each other better and then you could start talking about more things. 

I don't know because, I don't think that's going to be a problem because I do not feel, for some reason, and I don't know why... maybe I should, but I do not feel constrained by whatever bounds are involved in not knowing you very much yet. I've only heard you for an hour or so, but, for some reason, and I may be wrong, I got the sense, just kind of a sense, nothing that you can really put into words too much, I got a sense from listening to you talk that I can talk to you about a lot of stuff and that I can trust you to listen to what I say and... It's a just a feeling that I can talk and I'm not really going to worry about if I say the wrong thing, or, "maybe I shouldn't say that because I don't know her real well." I don't know if you know what I'm trying to say, but, like you say, I suppose that when you do start writing people, there would tend to be a holding back process on one side or the other about certain things because you really don't know the person. With you, I feel like it's different because you have an air about you of "Hey, this is just the way it is and I'm going to say it if that is the way it is, so the hell with it." And, I'm a little like that myself. So, I don't think it's going to be a problem for either of us as far as that goes.

*J and A were mutual pen pals at that time. They were responsible for T starting to correspond with me as I'd known them for some time before.

Two Types of Distance Relationships

We all live in a little mental "room" filled with our own experiences. They shape our worldview and we tend to believe that what we believe represents "the truth". Though we like to believe that we are open-minded, worldly, and quite experienced—especially when we have gone out of our way to seeks new experiences or learn new things—there is always something that will be outside of our worldview. When we are young, the box is quite a bit smaller than it is when we are older. Time has a way of bringing in many visitors who can open our eyes to other possibilities.

When I was in my distance relationship, I thought that all such relationships were like mine. That is, I thought people fell in love with someone who they didn't know face to face and then carried on at a distance until they could meet and resolve the geographical problem that stood between them. I thought that, sometimes, people met first for a brief time and then developed feelings, but my notion of a distance relationship was always one that formed as a result of two people who started out living apart. It did not occur to me that there were people in distance relationships who started out together and then were forced by circumstances to live apart. I always thought that people who were together physically at the outset found ways to stay together outside of very extreme situations such as a soldier who was posted abroad in war time situations.

This belief was obviously informed by my naivete, but it was also the case when I had my distance relationship (1987-1988) that people were a lot less likely to be together and then carry on an LDR in the future. I think that people used to have to make a choice when one person or the other headed off for parts unknown. The couple who once resided in the same place would either have to find a way to move together or decide to break up. It was the rare case that they decided to struggle on at a distance because of the obstacles at that time.

I cannot know if my sense of this was correct as there are unlikely to be any statistics about LDRs in the pre-internet age. I'm purely guessing, but it would make sense that people who did not have the option to contact each other for free, simultaneously, and by video as well as voice, would struggle a lot more with distance. If you knew that your partner moving from New York to California meant that you'd only talk briefly in real time because of phone call costs or you'd be stuck with the sluggish and laborious types of communication you could have by post, you'd be much more inclined to break up or move together. This seems logical.

While expanding my reading on LDRs, I've found that one of the most common ways to have an LDR seems not to be as I did—that is, to fall in love with someone who does not live near you—but rather to already be in love with a local person who has to move for career, education, or family reasons. People sometimes meet via social media or MMORPGs or other online games and fall in love, but that seems to be less common than people who are together at first and forced to be separated.

One interesting thing about these two types of relationships is that it seems much harder to endure separation after you've already had substantial time together. Once a relationship holds a particular status and occupies a certain place in your life, the gaping hole left behind when it changes is very hard to live with. If you've never met the person you love, or met them for a short time, the relationship adds something to the status quo. If you've been with that person for some time, it takes something away.

Both types of long distance relationships are very difficult and take a tremendous amount of effort to manage. However, the psychological impact and the sense of hardship at the separation seems to be worse when you've had the luxury of contact for some time and then had it taken away.

Which relationship do you believe is more challenging? What are the unique challenges of each type?

Correspondence May 15, 1987 (greeting card)

I do not have the first piece of correspondence that my soon-to-be long distance relationship partner sent me. I don't even have the first bit of written correspondence that he sent me. What's that? You don't understand the difference between correspondence and "written correspondence"? Of course, you are confused. Normal people didn't do what we did back in the day.

