Article

I don't know what to think about the article that we read this week. I am still a little confused...Sue was an older woman with a disability and “Rob” was younger and newly married.
When Sue first started e-mailing “Rob” maybe she thought it was just innocent letter writing making a new friend. Near the beginning when Rob told her that he is married, and he hopes that she does not take the news badly, she says “why should I?” Rob told her that he was having trouble in his marriage and she tried to help him. In fact, throughout the chapters of Rob and Sue’s internet “relationship”, which turned out to not just be friendship e-mails, she still continued to try and help him and his wife to work things out. I did not understand this because what she was doing was not helping him at all.
Sue says in her article “there is certain honesty indicated when you do not know the other party, have nothing to lose, in fact everything to gain by being able to talk freely, in other words free counselling.” Anonymity goes along with this, in that you don’t really know the person, so you feel freer to say whatever you want to say.
Also, I understand that Sue has a disability, but couldn’t she form other relationships not just through the internet. She says in the article: “Overall I think I am fortunate in being able to write as a means of communication, I was allowed to acquire those skills before my disability interrupted and I am receptive to relationships.” That sort of says to me that writing is the only way in which she is able to communicate and form relationships. But it didn’t say anywhere in the article that she couldn’t talk. I don’t know anything about her disability so I guess I can’t really say much, but it seems like she is taking it to extreme measures.
Either way this article was very different and a little disturbing and shows how interactions on the internet can be another thing that can harm marriages and relationships. Not to mention a FtF social life.