What is this?

Ok. I need some advice.

About a year and a half ago, I met a guy on FFN(fanfiction net) who was mentoring me through my FF story. As it is my first time seriously trying to write, he has been a incredible help. Now since that early mentoring, I have researched online blogs, and such of publishers and writers, not to mention a HUGE writing forum. So I now have a solid grasp of what I need to do writing wise, and what I still need to work on and study on.

The issue is, as time went along, we had/have become very close, albeit internet only friends. He became my bouncing board for story ideas, and it was invaluable.

Can't meet him, as we are 2k miles apart. I have come to know a lot about him and he me. Found out, that despite him being a soft liberal/democrat, and I a conservative libertarian, that we agreed on a whole heck of a lot. Was kinda scary that I could actually agree with some of his thoughts coming from a left perspective..



I don't want to get into the specifics of what it was that I had to sever the friendship.

Needless to say I got the angry letter I expected, him not understanding why I would end a good pen-friendship.

However I feel I did the right thing. That I know that it will be just a slow corrosion of things, that it will eventually just be a shallow thing. So I decided on a swift, clean break. So I ended it.

So, why does this feel like I just broke up with a girlfriend? I am not a homosexual, not that there is anything wrong with that and I mean no offense, but it is not how my door swings. I never had romantic feelings, but all the same, why does it feel like I just filed for divorce or left a girlfriend?

 

Any romantic relationship - once the initial infatuation phase has passed - becomes a much more mature development of feelings between the individuals, and is often built around common interests, with sufficient room for personal space of course

You have just been at phase 2 without having gone through phase 1 and the "break" will feel exceptionally similar to that

Any investment of interest, time and emotion with another individual always feels bad when it ends...especially if the ending is less than smooth sailing

In this case there was someone you had been advised by, had long conversations with and empathized with - and now that has come to an abrupt end and you miss that exchange or opportunity for same...it's normal so don't panic

 

Thanks for the advice Hannibal. I honestly was wondering and a bit worried about what this was. I am really getting hit in the feels. I still check the email, despite that I wont be getting any more. Good lord, we talked for hours every day.. I have over 1200 emails from him alone on one account, and over 900 on another account... All of it just normal banter, story ideas, chapters that he is beta reading and correcting grammar and such.(I tend not to give a care about grammar on the forums, but I put a lot of effort into my stories. )

I am honestly shocked that I got into such a emotionally attached kind of relationship with this person, despite never having met him.

Is it wrong that I am kinda weirded out by the notion of having emotional investment in another dude who is not related to me?

 

Not at all - relationships are multi faceted, and your conversations with him probably amount to more quality discourse that many married couples!!

 

Aint that the truth! Not to say me and my wife don't have quality discourse, we do. Me and her just connect on different things.

It is a sad thing to mourn this, and I know now that this is what this is. Mourning.

Maybe, someday I can find a another dude to connect with, chill and talk, and have a blast. Maybe emotionally connecting with guys isn't as bad as my upbringing made it out to be..

 

It isn't

 

Did you get an inappropriate photo?


Serious note: losing friends always sucks. Feel bad about, then move on. It's totally natural.

 

LOL Chadderz.

Yep, that is what I am going to do. Do my best to move on. Though, this does hightlight a severe deficiency in my life. A lack of friends, and close ones.. I need to start cultivating some.

 

This is a man issue generally; we don't tend to make friends as adults, so if you didn't cultivate your friendships from earlier in life, you can find yourself suddenly friendless.

That's not to say you can't make friends (as you found out), but you'll have to go out of your way to do it.

 

Good man! I have similar problems. It's hard maintaining friendships as an adult.



EDIT: Sorry to Mushroom, who had to edit my post

 

You have MAP......................































............not sure if that makes you feel better or worse!

 

I like Map. Maybe I should hang out here more often, avoid the political threads, and try to not **** anyone off with my opinions. Admittedly hard, since I tend to talk first and think much later..

Why is it that men have a hard time finding close friends? I know part of it for me, is I was brought up believing that those kinds of emotions were gay, and only gay guys felt like that. Of course you can imagine what effect that had..

