real-life friendship dies online

Libby, a single working mom, is a social animal - she loves an occasional night out and she is a loyal and caring friend to many people - male and female - so real life friendships are vitally important for her wellbeing and when her special friend, Toby, turned into a virtual friend she felt intense loss.

"I'm not a computer person," explains Libby. "I work with the things - and play around with e-mail and the Internet at work, very discretely, but I wouldn't want a PC at home."

"At first it was a novelty to dash off e-mails to Toby," explains Libby, "but e-mail ultimately killed our friendship."

"Before Toby got online at home we used to call each other often and meet a couple of times a year with the old gang," adds Libby, "but all of this changed when he started e-mailing me at work."

"Instead of surprise telephone calls and delightful face-to-face meetings I received lots of hastily written electronic messages from him."

"At first it looked like the daily messages were bringing us closer together than we had ever been," explains Libby, "but they were merely an exchange of mundane information that neither of us really wanted or needed."

"After a while, we both tired of the daily e-mailing sessions and settled into a monthly catch-up e-mail. This went on for about six months and then one month Toby didn't respond."

"I sent him a couple of subsequent emails inquiring if everything was okay, or if I had said something that had offended him, but he never replied," explains Libby. "I know he received and read the emails because I had enabled the 'acknowledge read' facility."

"I tried to telephone him but his line was engaged - I suppose he was connected to the Net - and I admit that I could have made an effort to visit him, or write him a letter, but the e-mail friendship to which we had devolved had robbed us of normal friendly relations."

"It's hard to explain," sighs Libby, "but I didn't feel right about intruding into his private life. He was shutting me out for a reason and I just had to accept that."

Read more by Libby on this issue:

ideal couple split by net

Facebook friend mining

Facebook friends

Single mom resents e-relationships at work

pen friends

Wendy is a housewife, 39, who's waiting for her youngest child to start school before getting back to work. Her her life revolves around sending and receiving e-mail, and she admits to being a bit jaded with it all.

Wendy has two types of friends - those she sees and those she corresponds with.

"It may sound strange," says Wendy, "but I am so much closer to my pen friends than those I see -- not that I get much time to see many people these days!"

"I can say things in writing that I don't normally say to people face to face," explains Wendy, "and my pen friends feel just the same -- we exchange some very deep feelings and bounce around a lot of great ideas, too."

"Pen friendship has been a part of my life ever since I was about ten years old," explains Wendy, "but it was never like this."

"Since getting online and discovering e-mail I just don't write letters any more and the whole e-mail thing has taken over my life to the point at which the only thing the postman drops into my real life mailbox are bills."

"Let's face it," laughs Wendy, "opening and reading and responding to bills is totally devoid of pleasure!"

Wendy appreciates that e-mail saves billions of trees from extinction, but she admits that her e-mail addiction has caused her to really miss a good old-fashioned personal letter.

"Putting aside huge practical problems with e-mail like spam and privacy breaches," says Wendy, "there is something much more insidious going on with e-mail than the demise of the good old-fashioned letter."

"It's called e-mail addiction and it has reached a point in my life where it consumes time that I should be giving to my children and this worries me. When they come home from school I am glued to the computer reading and responding to e-mail and sometimes I just can't unplug and give my kids the attention they deserve."

"I suppose my addiction has something to do with the fact that e-mail has an urgency and an expediency about it that a letter just doesn't pose", explains Wendy.

"You tend to reply quickly and without thinking to e-mail. It's there in your mailbox, and if you don't attend to whatever is there right away, there will be stacks more to attend to tomorrow - to the point where you may have 200 e-mails in your mailbox at any one time."

"A reply to a letter, on the other hand, was always a slow and carefully crafted exercise for me."

"There was never a hurry to reply to a letter," says Wendy. "Once opened, it just sat there quietly until you got around to answering it. It didn't multiply when you weren't looking, in the manner than e-mail does!"

Of course, e-mail plays a vital role in keeping in touch with friends across the world - without it Wendy would lose contact with a lot of people - but like most other net addicts Wendy cannot remember the last time she received a personal, newsy, hand-written letter sealed in an envelope with a colorful stamp affixed to its right-hand corner.

"The joy of receiving a letter was something I first experienced at the age of ten - when I joined a penfriendship club," says Wendy, "and it continued throughout my life until I got onto the Net."

"One by one my old pen friends got online, and while it's good that we're able to remain in touch, I do miss their letters."

"These pen friends are now grown up women like myself, with children and all sorts of life complications," says Wendy. "They're girls who've shared their lives with me for 29 years."

"They're from all over the world - tiny little islands like the Isle of Man and great big islands like Australia - and while our relationship is very special," explains Wendy, "it was never intended to be more than a pen friendship.

"I miss their letters and I miss the leisurely way we once corresponded with each other."

"I wish we could all get back to real letters and shake off this crazy e-mail addiction," sighs Wendy. "I'd really like to give more attention to my kids and go out more with my real life friends during the day - but having got hooked by this e-mail addition I don't know how to get unhooked. I'm stuck!"

"Any ideas besides unplugging and going cold turkey?"