Phone Phobias-Not Just for Crazies Anymore

Recently I met someone online. We’d been chatting through email for a couple of days. Things were going well and progressing nicely. Yesterday, I logged on and was excited to see an email from him…right up until I read it. It said, “Here’s my number. Give me a call tonight. I’ll be around all night.” He might as well have said, “Here’s a red hot poker. Stick it in your eyes. Both of them.”

I’m not sure I can even explain my reaction. I immediately closed the email as if snakes were about to crawl out of it. My stomach started doing all kinds of weird things. Butterflies hell, whatever was swimming around in there was much bigger than a butterfly. I panicked. I didn’t know how to reply, had no idea what to say. All I knew was that I was not making that phone call.

See, I suffer from a sometimes crippling affliction. I have a phone phobia. I’d rather put on 4 inch heels and run laps around the park than pick up the phone and call someone I don’t know.

When I finally regained my composure sometime later, I calmly reopened the email and replied like this,

“I’m so sorry. I’m not at all comfortable calling someone I don’t know on the phone. It’s not at all personal, just some weird phobia I have.”

Through the course of our email conversation I explained that I realized that most women love to talk on the phone and that I guessed I was not typical in that regard. Though he was very sweet and understanding, he did mention a couple of more times that he wished I’d call.

Fast forward to an hour ago. I was hanging out on a dating forum and came across this post by, of all things, a woman.

So, I’m on a couple dating sites and my preference is to set up that first date by email/IM. It’s hard to explain, but I just find chatting on the phone with a near-stranger uncomfortable. Without having much of a feel for the person, conversations seem more likely to be stilted and awkward. A guy and I are starting to set up a first date and he gave me his cell # to call should I prefer to do that instead of emailing. (I like that he didn’t just say “call me.”)

Anyone else feel this way? How have you dealt with this? For work, I’m in front of a computer all the time, so emailing back and forth to set up a date works great. I understand not everyone has that set-up though.

Shut up! Another woman wrote that! Very interested, I began to read through 4 pages of posts and found that most of the women that posted agreed! Holy crap! I thought I was really all alone in this, that I must be crazy. So what about you? How do you feel about talking to people, specifically men, that you really don’t know very well?

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Posted by lisaq on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 and is filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.