 

I would say most men confuse sexual intimacy with other types of intimacy. If it wasn't true then men wouldn't go so much for THE erogenous zones rather than realize that the whole body of a woman is erogenous with the right touch.

:thinking:

Maybe there are different kinds of friendship, and that's really all that is going on here. For example, a close friend is someone you can tell pretty much anything too and they will still be your friend. Really no secrets. A spouse could be this kind of closest friend in most relationships as well as "best friends".

Other kinds of friendships have bonding but with stricter boundaries. For instance, a fellow fan fiction writer kframe met online. If I remember from my writing days, a key to a good story is one that the reader gets to fill in the blanks. Delight the reader with vivid descriptions and flowing prose, the thrill of anticipation, the shock of the unexpected, and the cold hard facts, but let the reader's imagination fill in the blanks to make the story their own.

Fan fiction writers are readers too, they feed off of each other. One starts and the other finishes, the other starts and you finish. You talk about your day, your stories, your world... you bond. In the end, however, there are boundaries and when a boundary is crossed, it might be too much for the friendship. You go your separate ways.

kframe, there is nothing wrong with bonding, just, IMHO, be mindful of boundaries. A boundary was crossed and now maybe it was the right time to go your separate ways. Maybe it was a sign that you should spend more quality time with your wife and in person friendships and family.

On the other hand, I know writing can be almost like an addiction. There is a part of you that has left a void with the loss of your fellow writer friend. It might be time to nurture that with reading a good book. Become a reader for a while and let your imagination flow.

 

Rebel Wado, you are correct that we FF writers are also readers. I read FF and I read published works.

My relationship with him started out of necessity. He is a real writer, having been published. If you read FF.NET you notice that a great many of the stories are horribly put together, bad grammar and editing.. Well I was one of those. UNTIL he showed me how to do it.

In fact, since my story is still going, and still has many chapters left to write, you can go back and read my first chapters, till chpt 14 and watch my writing change. The early chapters, say 1-5 are pretty bad lol, editing wise, as I was a newb.

You are exactly right when you say, let them fill in the blanks, and flowing prose, and unexpected. Which was exactly my problem in the first chapters. I Was SUPER descriptive, OVER descriptive. It bogged down the story. Or some slice of life scenes that are way to slow or add little to the character development. Case in point for me, is the Doctors Office scene, where my Protagonist gets a check up for a concussion. I wanted to show off how high tech this world was, yet in the end, it was worthless.

I learned that I bit off too much with my Protagonist. I set the stage to deep. I gave the description for the story, of a man with a twice broken heart. Well, then I proceeded to write the story around those two relationships, and how each of their ends affected him. Took me 64000 words to get my alien female into the story, and I feel like crap about that. Had I not made his background so complicated, I could have made her appearance a lot sooner..

Him, like me, is using fan fiction as a means of practicing writing, with my goal being to eventually get to the point were I can try and get a real story published.

Aaradia, I agree that is likely the issue. However, I would agree with Rebel in that most men suffer that problem. But the other issue was, at least around here, most of us are not encouraged to get into emotional intimacy with other men. None of the men in my family have friends outside of casual work, and church friends. No one that would fit the description of a close friend.

I do need to cultivate some friends IRL. Despite how much this hurts, I actually liked having someone to talk to that I actually wanted to and looked forward to talking to.

 

I uhh… wow, this describes me to a T. I didn't realize other people had this problem.

 

I know right!

I know, that in my experience, I and other men around me, we tend not to form friendships but, these kind of casual acquaintances that we are friendly with.

I wonder if I should block him on Hotmail, or even change to a new Hotmail address.

 

I traveled as a youngster, so I never really had old friends like other people do. Nowadays most of my friends are either related to bonsai or BJJ. I don't think you need to block this guy if he's not pursuing contact.

 

I have gotten a few letters, but I don't read them. I just file them away, in a folder, with the other 2200 messages I accumulated from him in the last year and a half.

 

Damn dude, what did this guy do to **** you off?