You (don't) give me butterflies, babe

I think I might keep sending emails to Carolyn Hax until she responds to one, or until I run out of questions, or until she blocks several of my email addresses. Here’s tonight’s. The question buried within here is legitimate, so please respond if you have thoughts.

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Dearest sweet Carolyn,

Should I expect to experience butterflies with people I meet online? Is it a bad sign if I don’t?

Context: The last two women I was in a relationship with started as friends, and then I fell for them — madly so. We’re talking the type of infatuation where I could hardly think about anything else, whether they were in the room or not. We’re talking the type of infatuation where witnessing something as mundane and ordinary as a sneeze could make me melt. My assumption, perhaps a consequence of the country I was raised in, is that this sort of infatuation – what we call being “in love” – is a healthy and even important way to start a relationship. It is the explosion that starts the engine. Or something.

But with those feelings long since past, and with those relationships failed, and with most of my hours spent surrounded by a bunch of dudes and married people, it’s onto online dating. The thing is, it’s hard for me to understand how I even could feel a similar level of infatuation (or “spark” or “chemistry” or “clickability” or what-have-you) for someone whom, to this point, I knew only through an online profile and brief written messages. I don’t understand how it’s possible for my brain to conclude this person is deserving of my infatuation when it’s still trying to figure out who the eff this person is: their preferred communication style, what makes them chuckle, how they interact with other people, their intentions, their hopes, dreams, fears, and ambitions. All that nasty stuff.

This is not to say that I don’t find them attractive or impressive or likeable. I have sincerely enjoyed the company of some of these online daters, but it’s quite a distance from that all-consuming sort of lustfulness. I go home thinking more about the date than the girl. My brain devotes some rational thought to whether the girl might be a good match but it fixates more on the ambiguities of the encounter — what those little gestures, or absence of gestures, might suggest, and whether I should have let her pay when she asked, and whether it might have been a bit too early to mention that I’m not wearing any underpants.

Point being that I find myself unable to fall for someone in more than an artificial sense when I’m still trying to figure out who they are, and who I am, and what I’m doing with my giant mess of a life, and why Carolyn Hax won’t respond to my messages.

In conclusion, I just want a definitive answer to whether infatuation matters. And if so, when I should expect it. And if not, whether I should have my marriage arranged.

-- Carolyn’s #1 fan without underpants