Tom Scud and I did practically this. We’re married now, but we’d known each other online for years, first through Livejournal, and then through a spinoff blog. A bunch of us from the blog finally met in person over Memorial Day weekend of 2007, we hit it off, he came to visit me a month later, and 2 months after that he and I drove a U-Haul cross-country from DC to Chicago with all his personal belongings in it. (It probably helped that he’d just moved back to the U.S. a few months before, hadn’t found a job yet, and wasn’t really settled in D.C.)
Yes, it was more than slightly insane. Neither of us had ever lived with an S.O., let alone on such short notice. (Or as my friend Carmen put it when I called to give her the news, “Let me get this straight. You just moved your unemployed boyfriend of 2 months cross-country into your apartment.” We printed that quote in the wedding programs, much to her utter mortification. ) I would be extremely hesitant to recommend that path to anyone else, but it seems to be working out OK for us - we’re coming up on our 2nd anniversary, and we haven’t killed each other yet, anyway.
I propositioned to be your Doper boyfriend here. According to OKCupid, we’re a 91% match. But I didn’t know you already had one. I don’t want to be Mr. Foxtrot’s sloppy seconds.
I would be very careful. Write down today what your hopes are for the next month, three months, six months, year and two years. Write down your dealbreakers and milestones (e.g. she should have a job within six months, be open to marriage within a year, whatever.) Write down the signs that will let you know things are going well, and signs that you should get out. Write down what your exit plan is, and how you’ll know if you should get out.
Keep these, look at them later, and stick to them. God willing you won’t need them. But for now, the relationship is distorted by speed and her dependence on you (as she is in a new place.) These are not automatically bad things, but they can make it hard to tell what is really going on and how healthy the reationship really is. Things are so shaken up that you need a baseline now to refer back to.
I think the main danger would be that it is easy to have one year of bliss like this. Given the circumstances, problems might take that ong to surface. But if they do, by one year in you are going to be pretty enmeshed, and it will be hard to come to terms with reality. You might keep ignoring things because it’s too tough to think about breaking up that far in. And then what you have is several more years of an increasingly bad relationship before it comes to an ugly end.
Don’t let that happen. Keep an objective eye on things for a while.
My wife and her first husband. Off the top of my head, I forget how they knew each other, but she moved across the country for him after their first visit.
Or in the words of a friend of mine “I don’t want someone who needs me, I want her to be with me because she happens to want me and nobody else, and to feel the same for her.”
Hal, seriously, take a few cold showers. I know Americans jump with both feet into relationship depths that would have your average Spaniard still looking at the pool from afar, but wait until the divorce has been finished for a couple of months before you next decide you’ve met The One, please. For the Littlest Briston’s sake.
I don’t think you truly know anyone until you live with them for a good long while. I hesitate to say I’m advocating shacking up prior to marriage, but for me there were just too many things I found out too late.
In my experience people who fall so fast, rarely go the distance.
On the other hand, life is about risk, you sometimes, gotta take a chance.
On a more serious note, anyone who would enter into such an arrangement without addressing, with potential future partner, an agreed upon, comprehensive exit strategy, is deserving of the life lesson they are likely to receive.
Throw in an ex spouse and small child, and if you haven’t discussed, seriously, an exit strategy, you’re being not naive but shamefully immature and irresponsible.
Sorry if my opinion isn’t what you were hoping to hear!
Like all the others, of course I didn’t think this was about you :
And I’m also hoping that it works out for you.
I’m in long distance relationship that started online. Mine is complicated as well. Both of us are recovering from long term relationships and we have a lot of other stuff involved.
One of the things we both remind ourselves about is that we are not going to make major changes in our lives for at least a year. Yes, its fun to wake up and smile at him and say that I’ll just pick up and move 2 states away, but that’s just not realistic.
Job/pets/friends/home/volunteer work. All of these things are important. If she doesn’ have at least 2 of them, I’d just back away.
Hawt swinging off the rafter sex is a good thing, especially when you have been without. Go for it
(It probably helped that he’d just moved back to the U.S. a few months before, hadn’t found a job yet, and wasn’t really settled in D.C.)
) I would be extremely hesitant to recommend that path to anyone else, but it seems to be working out OK for us - we’re coming up on our 2nd anniversary, and we haven’t killed each other yet, anyway.
