We Touch Through Pixels

Most notifications earned a disinterested glance, and I ended up swiping them away, too lazy to change settings. But there was one type of notification that got my full attention: an alert from Reddit reminding me that I had a new message. Not a short and snappy message like the “What’s up?” casually sent by my friends. Rather, it was almost always a long, carefully thought-out letter amounting to at least a thousand words.

Looking back on it now, I’d say I started this because I was bored. Because I’d been searching for love since twelve years old, looking up at the stars, hoping someone would sweep me off my feet. That search took me to Reddit of all places, to a relentlessly active forum called r4r where people would write posts about themselves with the intent of finding someone to date. 

This can get a few eye rolls because, well, why not just use Tinder? I’d downloaded Tinder and uninstalled it right away. I didn’t like how I had to make a snap judgment on someone based on their appearance. All the men I was interested in before had never been classically handsome. Besides, the face isolated on a screen, picture chosen for maximum appeal barely told me anything, and the short descriptions were hardly informative. I was also curious about dating people from other countries. So I ended up on Reddit, where a 300-word post along with a public history could give you a less curated glimpse into someone’s personality.

As a writer, I wanted someone who could charm me with their words. On top of that, I had a detailed fifty-four point list about the qualities my ideal partner would have. It wasn’t necessary for him to fulfill all of those. I could compromise on eighty percent. Armed with both optimism and nervousness, I scrolled down the posts.

Posts on r4r come in all sorts of flavors. There are posts containing only a few generic lines hardly anyone ever responded to, straightforward posts equipped with a picture and several bullet points of what they’re looking for, and tentative posts asking respondents to test out being friends first before jumping into dating. 

Eventually, I found him, although later he would say to me with a straight face that he barely fit one-tenth of the qualities on my list.

***

His post opened up with a story: the person reading it was at a bar. He was the stranger treating her to a drink from across the room. It was well-written. I ached to read more. His personal description followed: it wasn’t out of the ordinary at all, except that, like his story, there was something about his tone that attracted me. 

I would have shrugged it off normally. Aside from writing, we didn’t seem to have many common interests. He didn’t sound like the poetic, sensitive person I’d envisioned. He was hardly a good match on paper.

But I wanted to continue his story. It hung in the air, too pretty not to notice. Despite my better judgment, I typed up a second chapter where I sent him a smile at the bar and slipped him a note. That was all I wanted. Given my short attention span, I predicted any exchange we had would fizzle out within a few days.

He messaged back in less than a day. He was frustratingly witty, responding to every one of my paragraphs with interest. He seemed kind. Before I knew it, we’d reached well past a week of sending a lengthy message to each other every day. The length ballooned steadily. When we started, it was at around 500 words, and after more than a month, we were breaching 3,000 words, almost an entire novel’s worth of digital love letters. There was too much to talk about. After a month, we watched a movie together and talked on the phone. He asked me to be his girlfriend right when New Year hit at midnight.

I live in Asia, and he’s a Latino who lives in the US, so the timezone difference spans twelve to thirteen hours. Most of the letters he wrote were on the train ride to his coding bootcamp, squeezed in during his commute. When I met him, he was a grocery store worker trying to transition into a developer. He’d handwritten a novel he hadn’t bothered to edit yet. He was smart, cynical, funny with a slight disdain for anything too pretentious, almost preternaturally calm while I struggled with my moods.

We were supposed to book plane tickets to see each other, but then the coronavirus pandemic happened.

***

 Both therapists I’d talked to about an online relationship with someone I’d never met reacted the same way: their faces scrunched up in a confused expression. They echoed that it wasn’t exactly a real relationship because it was devoid of presence, physical intimacy, actually knowing the person beyond a screen.

To be fair, they were both in their fifties and not exactly avid users of Reddit, Tinder, or even social media. They did admit, though, that they were curious about it. After all, cases weren’t exactly rare. The therapist I ended up sticking with because of location mentioned she used to have a penpal from Europe when she was younger. She was excited when each letter finally arrived after several weeks. She mirrored my amusement as I showed her a few snippets of my Reddit exchanges. 

Several sessions later, she softened her opinion. “You know, when clients consult me about this, the same issues pop up as in regular relationships. And I’ve heard from plenty of my graduate school students about it.” 

