Can you hear me now?
Yes, I love my wife, but my female pen pal in the Midwest has become the sounding board I need.
Early last year, my 16-year-old son was looking to improve his writing skills to prepare for upcoming SAT exams and college essays. I suggested he find a pen pal and helped him search for one through an online service. To help motivate him, the whole family decided we’d all try to adopt a pen pal as well. My wife, Julie, found someone who was OK at first but then became more of a mailbox litterbug, preferring to forward inane messages several times a day rather than striking up any real conversation. My son and 13-year-old daughter got some promising responses but eventually lost interest.
I didn’t want to give up on the pen pal idea, though. I am blessed with a wonderful family and am interwoven into a close-knit, small-town community where neighbors seem like family. As a person who was forced to move from town to town as a boy and never able to establish roots for much of my childhood, this has been an idyllic way of life. Such intimacy offers significant rewards, yet there were times, especially as I entered my 40s, when I wished I could have an outside voice to share things with, an outlet removed from that jumbled collective of beloved friends and family. Someone who would have a greater capacity to communicate without reservation or judgment would be an invaluable asset.
I sifted through some unusual, often amusing, even occasionally disturbing pen pal responses, but found only one that stuck out as belonging to someone who might offer more than just an occasional “HOW R U 2DAY?” It was from Jenny, a self-described “farm girl” from a small town in Ohio who like myself is a municipal employee and has a spouse and teenage children and who listed interests similar to my own. After a few e-mails confirmed that we were both accurately portrayed in our profiles (sadly not the case with many others), we agreed to see if we could form a friendship.
Of course, the thought of having a female pen pal immediately set off little red warning lights. While there are advantages to having another woman’s outlook on different subjects, we all have heard of instances where Internet relationships turn to romance, and I had no interest in finding a replacement for the fabulous Julie. I consulted my wife, and she recognized that this was something important to me and more of an exercise in trust than tryst. Jenny’s husband also gave his blessing, and our unique friendship was underway.
Jenny and I write each other perhaps two to three times a week. We might keep it light and joke about current events, or go a little deeper and ask for advice or share experiences long forgotten by others yet still deeply rooted in our hearts. We never feel obligated to reply right away, unless there is an urgent problem that requires insight.
In a little more than a year, Jenny and I have developed one of the most extraordinary friendships I have ever known. I have never heard her voice and have only seen her picture (well, a picture of her and one of her goats), but that matters little for the kind of trusted relationship we have developed. Writing to her is like making entries in an interactive journal, where you can divulge anything you want, with the bonus of having a response to your thoughts by a remarkably insightful voice that seems to know a side of you unexposed to the rest of the world. It is a perspective every person should find at some point.
Will we ever meet in person, or, for that matter, would we ever want to? The Wizard of Oz warns Dorothy to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and maybe that’s sound advice. It would be difficult to say how a face-to-face encounter would affect our relationship, one unique for its lack of prejudgment and inhibition. Perhaps someday we’ll meet, but for now I am more than content knowing that my confidante will always be there whenever I need her, a testament that platonic relationships between men and women can still exist.
Jeff Thomas is the supervisor of parks and recreation for the town of Ayer. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.
Story ideas: Send yours to coupling@globe.com. Please note: We do not respond to ideas we will not pursue. 