Lack of space in chat

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What's the polite way to tell someone on a chat service that they're too demanding?

I made a new friend on a forum, so we added each other on Skype. During one chat, I was away from the window for 4-5 minutes to write an e-mail and came back to find him upset and wary. This happens every time it takes more than 2 minutes to respond, and it's stressful to have these kind of social demands with penalties placed on me when I'm relaxing at home in the evenings.

I can always set my status to Away, but it's very rare that I only focus on chatting (everyone else I know also plays games, reads, listens to music, etc, while online) and inevitably that's probably going to become a problem, too, since I'd also be chatting to other people.

Kind of having second thoughts.

I thought the whole point of chat was to have real-time communication. It sounds like you prefer something like e-mailing so that you can respond when you want to.

I chat real-time with others, or as real-time as something that isn't voice, video, or face-to-face conversation can be. It's just not a big deal if we stop for a few minutes to write an e-mail or grab a snack, and we assume that it's something innocent if someone is called away by a parent or has to chase down a dog that wandered off. There's never the assumption that they're hated, being punished, being deliberately ignored, etc.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks it's really inappropriate to not be able to stop typing on your computer to go pee and later to put a pizza in the oven because the other person will get angry at the interruptions.

I think I understand. How about you tell your friend this:

Maybe your friend doesn't know that you are doing other things while chatting, so it seems like you are just ignoring when you don't respond right away.

I would be kind of like your friend in this situation. I expect to have a person's full attention when we are talking, and I don't even understand how people can do the multitask-chat thing. If your friend is like that, chat may not work for the both of you. Or you could set aside a time when you are only chatting with that one person.