Really don't know where to start. I'm a little older, over 50 and haven't done a lot of dating, but last year I was starting to reach out a bit. None of the things I tried really panned out, so I took a break. On a whim, I joined a karaoke website and started recording songs. I've always been a musician and have a very good voice, not pro level but good and I sing with a lot of feeling. I recorded Love Me Tender, and suddenly was getting an overwhelming response to all my songs from a very nice woman, but Love Me Tender was the one that had her commenting, OMG I'm in love! Honestly I was just a lonely guy sitting here singing but I have a lot of feeling inside, and it touched this woman very deeply.

We started writing back and forth some very positive love emails full of hope and mutual caring, this all got sparked by a song and everything just seemed to take on a life of it's own. The other side of the story is that I'm in the US and she lives in Germany, still we just went with the feelings. We both bought webcams and got used to looking at each other and talking, eventually we turned the webcams off and just talked each night on Skype with our headsets. There was too much distraction with the webcams with us gawking over one another. Our love right from the very beginning was full of such care and desire to just love the other one unconditionally, and for nine months we never had a problem. The nights were just full of overflowing love, care and sharing. It was and still is the most beautiful feeling for me. I'm an artist and very sensitive, so our time together was always a joy. I got to know her whole world, her neighbors and friends, and animals in the house, the weather, we shared it all and I shared my world with her as well. We were like little kids sometimes sending back and forth pictures of animals, and information, just exploring and feeling safe. We would share love songs and listen together and did a lot of crying with our feelings for each other. She also sang and we did many duets. Though she was not a raving beauty, it was really the love that bound us together, the biggest and strongest feelings I've ever felt. She took away my pain every night and I felt light as a feather.

On her end, there was a lot of forever talk, and coming over to spend the rest of her life with me talk, lots and lots - all the comments she left on my songs were overflowing with a desire to spend her life with me. And with all the sweet love she was sharing, I felt nothing but tears of joy and gratefulness. Unfortunately there were complications, she mistakenly thought she could leave her little daughter behind her with the father (they were not married) and would be strong enough to separate herself and come stay with me in this country. She flew over to spend a week with me in January. We were very certain about our hearts and our love, but there had to be the final meeting to get the head to go along. The moment she walked over to my car at the airport, all my nervousness was quieted. She was wonderfully sweet and the week couldn't have been more beautiful holding hands and holding on to each other tightly, gazing across the table in candlelight and caressing her face, sleeping together like babies, the best week of my life really. I took her to some special outdoor settings and we took many pictures and videos. I put together a video of our week together and sent it to her on Valentines Day. It's still on YouTube and I'm singing in the background. The whole relationship up until the very end was an unbelievable joy for me, many days I had such a big feeling of love in my heart from her that tears would just stream down gently and silently. Can you tell I still love this woman more than anything else in the world for the way she touched me? (and continues to).

On the tail end of our time together riding to the airport, we held hands silently and the air was heavy with grief, not much talking, just sorrow at having to part, and tears of sadness. When we held each other to say goodbye, I hadn't planned it, it just came up from inside of me, I asked her to marry me and she said yes. I couldn't bear to see her walk through the doors without some kind of plans for the future. I cried like a baby on the trip home and she said she was doing the same on her long flight back to Germany.

Fast forward just a bit, and things remained beautiful between us, I've never felt so much love in all my life bigger than anything I've ever known, we could spend two hours just exchanging words of love, and the words even if they got repeated, always felt and sounded fresh. We had many nights of crying together sharing love songs and nights of laughing until we were choking on our tears. Things got complicated when she moved away from her daughter to get more work to save money for us. She finally realized after talking to her daughter on the phone a number of times, that the bond was just too strong and she couldn't part with her daughter. The night she told me we both cried, because she couldn't live without her daughter and I couldn't live without her, so now the daughter had to on my part be accepted into the picture and I went along with it. From here it went into custody battles between her and the father and she made some very bad decisions. When she went home to get some clothes she had left behind, she abducted her daughter. The father is handicapped so he couldn't catch up to her. He called the police, she had to return her daughter. After a short time, visitation was granted so she could see her daughter again for five days. When the time was up, she foolishly kept her daughter again, another bad decision. I advised her not to do either thing, that she would win her daughter in the end if she abided by the law and had common sense.

Fast forward again to the end, because I know this has become long winded, it has now become a journey of joy and extreme pain. Things stayed beautiful for a while, we maybe missed only 4 nights of talking in a nine month period, but now she was disappearing and her emails were full of pain desperation and detachment from me until she told me I would have to let her go, it was the only way she could concentrate on getting her daughter back. In one email she even called me Charles in a most formal way, instead of Chuck, and I knew things were bad. There was no longer talk of us at all, just her abandoning me, and I know that the father made me the bad guy and her decision to be with me without the daughter was a big strike that he used against her with his lawyer, and I'm certain everyone around her was telling her you have to cut ties with the American or you will not get your daughter.

The emails from her at the end were very detached and full of fear and regret for the things she had done.
Fast forward for the last time, I've never felt a love like this before in my life, it's been and still is such a big wonderful feeling all the way through until all the problems she had and cut me loose. We constantly told each other we would never give up, we couldn't live without the other, she always told me her love would always be there when her voice was in my ear and on all my songs, there was so much hope and promise and we even developed two characters in our own love story, putting all the parts together. It wasn't enough, I've been hanging on for weeks now unable to let go, and the kicker is now she has another man in her life, and I'm sure that will help her get custody of her daughter now that I am out of the picture.

I know she still loves me, we've both agreed it was the love of a lifetime and will never come again. I've never felt such immense joy and now crushing pain that has had me grieving heavily, and the other side of me is still hanging on to her, trying to get a glimmer of hope for us in the future somewhere, but she gives me nothing except she felt the same way too and she will always love me and keep me in her heart. I'm at a point where I will probably have to go and seek some help because I've even been a little suicidal at times, reaching out to friends. I know it's time for me to let go but it's the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with in my life.

If you've gotten this far, and this site will take so much text, God Bless you for your patience. I'm not sure I will get through my pain without help. My eating and sleeping have suffered and I still get in touch with her when I can't stand it, it's hard to admit it, I've been obsessive, and just can't believe that the joy she brought me is gone and she is not here waiting for me on the computer every night where we would do nothing but give each other joy, love and hope. It's all gone. Really just wanted to share.

They say that in current losses, a lot of times the pain goes all the way back to childhood loss and I think that is the case here for me. The loss is so deep that it cuts me to the core, and the tears of pain are hard tears of trying to let go, the love was so big, and now the pain is just as big. I don't know if I can go on at times. Any advice appreciated and thanks for listening.