He’d been planning to stay in his marriage until his kids were older.Ĭonnecting with Dawn upended these plans. While Paul had been unhappy in his marriage for a long time, he’d been with his wife for many years, he had two children and two step-children. Plus, the two wanted to meet, and neither was comfortable doing so while they were married to other people. Dawn and Paul say their email connection made them realize what their present relationships were lacking. “It was an overwhelming feeling.”Īnd with that, they both decided to end their marriages. “Finally, it was just like, we had to admit that something’s here, there’s a connection here that we just can’t ignore,” says Dawn. The more candid she was, the more candid Paul was in return, and rather than this driving them apart, they grew closer. Neither of them had intended this to happen.įeeling conflicted, Dawn recalls trying to be even more honest about herself, flaws and all, in her emails, hoping it might put Paul off and put an end to the connection.īut that didn’t work. The two gradually began to acknowledge the connection they felt went beyond a pen pal friendship.Īnd with that acknowledgment came guilt. ![]() “And because neither one of us was truly happy, we realized that it was dragging us together.” ![]() “After a couple of months, we realized that our interests, our goals, our dreams were very similar,” says Paul. “We were desperate to write each other all the time and very worried if we didn’t hear something.” “As time went on and we started exchanging emails more and more frequently, getting to know each other, it became like a drug,” recalls Dawn. “You get to know the real person as a consequence.”Įach day, Dawn and Paul would fire up their slow dial-up internet connections and wait for their computers to load and check their inboxes, hoping a new message had winged its way across the Atlantic. “Because we hadn’t had the intention to meet physically, basically you could get all your skeletons out the cupboard, it didn’t matter,” says Paul. Their emails soon had an easy, unexpected intimacy. “And one thing led to another, we started becoming more open and honest with each other, and just sharing our lives.” “We both had loads of pen pals that summer, but something just clicked between us,” says Dawn. There was nothing at first that distinguished their correspondence, but as time went on, these dispatches grew longer, and became more personal. “And from that, here we are 25 years later,” says Paul today.ĭawn and Paul’s first few notes to one another were polite, friendly and brief as they introduced themselves and sketched out details about their lives. It was a simple email that she never expected would change her life forever. She introduced herself as a 36-year-old married woman living in Atlanta: “Write back and we’ll chat some more,” she wrote at the end, and hit send. On July 30, 1996, Dawn sent her first email to Paul. ![]() They both simply liked the idea of a pen friend on a different continent. Neither was very happy, but neither was consciously searching for romance elsewhere. Email was just taking off, and Dawn, based in Atlanta in the US, and Paul, from London in the UK, had both been looking for email pen pals.Īt the time, Dawn and Paul were married to other people. Dawn and Paul, both in their mid-thirties, had connected online three months prior. “I came out and put my arms around her and said ‘Hi,’” Paul recalls to CNN Travel today. That’s when Paul White made his way from the elevator onto the viewing platform and spotted Dawn. But her heart was beating quickly: what if something happened and he didn’t make it? ![]() Willa and Bill then embark on revisiting their past-with hesitation of course.Īccording to Variety, the flick's official logline reads, "What if late one snowy night you came face to face with someone from your long ago? Someone who once held your secrets, because once, long ago, that person held your heart.Dawn Dixon was looking over New York City from one of its best vantage points: the top of the Empire State Building.Īs she surveyed the skyline from the 86th floor, snow flurries circling around her, Dawn tried to focus on the spectacular view. As luck (and the world of rom-coms) would have it, the two are reunited after being snowed-in at an airport decades after their breakup. So what exactly happens…later? The film will follow two characters named Willa (Ryan) and Bill (Duchovny) who used to be in a relationship long ago, per the outlet. The movie will be based on the Steven Dietz play Shooting Star, with Steven co-writing the screenplay with Meg and novelist Kirk Lynn, according to Variety. Meg, 60, will be directing and starring in the upcoming romantic comedy What Happens Later, co-starring The X-Files actor David Duchonvy, she shared on Instagram on May 3. You may be sleepless over this news: Meg Ryanis returning to the world of rom-coms.
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