How long are the letters?

[catzenmouse]

I work in InfoSec/Information Assurance

I could tell by your avatar. Sometimes those cube fights get really out of hand! 

Softy,

 Welcome to RWD!
   Please take a few moments to tell us about your self in the introductions section. Always good to have another FSU womans thoughts here.

Ken

[Blues Fairy]

Blues Fairy, 3 years!   That must be the record.  I think you are the exception of exceptions.   You have the patience of Job.  Did you start correspondence with a 3-year plan in mind, or did he procrastinate a few times along the way?

I guess we started writing to each other without any specific agenda in mind, just enjoying the process.  We wrote long letters about once a month, sorta like Bernard Shaw & Ellen Terry kind of thing.  Until, after some years, it became obvious to me that no other suitor of mine, online or offline, could compare to that mysterious man behind the letters.  And the same thing occurred to him, apparently.  So we met.

We still are very good friends and will most likely remain so even if the marriage does not work out.  But I'm sure it will.  

[Gator]

Blues Fairy,

Beautiful story!  I believe the most fulfilling and enduring  relationship is to be true and best friends with the one you love. 

[I/O]

Letters should be long enough to "Get" the other person's attention and short enough to "Keep" it.

Personally, I have always thought that far too many people way underestimate the value of the written word in this pursuit. Telephone etc? What the heck is that? Mine and I never had any audible communication prior to meeting and it was about a year of communications before meeting. :noidea: :noidea:

The paradox which continues to amuse me is that people go to the written medium to find someone, IE: an internet site, then they do their very best to avoid or minimise using the very medium that got them started, that is the written communication.

I/O

[softy]

well... i think it's possible to write eachother long time if you have friendly feelings only. i have few internet friends whom i didn't see in real life and maybe will not see ever but they are my friends and i enjoy our communication.
and as i understood, Blues Fairy story was same... friendly feelings first and after it became something more than simply friendship. it's normal but if man and woman have met at dating site for example and they had clear point to find second half, and they started talking in romantic way from the beginning... i think it's silly wait for ages in writing emails...

thanks to all for greetings 
 

Softy,
 Welcome to RWD!
   Please take a few moments to tell us about your self in the introductions section. Always good to have another FSU womans thoughts here.

Ken

i did it by my first step at this site

[catzenmouse]

You sure did. My bad as this was the first post of your's I had seen.

[Son of Clyde]

Try this it worked for me.

http://www.ipipi.com/

[2tallbill]

I understand most of these women are writing lots of letters to lots of guys.  That being said, do you consider there to be a "minimum" length of a letter to really take someone seriously?  What are the average lengths of your correspondence?  a few sentences, a few paragraphs, a few pages?  I'm just curious

You want to get to video chat as soon as you can, but yes. Most letters from Real girls are short.
The real long flowery letters are from Hairy Borris (not a real girl writing to you).

[ML]

Even when I had it narrowed down to 12-16 gals for my WMVM trips and was negotiating meeting  times, some of them refrained from writing more than 2-4 sentences.

And it was a mixed bag how the meetings turned out relative to length of messages.

Some gals wrote very little, but we had very good in-person date.

Some gals wrote relatively long and informative messages, yet the in-person meetings were a flop.

I think some of it had to do with how much experience they had with previous guys.

i.e. Those who had been at the game for quite some time were tired of putting a lot of effort into long messages . . . yet were quite talkative in-person when a guy actually showed up.

Others who were newer to the game put a lot of effort into their messages, yet the in-person meetings didn't go well.  Perhaps they had built up too much in the way of the 'man on a white horse' while I merely walked.

[Trenchcoat]

There might be something in what you say ML.

However, I have found that the level of communication tends to follow the girls interest. So a long message and/or frequent message replies tends to show good natural interest. Whereas short messages and/or infrequent message replies tends to show poor natural interest from a girl. Possibly the odd few girls might become somewhat jaded over time on writing messages on dating websites and put in less effort to gys they feel interest in but generally that is what I have found.

The long flowery messages Bill talks about are a different kettle of fish to long genuine messages. Once a guy notices the difference in how they are structured, content, etc it is not normally difficult to tell the two apart. If a girl is processing love and/or telling you how wonderful you are without ever having met you in her first message or so and there is a lot of that in the message then it's almost certainly a scam message. Common sense should be clued into with the guy asking why she would fell this towards a guy she doesn't know and hasn't met just in the basis of a photo and a few words, there is really no logic to it other than to scam.

Generally a girl who has interest in a guy will probably reply well to begin with and get better over time as they feel they get to know the guy more. I have tended to find that a very high level of messaging interest is needed for a meeting to likely go successful. I've had a good level of messaging interest with girls I've met in the past but it was not very high, not high enough and the meetings didn't work out quite well enough. I have noticed that often guys do similar with Video Chat/Skype where they are very involved for a long period of time with quite an intensity to it before meeting a girl. Usually that it rolls into a successful date/ongoing relationship as they are almost in a relationship by the time they get to meet anyway that the crossover is almost unnoticeable.

The only thing I would say is the length of time of messaging, etc. Normally it should be rolling very well within a few weeks to a meet. There is not a lot of point Penpaling it many months as it could be wasting time and being counterproductive. I know some guys have video chatted to a girl for months on end, that may be a little different as you get to see her although aren't with her exactly and that's up to them.

I general any relationship can not work out eventually I think but finding out lots about one another can see how well you might line up. I don't think lining up completely is necessary although can make things better/easier but lining up enough is probably needed. If there are deal breakers on differences between the two of you then that is better found out about up front also.

[ML]

It has changed over the last few years, but yes, all the girls there have cell phones now.

I can only think of one guy in the US who doesn't have a cell phone!  He is a frequent poster here, BTW :-)

Simoni may have been referring to me !

I did not have a cell phone until around 2012 or so.

And even then, and still now, I have only a flip phone.
I do not do texts.

I am a big email writer.

Interestingly (or not) I taught computer programming way back in the day . . . and wrote many very complex programs in Fortran and used SAS and SPSS for my financial research leading to top publications.

But now don't like to do such and only rely on spreadsheet software to do my financial and accounting work.

I have never and will never download an 'app.'
At some point I may be locked out of online banking, etc.

I do NOT like the way computers and cell phones are taking over our lives and ruining childhood.

[2tallbill]

I didn't have a smarter than me phone until my first flight to Voronezh.
You still have to hold a gun to my head to get me to install any type
of app especially one that wants access to anything else like my
location or camera or something. 

I had a flip phone and I hated texting mostly because you had to press
the 7  4 times to get an "s". I forget how many times you had to press
it to get a capital "S" when you were machine gunning through the
letters then passed the one you wanted, curse words would start
flying.

I tried to put in an image but it didn't work.
http://static.wikia.nocookie.net/getsmart/images/f/f8/Maxand99promo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080518195103

[2tallbill]

Well my guy and I were in correspondence for 3 years before our first face-to-face.  No disappointment whatsoever.  I guess that's because were had enough time to become really good friends before anything else.

I knew a guy from the UK and a girl from Tashkent

UK boy wrote and chatted with for several months without meeting. Then a guy from Kansas
who was not thin or handsome got on a plane curled her toes and now they are married
and indecisive letter boy got nothing. Anyone who thinks that you can get a real girl writing
her letters for long times should worry about fat uglies from Kansas who will buy a ticket.

If you find an excellent girl buy a plane ticket. Fortune favors the bold.