The first piece of correspondence that I ever received from my future love was a cassette tape of him speaking to me for about an hour, possibly 90 minutes. Since I no longer have the tape, I do not know the length. I only knew that I was thoroughly unimpressed by him at the end of that time. I did reply on a tape of my own. My response was less than an hour and I did it because I felt obliged to reply to him out of a sense of courtesy and decency.

I haven't decided yet in this blog how far I'm going to go with revealing names. To protect the privacy of everyone involved, I'm censoring the names from any scans I put up and I'll refer to my partner as "T" and myself as "S" as those are the first letters of our names. At a later date, I may be less squeamish about such things, but this will do for now.

T responded to my tape rather quickly, but I wasn't really interested. I tossed his second set of tapes (because he sent two the second time around) aside and hoped he'd forget about me. He didn't. Around mid-May, my guess is shortly before the card I am scanning and posting here was sent, he sent me a letter asking politely if I'd gotten his tapes. I threw out that letter, but I did send this card in response:

Card front:

Card interior:

Transcription:

May 15, 1987

Dear T,
     Actually there are excuses and I'll probably bore you with them. Let me first apologize for not getting back to you in some way, shape, or form much earlier. The reality of the situation is that I haven't even had the opportunity to hear your tape, let alone respond to it. I did get your letter and read it.
     Ready for excuses? Work has been a true bitch (there's a lot of internal strife... my boss hates me and I had an anxiety attack on the job). My social life sucks, I'm having an identity crisis, and I went to Boston for a week in April. Now aren't you happy I laid all of that on you? I knew you'd be. Heh, heh, heh. And it's not even a soap opera, it's real.
     I promise, promise, promise (!) to try to get back to you ASAP.

Your pal,

S

*****

One part of that card was a bit of a fib. I was very busy, but I could have found the chance to listen to his tape had I made it a priority. I did have an identity crisis at that time (and, yes, I knew I was having one and why), and my boss was treating me horribly. I don't recall having an anxiety attack, and I think that what happened was more of a meltdown. This message was the calm before a storm emotionally, though my life seems to always be full of thunder and lightning psychologically speaking.

How To Survive A Long Distance Relationship

One of the most common pieces of advice that I've read and seen about dealing with a long distance relationship (LDR) is for each party to make sure that they build up their own separate lives so that they aren't spending all of their time pining away for their loved one. This is generally very good advice, but not just for LDRs, but for all relationships. I think most people already have a life before they get into any relationship and it doesn't suddenly cease to vanish the minute they get involved with someone. Unless you have zero friends, no work, no hobbies, and live with your partner, you've very likely already got a life of your own.

The approach which advises people to cope by making sure they have their own life is one based on distraction. It says that you should do what you can to not think about the separation. It does not focus on how to cope with the separation or make it less difficult to endure. It also runs the risk of a person building a life in which they don't actually attend to the LDR because they are too busy keeping themselves occupied and building a life which doesn't involve the other party.

For me, in my LDR, I found that it had unique needs. In fact, it needed to be dealt with more attentively and actively than a face to face relationship. The primary problem is that you cannot get the same sort of casual contact and gratification that you can in person. This is both a burden and a potential blessing depending on how you frame it. The "burden" is the loss of ease that comes from hanging out together watching movies, playing sports, eating meals, etc. We can slowly learn a lot about a partner through casual contact. The word "slowly" is very important. Time spent together face to face is often quantitative, but not qualitative. We imply intimacy from hours spent together, often when we do not actually have real emotional or psychological intimacy.

LDRs, in contrast, need qualitative contact. We need to build intimacy in deliberate layers because we can't get it physically or by casual association. This means that those in LDRs have an opportunity to build a stronger bond through whatever outlets are available for contact. This can be accomplished via a variety of techniques, but one that does not work is simply making appointments to "hang out" together on Skype or send text messages which convey empty sentiments or queries. Those are substitutes for being in person, but ultimately are not particularly satisfying as they will always pale in comparison to the real thing.

The opportunity for the couples in LDRs is to truly engage with each other in ways which are not typical face to face. This means you ask more questions about more interesting things and listen more carefully to the answers. It means you are more observant about your life and daily interactions and share in greater depth. You can also absorb and talk about content you've seen in greater detail in ways that elicit opinions, encourage discussion, and open both you and your partner up to deeper aspects of each other's personalities.

