Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Eve of Destruction?

Monday, Nov. 1, 2004
9:06 p.m.
Remember this song?

The eastern world, it is exploding,
Violence flaring, bullets loading,
You�re old enough to kill, but not for voting,
You don�t believe in war, but what�s that gun you�re toting?
And even the Jordan River has bodies floating;
And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend,
You don�t believe we�re on the Eve of Destruction.

Reading many of my fellow Diarylanders� entries tonight brings those lines to mind. I was especially moved by spacemuppet�s contribution tonight, as well as harri3tspy�s plea, even with a broken power cord. My wishes go with all of you. DO THE RIGHT THING!

On to other things now. I have a question. Because of Diaryland itself, I have developed some ongoing, online relationships with people, people I will probably never meet in the flesh but whose conversation I enjoy and look forward to. Some of these people are women, some are men. I am a happily-married, middle-aged mother of two, definitely not looking to cause trouble for others or get into it myself, and yet when I told my husband I was talking online to a male friend, he got rather upset. We�ve talked about this, and discussed many possibilities for his reaction.

Firstly, he didn�t think it was right that I have relationships with other men. My answer to that was that I have lots of relationships with other men, in person even, colleagues of ours, mutual friends, and if I were going to cheat on him, I have lots more opportunities with these �in-real-life� people than with my invisible online friends. Secondly he was afraid that maybe my invisible friends were preying on me and that I was being totally naive in this matter. I reassured him again that I am happy in my marriage, I am not about to abandon my family for a fantasy person I only know as a screen name, and he should not be worried about it. I also told him that he has many colleagues who are female, younger and better looking that I am, and I have never entertained any fears that he would be �distracted� by these women. Add to that the fact that he is a good-looking middle-aged man, in a position of power and somewhat famous in the narrow field in which he finds himself, and there are female students gazing up at him with stars in their eyes every day in his classes. This has never perturbed me because I trust him.

What it finally came down to is that he is not really jealous, because he does trust me after all, but that he is in fact envious that I have the time to spend chatting online when he is working his butt off in his office or teaching his classes or trying to debug a computer program in the electronic music studio. The other �excuses� were merely justification for disapproving of my co-ed friendships when he himself simply cannot afford the time for such luxuries.

So, my question is this: If you are a married or similarly involved woman, do you have online friendships with men that your husband knows and approves of, or do you hide these things from him because you fear it would upset him? If you are a man who is married or similarly involved, do you have online relationships with women that you can be honest about or must hide? Finally, if you are involved in a same-sex relationship, is this an issue at all in your household? As today�s fortune cookie in Shanghai II said, �Things just get curiouser and curiouser.�


from harri3tspy :

With the exception of diary readers who are mostly female, I don�t have online relationships with people I don�t know in real life. I have a lot of male friends, but my husband knows about them. Nevertheless, he is a bit jealous of the time commitment my computer gets. I don�t think it�s an issue of trust. Just that I spend a lot of time working or playing on my computer and that doesn�t involve him.

from coldandgray :

Ooh, good topic. I don�t hide the fact that I have male internet pals, but I don�t really expound upon the details, either.

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