If I wish, I could write a story about myself as a pilot in the Vietnam War, or as a physicist working at Fermi Lab in Illinois. I know enough about both that the average reader could believe that I was writing an autobiography. It would require a background check to discover that I really was an airborne navigation technician and that I have a real love for high energy physics.

Reality, for humans, is seldom real. Even when it comes to what we believe about ourselves, we have trouble distinguishing manufactured reality from what is truly real. This particularly common human frailty finds it’s happiest, and safest, manufactured reality on the Internet. The movie "Matrix" uses this as a subplot of the human condition.

The great joy, and the great danger, of the Internet is that we can easily live vicariously through others. We mentally absorb the manufactured reality as our own. Anyone can present fantastic fantasies that cannot exist in their real life. Did Stephen King personally experience his stories? Common sense tells us no, not really, but he still scares the hell out of us.

I, like the rest of us, continually remake my reality. Some of that requires help. I read a lot, listen to friends, meditate, and accept professional help (kicking and dragging) when needed. And I dream. That I do not like being alone makes me more open to any possible female relationship. I have to step slowly or I will trip over my own fallacies. Deciding that past events are a good predictor of future events is a logical fallacy called Gambler's Fallacy. Even when we know the odds we will still attempt to win because we want to believe that it is “my turn.”

We decide what we want to believe about ourselves, our environment, and our future. Government and religion count heavily on this. To assume all changes in relationship are the same at their core is false. Yet we do that all the time. That is the nature of relationships. We stay in a relationship when both parties are successfully working towards continuing the relationship. If one of the parties changes the other one may recognize neither the reasoning nor the disillusionment.

Again I refer to Stephen King. If a writer tells us that it is all true and we believe her then she has written well. But unless we know her in real life there is no empirical evidence of truth. Even then, we cannot be sure unless we were there when the story happened. Life is just that way - full of locker room stories that we want to be true.

That I want to believe that I have found someone, regardless of the method, has often turned wrong. The nature of relationships is that the more complex they become the easier it is to manufacture reality. We want to believe so we do. I have stories.