Here are examples of what I mean:

Small Experiences/observations:

I was walking home from the store and I noticed that someone had left a pair of gold and pink sandals on the bench at the bus stop. I wondered what could compel someone to just leave their shoes there. Why do you think someone would do that?

I walked by a house and a woman was picking grapefruit from a tree in front of a house. She was in the process of stacking dozens of them on a bench nearby. Nearly a third of the bench was covered in grapefruit, but she hadn't put a sign up to tell people that it was okay to take them. Do you think she was gathering them for herself and would later get something to put them in or that she was stacking them there for someone to take? Would you have taken one?

Note: The purpose of this type of sharing is two-fold. You are telling your partner about the details of your daily life, but also exploring what would be said or done if the two of you were having the experience together. It allows you to relive the moment to some extent as if you'd been together.

Sharing what you've read/learned:

I read an article today about water usage in California and how it takes 220 gallons of water to grow a single avocado. Given the long-term drought, I'm wondering if perhaps I should focus on buying avocados grown only in Mexico and Florida, but there is a point to be made about supporting jobs in California as well. On the one hand, it's unethical to contribute to the water problem when there are alternatives, but, on the other hand, it's also not good to put people out of jobs. What do you think?

I read a post about how some guy invented a substitute for food called soylent something or other and that it's supposed to have all of the nutrients you need to just chug it down and not worry about shopping, cooking, or cleaning up a big mess. What do you think about giving up food and all of the hassle associated with it?

Questions:

Tell me something about you that I don't already know. (Ask this question often, and listen with genuine interest and ask follow-up questions!)

Think about anything that you don't know about your partner, but you might want to know or "should" know. Do you know their favorite food, color, season, etc? Think about those aspects and ask about them and why they are favored. You don't have to do it by rote or unnaturally, but such questions can come up when relating experiences. For example, you can say that you tried some new beverage at Starbucks and ask your partner what drink is his/her favorite. 

One of the wonderful possibilities afforded you when you are in a LDR is that you are encouraged to live your life differently in order to strengthen the bond of the relationship. You have to be mindful of your daily life to relate experiences and ask about them. You have to read interesting things in order to share them and ask for other opinions. You will grow as a person as you add to the texture and depth of your relationship. You will also have a chance to show your interest in your partner and to really get to know him or her. If you can't witness their life, then you can ask about it.

Keep in mind that this isn't about filling time or making conversation. It's about building intimacy and substituting for a lack of proximity. If it feels like a chore, then maybe you need to question how interested you are in spending time with the other person and knowing him or her better.

1987

My long distance relationship started in 1987—July 18, 1987, to be exact. Such precision is possible when you have never actually met the person you've fallen in love with and a formal announcement of the change of status of your relationship from "friendship" to "relationship" must be made in order for the coupling to commence.

In 1987, the world was a different place. Here are some ways in which it was different that mattered to me:

• $1 in 1987 would be the equivalent of $2.08 today
• There were no cell phones, obviously. People looked at each other and listened to one another when they met for meals or conversation.
• Few people had computers because the cost was prohibitive. In modern terms, a personal computer (like an Apple), would cost over $7,000.
• Only local calls (within the same town) were free. Long distance calls were prohibitively expensive, especially across states during prime times.
• CDs were just becoming popular, but were so expensive that few people could afford to buy many of them. Many still bought records.
• Recording technology was analog. People mainly used cassettes for sound and VHS for video.
• The minimum wage was around $3.35 (equivalent to $6.98 today).
• Pictures required you to buy film, have it developed, and for prints to be made.
• A postage domestic stamp cost 22 cents (equivalent to 46 cents today).
• Few people owned video cameras. Home videos were a luxury most could not contemplate without a decent cash outlay.
• Nearly all college students had to research "by hand" by going to libraries and finding books, journals, papers, or microfiche.
• The only way you could get to know or learn about another person was through other people or filing official documents through a court or other agency. There was no such thing as an online profile or search.
• 56.8% of high school students enrolled in college as compared to nearly 67% now
• Television viewing largely consisted of the three major networks. The Fox network existed, but it only aired twice a week. Cable as we know it was greatly more limited.
• People tended to visit the homes of their friends to socialize with them. There was no online social networking.
• The main way in which strangers met for dates was through blind dates or by visiting bars. There was no online dating.
• People used paper road maps to find their way around.
• Phone numbers were something you wrote down in your paper address book or Rolodex or you simply had to remember them.
• Prozac had just been introduced, but was not yet in widespread use.
• Technology neither talked to you nor could you talk to it. That was the stuff of "Star Trek".
• Banks had pneumatic tubes through which you could conduct business at a distance and ATMs were called "Mac" machines on the East coast and had physical buttons that you had to push. 
• Most people made purchases with paper checks or cash. It was difficult to get a credit card and, when you were allowed to use one, it was ran through a little machine with raised letters that imprinted on a special form.
• AAA would assemble custom "triptix" to help with complex travel. They did this by hand and made it into a little book of maps. It tricky to plan such trips on your own.
• The only way to know if a restaurant was good was by word of mouth, to eat there yourself, or catch a review in a paper.
• The postal service was the main means by which packages were delivered. UPS and FedEx existed, but they were more expensive alternatives used to ship either special items (such as large parcels) or faster than the postal service.
• "Mail order" meant paper catalogs that you received at your home and ordered using a letter that you sent to the seller. Sometimes, you could order by phone, but this wasn't as common. 
• Pornography was hard to come by and something that you found only in specialty shops. 
• Ronald Reagan was president.

