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I first got online in late 1991 when I got on the internet through my university where I
was doing research for PhD. A year later I discovered MUDs and loved the idea of actually
being able to talk in real time to people from all over the world. (I am from Scotland
originally and I was at the University Of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North of England at
the time.) I met Lon around October 1992 when I discovered a MUD called
Moral Decay which seemed to be full of all sorts
of interesting people. Lon (who's MUD character was called Kyosuke) was among many good
friends that I made around that time despite never having met them in real life. I met
some of these people for the first time in March '93 when I attended a conference in
San Francisco for which one of my papers was being published. Lon became my best friend friend online and this was further strengthened during the summer of 1993. He met a girl online around this time whom he had pretty strong feelings for. He spent a lot of time confiding in me about this and then in July '93 he suddenly decided to do something about it and flew off to meet her in person (Lon is from Virginia and this girl was from Canada). Things seemed to work out fairly well for them but it blew apart after he came home when the problems of maintaining a relationship like this made themselves apparent .... When this happened Lon was very upset and we spent a lot of time talking about it all. During this time our own friendship grew much closer and we decided that it was high time we met in real life and arranged for me to visit after Christmas 1993. When the visit was first arranged we really were just friends but for the few months before the visit we spent more and more time talking and spending time together and the relationship began to deepen. We were cautious not to expect too much before meeting in person especially after Lon's previous experience of falling in love online. When we met in person it all clicked and it was as great in real life as it had been on line and after two weeks with him I didn't want to go home. I did go back home and things remained the same so he asked me to marry him during a 7 hour phone call at the end of January 1994 and we announced it to everyone around Valentine's Day. Lon came to visit me in March and I then spent the summer in Virginia with Lon. We were married on the 29th of December 1994 exactly one year after we had met for the first time in real life and it is now over a year later and it's all working out great. Wanna see some of our pictures? At the moment, we're in the process of starting our own internet service provider business. Unlike the cities, internet access in small rural towns like ours is an expensive proposition due to the long distance charges to call the "local" access numbers. Our aim is to change that. We currently operate a fairly busy little BBS called MoonStar (804-392-7670 or bbs.moonstar.com). We're also offering full internet access to the people in our area and the first of them are going online this week. Many of them are getting their first taste of life on the internet. We're also be running a web site with home pages for our users and will be selling space for businesses and anyone else who wants to set up pages on our server. Check us out at www.moonstar.com. Written February 1996.
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I'd love to hear your comments good or bad, your experiences of
relationships good or bad or just anything else you would like
to share ;-) Email me at:
mj@moonstar.com
© Copyright, 1996, 1999, Mary Jo Stockton
Replication and distribution are allowed if credit is given.