express welcomes Curvaceous Dee to www.gayexpress.co.nz as a regular contributor. Check out her column fortnightly on Fridays, or for a regular fix of Dee’s raunchy sex blogging, visit her R18 website curvaceousdee.com.

The first time I fell in love I was 15, and it was with a penpal. We had connected through the pages of RTR magazine, and writing by hand was still the norm – each day I wrote screeds until my hand cramped, and daily checked the letterbox for an eager response, to be devoured each time it arrived.

I was in Auckland, he was in Wellington. We progressed from written word to phone calls, to a visit, to another visit – it was a relationship that was to last nearly three years, the latter two with him living nearby.

But really, it was his words I had fallen in love with – and while the reality was (alas) nowhere near as romantic as those words, they carried us a long way indeed.

Now, many years later, I have fallen in love through words again. What began as just another twitter account, then a blog to follow, has expanded into chat, skype, and – indeed – written letters sent across the ocean to Australia.

While there are similarities with the past, the wealth of relationship experience stands me in good stead. Yes, I’ve fallen in love with hir*, and zie* with me. But with us each in other long-standing polyamorous relationships, and each with a complex and full life in our own cities, it’s a fresh challenge to figure out how to make this relationship work for the each of us.

Long distance relationships, or LDRs, are nothing new, and many polyamorous people have lovers they see only occasionally as travel permits. But this feels quite new to me, and certainly the technology changes over the decades have helped to create a connection even without the in-person meeting we both so ardently desire.

While zie is, really, only across the ditch, it is a distance that physically is very large, although technologically is very small indeed. Every day we are able to chat together online, send text messages, exchange direct messages via twitter. I can read hir blog as zie reads mine, and we often share images we’ve found on tumblr that are particularly arousing to the both of us.

Instead of using a telephone (with a phone calling card) as happened in a relationship long ago, we now talk over Skype, sharing video and audio connections in real time. This person I love can see me as I smile and converse, as I can see them. How marvellous is the computer age?

Still, I have rediscovered something special about the written word. When recently laid up in hospital I began to pen a missive, and quickly discovered just how rusty my handwriting skills are. When, aside from a birthday card or dashed off note, had I last written anything longer than a page by hand?

Those nine pages, written over days, were a rediscovery of myself. When writing by hand, my brain moves in different patterns; thinks in different ways. I meandered through history, memories, favourite things. I shared intimacies that would never have emerged when typing at a computer screen.

To receive paper that has been touched by another; read words that fingers have penned; know that their hands brushed across the lines now being read … they are words from a different time, and a different age.

Written romance, across the ocean. It’s how love can blossom, and burst into bloom.

| Curvaceous Dee

Dee Morgan is a blogger extraordinaire. Her website is the home of all things sexy and sexual. Head there to read her musings on pansexuality, polyamory, kink and sex (and maybe find one or two naughty knickers pics of the lady herself!) Check her out at curvaceousdee.com.

*hir and zie are gender neutral pronouns. Wikipedia has a great explanation on this topic. Head HERE for more information.