Who loves you baby?

In the past three months three guys have told me they can't talk to me anymore because they love me and knowing I am unavailable hurts them too much.

Mind you I have never met any of these guys in person.

Okay a little context, all three of these guys I met in a gay chat room. All of them I have chatted with over an extended period of time. All of them started as just cyber sex buddies but over time we shared bits of our lives with each other. All of them confided in me and me in them - and advise and care/interest in each others lives passed back and forth. I had considered them all friends. All of them I had talked on the phone with at least once. I did harbor fantasies of lust-filled encounters if we ever met. That is the fantasy someone you actually connect with and have passionate intimate sex. I definitely cared for these guys in a brotherly friendly sense.

BUT LOVE?

Now off-line in real life - people just don't fall in love with me. They just don't declare what a kind, sexy sympathetic person I am. Generally I get ignored (sometimes even by my bf). Now the scary part is that I generally view myself as a good judge of character - both on and off-line. All of these guys seemed genuine, stable and decent - accept for one thing - they have invented a deep and painful love with someone they never met.

Now even in my most egotistically moments I would never say that I am that special that I leap off the internet and into a man's heart. You got to question - are people that lonely, or out of touch with reality to fall in love with someone they have met on-line. Call me cynical - but I may lust after someone, I may fantasize about a night of intimacy that fills the void in my own life, but is it just me or is something odd here?