Hello Friends:

About eight years ago, this month probably but I cannot recall specifically, an interesting thing happened to me. I had had my computer for about a year, and while working my first teaching job and a weekend job at a steakhouse, then, just like now, I didn't have much time for a social life. I had joined Yahoo Personals (back when it was free) in order to meet some friends and find romance. That worked out pretty well for me, as I made lots of friends and had two long term relationships come from this.

Well, one day I checked my in box at Yahoo and found a message from a woman in the Philippines, who had answered my ad. While still being new at this cyber dating thing, I was hip enough raise an eyebrow or two at this. Red flags weren't going up, but let's just say they were a nice shade of orange. I already knew about all those "Asian penpals" and "Meet Russian Ladies" ads in the back of magazines and already beginning to prolliferate in the early days of the internet. In fact a friend of mine had been taken to the cleaners by a "mail order fiancee" years ago, so I answered this ad with my guard up.

Turned out my fears were unfounded. "Layla" was just looking for friends and penpals in the US, not romance, a finacee visa or a green card wedding. She was a year younger than me, single and had a good job in Manila. WE exchanged information and began a long pen pal correspondence, and chatted for hours on IM. We shared similar tates, views and attitudes. We were both single and never married, but we wanted marriage and children. We were both Roman Catholics and we both had lost our Mothers to cancer. We had similar political views, and liked the same kinds of music and movies.

Our friendship blossomed over the winter, through chats and emails. We exchanged photos and both liked what we saw. She IMed me on July 4, 2001 (appropriately enough) and I told her that I had just bought a house and she told me that she was emirgrating to America. She had some relatives in Los Angeles and she had applied for a work visa through them and the company they worked for. I looked forward to being able to call and talk to my new friend when she reached the continental US.

Most of you have figured by now, that yeah, we talked about romance. We discussed the possibilites of the two of us meeting and clicking, marriage and children. I mean, hey, we are both human, and as I said, we had really clicked. Both of us entertained the possibilites of a relationship developing, and our being closer than half a world away, was very exciting. I can recall the exhileration I felt the first time we talked on the phone and I heard her voice, sweet and chraming, made more so somehow by her competant, but still halting, English.

Well things changed a month or so later when I met Alyssa. We began dating and became serious. She moved in with me the next year, 2002 in the summer, and we were engaged in the winter of 2003. I was honest with Layla about this, as the relationship progressed, at least I think I was. I honestly can't remember a lot of what happened beyond my pair bond with Alyssa during those times. We stayed friends and shared the occasional IM, which I did hide from Alyssa for obvious reasons. I could see her asking why I was still even talking to a potential rival female and , who knows, perhaps, subconciously I was seeking it out (Paging Dr. Freud, Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud call your service ). I honestly don't know, but I stayed in touch with her.

Well as you know Alyssa and I did not make it and we parted. This was in December of '03. Layla was well established in California and was doing well. She shared a nice apartment with another Philippina girl, and had a good job with her company. We started talking again, and the idea of my flying out to LA to visit her finally came up. For whatever reason or reasons, we never were able to make the arrangements work out.

Sometime in 04 she met a guy and began dating him. Our correspondence was pretty rare in those days, but part of me died, when she revealed this to me. I had always held out this hope that she would be "the one." Considering the way in which we had first met, and how she moved to the US and....well you get the picture. I was even more taken aback when she told me she was moving in wiht him in 05. This shocked me, because she had always given me the impression she did not approve of this. Without revealing too much detail, let's just say she was a good Catholic girl, even into her 30s.

Her IMs became even more rare as she was in this relationship with this divorced guy, who had a ten year old son. Our conversations resumed soon after and I asked her about her relationship. She was not really happy with him. She wanted marriage and children and he wanted neither. She revealed to me that he pretty much told her up front, that he was not going to marry her. And she had to talk to me on IM in secret because he was the jealous type and would check her computer to see who she had talked to.

I was kicking myself, for all those times I just "could not get out to see her," all the mis steps and false starts to see her and meet her finally. I kept asking her why she was with this guy, and she could not give me a good answer, although she was pretty cold when she told me, that I had pretty much blown my chance with her, (and I hated to admit that she was right).

I dated no one seriously or long term for those years, and she often ended up Iming and talking to various dates of mine, in addition to me. HEre I was playing the field and here she was, in a nowhere relationship.

I hate to say it got pretty emotional at times. I kept asking her why she stayed in this relationship, even if it was not fulfilling her needs, and she kept saying that she got tired of waiting for me, and why it seemed like I was playing the field so much, if I wanted to settle down and marry. Both of us exchanged pointed jabs like two top-notch middle weight fighters.

At one point I even told her, "Congratulations Layla! You've always wanted to be an American girl and you have finally succeded. You are now officially the typical American girl. You're stuck in a relationship that is going nowhere with a loser who doesn't fulfil your needs and won't be a part of your long term goals and you are going to waste all of your energy "trying to make this work" and "someday he will CHANGE."

Hey, I told you it got contentious. As Bree once remarked to her son, when she threw him out of the house and abandoned him during Desperate Housewives's second season, "The opposite of love isn't hate, its indifference." Hate still involves feeling. Layla and I did not hate one another, but we still felt and we still hurt because of that.

I could tell she was hurting. The fact that she was sneaking around and trying to IM and talk to me, her friend, was a good indicator of that fact. She was unhappy.

Well sometime in 2007, she finally reached the end. She finally realized that this relationship was not fulfilling her needs. She broke up with him and moved out. Her Yahoo icon started popping up a lot more on my screen. She could not wait to talk to me and tell me of the changes in her life.

She moved to Orange County and got her own aprartment. She got a promotion at her work. She is now no longer on her work visa, which pretty much limited her to her employer and living in Califronia. And finally, she now has her green card.

We talked more and more as we rebuilt the bridges we had not just burned, but in some cases had dynamited, in the past five years. We rekindled our friendship and reignited our mutual, long distance, and somewhat unspoken romance.

Which brings us to today.

My flight to LA leaves at 6PM tomorrow night. Wish me luck gang!

PIKE