How do you feel about online relationships?

I think all the questions you’re asking yourself are perfectly normal. I think one the biggest things that make online relationships most successful is TRUST and COMMITMENT. I know of two couples that made their long distance relationship work (one is getting married next November), but it does take a lot of effort and patience. This may include phone bills that are run up, and lot of money into traveling. It also involves being mentally stable and able to trust your partner. You have to be sure it’s something you want to work for, otherwise the investment in the relationship will seem pointless.

If you two are too both busy and still planning out your lives, it may be best to take it slow. You know, talk, really get to know each, perhaps meet a couple of times before you make the ultimate commitment.

Well I better feel pretty good about them because mine started online and now we’re married.

You have never met this guy in real life? I would be hesitant too. I actually had a friend who met this girl online and the were in a “relationship” that was really odd and inevitably didn’t last. I think she meet someone at her school. I have spent a lot of time on the internet and in various internet communities where I spoke (over voip) to people and you can definitely develop connections. I just don’t think they are quite the same as a real relationship. The internet provides a huge filter where anything that person doesn’t want you to see/hear can be omitted. So do you think you really know this guy that well?

I got together with this guy online almost 15 years ago, and then he moved in with me. A few years later I married him. So far so good. :^>

They puzzle me. I don’t understand how people can be in love with someone online, and not in person.

I’m not too crazy about it. I don’t really trust people unless I can hear their voice and see their face.

They are great with the right person. I have been in one for 11 months and my girlfriend is wonderful. I think the relationship really has to be strong for it to work though.

They are poor for body touch plas the fiction it does not feel realistyc

I met my current boyfriend online. He lived in Cali and I was in Florida at the time. We talked for a few months online/on the phone. It was great being able to get to know each other so in-depth and it was all just personality. I ended up flying out to hang with him for two weeks, he asked me to stay, and we’ve been living together for 2 years in January, dating for 2 years in March. I couldn’t be happier.

I think it’s perfectly normal to meet someone online, but I’m not sure if you can fall in love just by talking online. I think talking for a while, meeting up…could all potentially lead to love.

Long distance romantic relationships are just mutually enabled fantasizing. If you don’t see each other in person, you’re more in love with the concept of the other person than with the real other person.

If you don’t have concrete plans for getting together physically and a timetable for when it’s going to happen, you’re just dreaming, while making yourself unavailable to all the wonderful people in your immediate vicinity.

@pathfinder : Wilcome bick. I half mised you.

It’s your life. Time is never wasted. If you want to be involved with an entity that is 75% fantasy and 25% reality (instead of 50/50), you will learn a lot, and it will be valuable experience. I wouldn’t worry about success or failure. Your path is your path, and it does little good to judge it. Judging it is merely allowing other people to determine your future.

It’s up to you. How much do you want to be influenced by others, and how much do you want to follow your own desires? In either case, you will not be wasting time. Other people may think so, but in the end, it’s what you get out of it that matters, no?

I prefer freedom. I prefer to take my own course, rather than being overly influenced by others. However, I do allow my concerns about others to help me decide what to do. In a case like this, I doubt if anyone will really think the worse of you for maintaining the relationship. Follow your own path. If that is lead by your heart or your brain, it hardly matters.

I don’t think my wife and I would ever have found each other on an online service. Our profiles would be way too different, and the attraction we first felt for each other probably could not be reflected by a profile.

That being said, I know of a couple in their 60’s who met on an online service, and were happily married for almost 12 years, until the husband passed.

I think it depends entirely on what one is looking for.

Well put @cwilbur.. I do need to appreciate my surroundings and others around me more. I guess taking it to a romantic level with him would be the wrong thing.. We don’t really have a timetable. All we say is.. AfterCollege AfterCollege. which is a few years from now. Its not even a once a month or yearly thing to see each other..

Some yal might be right. I can stick to Here & Now instead of Dream. Ive been communicating with him for almost 4 years, and yet, no exact/detailed plans.

Thanks..

This is not to say, of course, that you must give up on the thought of someday getting together with him. You can keep in contact with him, with the idea that if you’re ever both in a position to live in the same city you can explore dating.

The real problem is that without frequent face-to-face contact, you don’t know if you’re falling in love with him or with some kind of idealized version of him. And meanwhile, if you’re in a long-distance relationship with him, you’re locking out everyone near you, in order to pursue a fantasy. What if your soulmate is sitting at the next desk over in your sociology seminar, and notices you, and you’re unavailable because you’re in a fantasy relationship with a distant man?

@Yetanotheruser : My husband and I met online, but it was in no way a dating service. We both wrote on a usenet group we liked and then became email penpals for a while. Things progressed from there. Neither of us was looking for someone. We just liked writing on this particular topic. We found out the other stuff that we had in common and liked about each other afterward.

@casheroo some people, like myself, can fall in love with someone just by talking with them…it’s possible if you really value a mental connection…having him understand me like no one else was like lighting being struck…i never thought i’d meet anyone so intelligent…ever

@Simone_De_Beauvoir : Yeah, I think I fell for mine when we were still just writing each other.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I know that feeling, the one where you can fall for someone just by talking. It’s greatness.

If your strong and you feel that that is something you will be able to pull off then give it a go if you like him. I am probably the most experienced person out there with long distance relationships and it’s not even funny….lol
But trust me that is one way to find out his true inner greatness, cause when your with someone it’s one thing but when you don’t see someone and only communication is involved….it’ sucks sometimes really bad that he might not be here but if your sure of it , if your sure of him. Then try it. I am in a relationship with a man from a tottaly different continent. But I got to know him and it’s great. good luck. the main thing remember please….........GO WITH YOUR GUT FEELING. trust yourself.

Well in my case, the boy in question was so shy that if he had lived here we never would have found each other. He’s all that I could ever hope for in a SO. It all depends really. If you’re like me and too socially awkward to attract the attention of a boy in person then you might find love online. But it doesn’t happen that way for everyone. If the feelings are there, then they’re there regardless of if it’s over the internet or no.My friend has is in an online relationship and had been friends with the guy for several years prior. He is from Lancaster in england, and she is from Texas. He is coming to visit her in the summer and is staying for 6 months. I haven’t seen her this happy in all the time i’ve known her.