unavailable men
Libby and Toby had grown up together and, despite going their own ways after school, everyone expected them to get together permanently because they were an ideal couple and such good friends – but Libby maintains that this scenario is unlikely to happen because Toby had become addicted to the Internet and is no longer capable of conducting a real life friendship with her. He has become unavailable in every way.
"At first it was a novelty to dash off e-mails to Toby," explains Libby, "and the daily messages seemed like they were bringing us closer together than we had ever been, but they paled into insignificance compared to the surprise telephone calls and delightful face-to-face meetings we used to have – and then all of a sudden I never heard from him.”
"He had probably got himself a cyber girlfriend and either felt uneasy about keeping in touch with me," muses Libby, "or he was forbidden to do so by the woman in his life. It happens. A lot of women are suspicious of guys claiming to have platonic friendships with other women."
“Finally, I presumed that Toby did not want to continue a friendship with me for whatever reason and I let him go from my life.”
"He had been a good friend and when you're a single mom like me you can't afford to lose friends," explains Libby, "especially those you've known for a long time, and your children are also involved with - but it was evidently his time to move on and I wasn't going to interfere in his new life."
“A year later I received a surprise e-mail from Toby,” says Libby. “It was brief, hurriedly written, and contained no apology and no explanation for what had happened. It was just a blithe expectation that I would be happy to hear from him.”
"Under the circumstances I was not happy to hear from him and told him so," says Libby. "A lot of water had passed under the bridge in the year during which we had been out of contact. I had moved on, found new friends and new interests and my children had stopped asking about him. The void that Toby had left in my life had been filled."
“Rather than accepting my response – or visiting me in person to repair our friendship,” says Libby, “he then hurt my feelings more by sending me a really angry message.”
“We may once have been an ideal couple – and maybe once had a future together,” says Libby, “but the Internet had changed him into a cold-hearted monster and as diplomatically as I could I told him that I would prefer that he did not contact me again.”
Read more by Libby on this issue:
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