People already tend to view long-distance relationships with skepticism, but online relationships are scoffed at. Catfishing is somehow always brought up, thanks to widespread (and all too true) tales of people getting tricked into sending money, or meet-ups that became disastrous because the other person faked their identity. I don’t blame them. It sounds dubious to me too, perhaps bound to dissipate when we’re finally face-to-face with each other, because there might be no sparks at all in person. 

Still, the sense of attachment is very much real. Nearly one year in, I’ve felt a similar range of emotions as I would feel in a relationship: the initial stage of infatuation, followed by frustration as our differences clash, the occasional bout of uncertainty, a sense of relief and comfort when we chat every morning, intense shyness the first time we saw each other on video. More than that, it has shifted my perspective about myself and the world, in the same way relationships seem to leave indelible marks.

But then one could make the same argument about imagination. We imagine biting into a lemon, and our mouths water even without the actual stimulus. It’s certainly possible to craft a dreamy vision in your head, even if the other person doesn’t feel the same way.

Can you really fall in love with someone you’ve never touched or even been in the same room with? Or are online relationships merely a trick of the imagination, a product of our modern obsession with being on our phones and computers instead of putting ourselves out there and meeting people in flesh and blood? 

In all honesty, I can’t give a definite answer. But I’m willing to take the risk of being wrong, of finding out that maybe compatibility can’t be gauged through conversation alone.

Maybe I don’t know exactly what his eyelashes look like when the light catches in them or the feel the texture of his hand on any part of my body. But what I do know are concrete, specific details about him: how he eats lasagna during every birthday, his annoyance at designing, his passion for virtual reality, the sound of his voice as he talks to his mother in Spanish, the lingering insecurities from his past relationship, how he cracks when he’s on edge and trying not to yell, details often minute or unnoticed, spilling out only once somebody has dug in enough. 

***

It gnawed at me.

My usual complaint was that he was too steady, too reliable. The last time I’d dated someone, it had been dramatic and intense, with breakups occurring every few weeks followed by passionate but empty declarations of affection. There was so much drama involved: cheating, threats to mail back gifts, impending alcoholism, skipped antidepressants, me begging back for it like it was crack and I was thoroughly, self-destructively hooked.

I promised it would be different this time. The signs were there. The replies came steadily and predictably, even when his schedule was extremely tight and he would wake up right when I was brushing my teeth before sleep. When we switched to texting and calling rather than long letters, the predictability didn’t wane, and he would actually apologize when he replied late. And yet, he stayed calm and placid whenever I got embroiled in drama, resisting my attempts to get him to yell at or leave me.

 In the language of psychology, he has what is called a secure attachment. How mothers bond to us as babies influence our relationships in later life. His had been stable, warm, affectionate. Apparently, mine was inconstant. I have anxious attachment, characterized by an ever-present need for reassurance and the urge to cling. Stability was supposed to be a balm for me, but it was uncomfortable, even unstimulating. He lacked passion, I interpreted. He refused to get down on his knees and make grandiose promises. There was no thrill to our interactions because he was never hot-and-cold.

With long-distance relationships, where timezones are often far apart and communication isn’t forced by presence, it’s all too easy to be erratic. He never was. The unfamiliarity of it scared me.

After several months, when my hunger for drama and pain and confirmation of my narrative I was meant to be left behind finally died down, I realized it was the first time I understood what genuine romantic love was.

“I’m not sure if this makes sense,” I told him one night when struggling to keep my eyes open. “But I felt like before, I was always looking for love from the other person to fill up some sort of emptiness inside me. It doesn’t feel that way anymore.”

All the men in the world could line up before me and tell me they loved me, breath out everything I’d wanted someone to whisper in my ear, but it wouldn’t have filled the huge, gaping hole in my heart. Maybe temporarily, but never for long. What I was looking for was my own. Somewhere, my therapist is smiling.

 There is endless debate about whether online relationships are real, and most of the people who defend these are those who have experienced it for themselves. But that realization alone was priceless and life-changing. I would never love the same way again after he walked into my life through a Reddit message. 

“Awesome, that’s a huge milestone,” he replied.  

I read his words on the screen, glowing warmly against the app’s black background, then hugged my pillow with the same tenderness with which I would have hugged him. 

-Ima Ocon

Ima Ocon is a freelance writer and editor from Asia who works with different businesses from all over the world. She's currently taking postgraduate classes in counseling, and her passions include psychology, philosophy, and storytelling. Her work has been published on high-volume websites such as Thought Catalog as well as literary magazines. She currently blogs on Medium (https://medium.com/@fireflyskitters).