Pen-pals from across the pond

Pen-pals from across the pond 

It started innocently…I was trying to get through having my heart a little broken and wasn’t quite ready to go out and date a lot even though I am really looking for a full blown relationship. So I thought it might be fun to place an ad for a pen-pal in London.   I don’t know why I can talk to Englishmen so easily about most anything, but it just is.  Granted, there are some American men that I can do this with, but they seem to be needles in haystacks and who has the time for that when you know you have Brits just waiting to send emails?

The ad read something like this:

“I am looking for an email friend only. I am an American southern belle who has previously dated a couple of expats. I find they really know how to speak to a woman's mind and I miss the type of great conversations I've had with them.   I'm a divorced business owner and mom and enjoy talking about any and everything. I even like it when someone thinks the opposite of the way I do bc that is how I learn.

So if you want some quality conversation, fun banter and a friend, please reply.

Put your favorite drink in the title.”

I got a bunch of replies, but eventually it was weeding down to three, then two.  One was a slightly older gentleman who truly makes a great, platonic pen-pal from another country. I will call him “dear John” as he is sending me long and copious emails each day, detailing the current happenings in the UK, whilst giving me history behind so many things.  He’s a lawyer, an avid photographer and cleverly includes all sorts of links and pictures for me to learn more.  Sometimes the emails are quite long, given my much shorter replies, but for me but they are fun because he puts so much into them. 

The other man I continued to chat with, I will call him “McDreamy”…if Grey’s Anatomy can have one damn it, I can too.  Boy was he dreamy…absolutely gorgeous, especially for a British man, and quite successful too.  We sent a few emails back and forth before exchanging pictures and I honestly thought he was too good-looking to be real, so the picture must be a fake…hey, I watch “Catfish!” 

After another few emails, he stated that he was coming to my state soon for a conference and was it near where I lived.  Turned out it was just an hour away.  At this point, I was still fairly certain he was not who he said he was, but we continued to chat about life, work and then, my favorite subject, sex.  I will admit it wasn’t long before our emails got quite steamy. 

With the time difference, both Dear John and McDreamy had a typical pattern to when they would email, but my favorite time started being 3:30pm when I knew McDreamy would start emailing me for the rest of his night.  Before the end of the our time together that day, we would find ourselves in a highly aroused state and I think we both enjoyed this element between us. Okay, I have proof we did.

Now, when I ran this ad, I entertained no thoughts of actually meeting anyone from the ad unless some year I decided to conquer my dislike of long flights and fly across the pond to fully immerse myself in Englishman bliss! But as McDreamy and I continued to email knowing he was soon visiting my state, it meant that I could further my “purely academic” research on my chemistry with Brits.  But I was also more nervous than even when I’ve meet online American men.  I guess feeling more removed (proximity wise) I wasn’t sure I could read how sincere he was, if he was a con artist, if he was just after sex, if he had a girl in every city he traveled to and finally, if that picture of this beautiful man was actually a picture of the McDreamy I was getting to know through email. 

Thanks to watching a lot of the ways Nev and Max check people out on Catfish, I did a google image search.  I found another picture of the same gorgeous man to what seemed like a legitmate twitter account with a first and last name.  I googled his full name (which I did not know at that point) and found his LinkedIn account. Ding-ding….my favorite form of online positive ID!   

He had a very impressive resume and I told myself this was still too good to be true.  LinkedIn has a feature where you can see who has viewed your profile and I noticed he had looked at mine too. However, because he didn't mention my savvy detective skills, I convinced myself there was a strange man in London who clicked on my profile, puzzled that a girl in the US, in a completely unrelated line of work had been viewing his profile. In fact, I even tried to trick McDreamy into taking a pic of himself during our regular chat during his lunch time. I explained how I loved  a man in a suit and asked for a snapshot so I could see a spur of the moment pic and if it was really him.  He resisted several times but when I pushed, he said “you’ve already seen me in a suit today…on LinkedIn!” 

Did I win the Englishman pen-pal lottery? Was there such a thing and I was unaware? Oh there really should be a lottery like that…I’d go poor buying up tickets!

Was he really McDreamy in person?  To find out, read tomorrow’s blog...