Some of this information is fairly trivial. No small amount of it sums up to the fact that, in 1987, the world was one in which contact between people was largely if not entirely face to face and experiences were far more tangible (analog, printed) and less ethereal (digital) than they are now. Your music wasn't something invisible in a tiny device. It was something you had on a shelf, held in your hand, and saw moving in a machine. Your photos weren't bits on a hard drive. They were pieces of paper in a book that you leafed through. Money wasn't data on a card. It was paper and coins you fumbled with in your wallet. Everything was concrete. Things were solid and you couldn't pull them out of thin air into existence.

It was not a time during which people were comfortable conceptualizing anything in life as "real" unless they could see it, touch it, feel it, smell it, or taste it. Conducting any relationship—let alone a romantic one—at a distance was an act of imagination as you could not see the couple interacting together. At that time, a long distance relationship that was not forced by circumstances (such as a military posting separating a husband and wife) was regarded as very peculiar. The sort of person who would engage in one was regarded with suspicion. Why wouldn't someone just do what everyone else did when looking for a partner? There must be something wrong with the involved parties or they would pursue relationships like "normal" people of the time.

If you have been or are in a long distance relationship, do people ever question the legitimacy of your relationship? Do they see you as being somehow "wrong"?

What Is a Long Distance Relationship?

I don't know how many times a definition has had to change along with the times, but what is considered a long distance relationship has changed over the centuries. At it's most basic, a "long distance relationship" is one in which the involved parties do not reside in the same area such that frequent contact is difficult or impossible.

For me, there are essential elements to such relationships that relatively recent technology has largely overcome and thereby eliminated some of the most critical components. The distance itself creates physical separation. This is half of the relationship equation and a very important one indeed. A big part of what makes being with another person so wonderful is the ability to touch one another. One of the best parts about being half of a loving couple is that you have granted one another special permission to touch in particular ways, often ways that you cannot touch others.

Internet technology has wiped out many of the other parts of distance relationships such that I sometimes wonder if modern long distance relationships suffer as greatly from them. One of those parts is the lack of immediacy. Prior to the invention of the telephone, all distance relationships required people to operate entirely out of time as well as space. One party has a thought or a feeling to express, puts pen to paper, or hits keys on a typewriter and puts the thoughts into an envelope and surrenders it to the postal service. The other party receives it, reads it, digests the thoughts and responds. The sender and receiver are, depending on the times, at least days apart in communication. In the even more distant past, they could be weeks apart or more. You feel despair and longing, but your partner cannot respond or even know for some time.

My long distance relationship started in 1987. At that time, there was no internet as we now know it. Regular people did not have the capacity to contact each other in real time except for using the telephone, and that was a lot more expensive than it is today. I lived in a prolonged state of being out of time with my boyfriend at the time. It created a unique set of circumstances which I would not experience if I were to experience a similar relationship today.

I am writing a book about my relationship. This site is about that to some extent, but it's also about long distance relationships in general. It's about the special problems and considerations that go into having one and the societal environment that surrounded them back then and an exploration of that environment now. If you are in a long distance relationship and you have found this site, I would love to know what you believe are the particular challenges of your situation. In the future, I will talk about some of the challenges that I faced when my long distance relationship played out.