All or Nothing

I “met” two men from this forum who said they wanted to be my pen pals. I agreed, and emailed them. When they wanted to take it further–to phone calls or to facebook, and I wanted to just keep it at pen pals, they stopped emailing me. Why is this? What’s wrong with just being pen pals?

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people generally think being friends means contact through internet or phone…most people think that way.

you have the right to keep it just as a pen pal thing, remember we are all a bit ill, try not to take it personally.
take care of your self you are a good person.
take care

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Okay, one of them just replied. He was just sick. I guess that was just my paranoia acting up. But the other one said he had a crush on me, so I definitely didn’t want to take it further than just pen pals.

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That’s probably why he stopped. People should be friends and if whatever happens happens, and if one party doesn’t want anything further, I don’t see why a pen pal friend should ditch them… but it happens.
People have expectations and when they don’t pan out they tend to get mad or ignore. I’m a guy and that’s happened to me a couple times.

Also, with phonecalls if you want to keep it just pen pals and someone wants more they can put you on the spot on the phone like asking to hook up somewhere, and then questioning why if you’re not comfortable with it, and then putting pressure on. Whereas in just emails you don’t have to deal with that direct pressure. not saying they would do that, but some guys do…
I seen some crazy stuff go on in this regard with people on old forums I’ve been on…

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You’re smart to stand your ground!

I don’t know why they stopped responding other than they did not get their way. Sounds a little fishy actually.

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More likely the first part, which is selfish and uncaring.
I have had a few strange experiences along the other lines though. people show up new on a group or forum and will ask me a bunch of questions for a few days, then disappear. Almost seems like they are trying to gather info for whatever reason.
I’m not really paranoid about it, and could be wrong, but that’s happened a few times over the years. these are people who are not regular posters on groups though - like they show up, ask questions of me and maybe a few others and then after answering some of their questions they suddenly become completely inactive without any explanation why. that kind of stuff is definitely fishy…

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I was catfished by someone. They pretended to be a different person entirely and it all seemed legit.

Eventually, they came clean and I gave them a second chance. Then they started knowing things that I was doing when I hadn’t told them about it and I had to cut ties. I still worry sometimes about it.

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One must be very cautious when communicating with others privately, especially when opposite genders are involved.
I personally trust women more than I do males ( I got pushed around by too many males in my life) I was raised by women and had girls as friends as a toddler. I used to work with women for many years. But I never limit myself to one gender when it comes to friendships. I do think that dating online or striking up online romantic relationships are not such a good idea, especially on a SZ support site. I am glad that this fabulous site does not encourage dating on here. If someone wants to PM me to say hi or talk or ask me about something, a med or whatever, I am ok with this. Everyone wants something different out of a relationship, motives will differ. I welcome casual laid back easy going private conversations, but respecting boundaries is very important

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I agree to a point on this. But I can’t agree all the way because I met my wife online just by casually answering a question she posed on a group. Something i would have done no matter who it was. I had no idea what she looked like, how old she was, or even what country she was from, since there were people on the group from all over the world.
We became friends instantly and just clicked. I forget how long before romantic feelings started, mutually. Maybe 6 weeks - 2 months. Then the calls, regular mail and met 4 months later. Got married 11 months after we first met 3D.
However, and this is the big one…We both sensed everything was ok. I had just gone through being ditched by someone who wanted all or nothing, and I had been in a rebound relationship before a few years before, and she was sort of in that situation. So I let her know both things and asked her if she was sure… I guess she was because she almost started crying !
But point is, WE KNEW and felt it, sensed everything, had synchronicity in a lot of things…go to pick up the phone and she was already on it…a couple times with that…

People tend to go blindly into things without discernment, just based on external things and maybe wants and wishes, but no deep empathic insights, that intuition of the soul - And if there is some sort of clash at the beginning where both parties aren’t mutually attracted so one is hesitant and the other is pushing for immediate action…then i’d say it wasn’t meant to be. Funny, with my wife I was the one who hesitated for a bit that one night on the phone and had been thinking all day about it because I didn’t want to go through what i had been through before. But it all worked out.