I’m not going to tell you that your relationship isn’t real. Of course it’s real.
But no matter how much you click on the net, there remains the possibility that the romance will totally die as soon as you meet in person. It just works that way sometimes. I think both you and he need to acknowledge this possibility and be ready for it before you meet. It’s not something you’re going to want to talk about but I think you ought to if you’re going to be mature about it.
Also, in the unlikely event that he turns out to be some kind of psycho, make sure your first face-to-face meeting is not alone.
Oh, and there’s stuff like this, too. Nice guy – with photos – phone calls, friends, family, and all of it fake. (Though in this case I’m gobsmacked the woman didn’t get sick of all the excessive and unhealthy drama and flee long, long before the jig was up two years later – regardless whether she believed it all to be true.)
Not all internet predators are creepy old men trolling for sex.
I once met a man on my computer who seemed just too good to be true. It was before the internet, back when there were only local Bulletin Board Systems with public chat rooms and private chat rooms. That meant he lived in the same city.
I didn’t want to meet him for a lot of reasons. He said that his wife had died and he didn’t go out much since. I just thought I could get him used to talking with a woman again. So we just talked by computer all the time.
After a couple of months, we switched to the telephone and would talk for hours and hours.
To make a long story short, we will celebrate our 23rd Wedding Anniversary on New Year’s Day.
Take note though: Both of us were grown ups capable of supporting ourselves.
You know that you are too young to be doing what you are doing or you would have told us how old you are. You feel guilty because you know that you parents should know.
You need to talk with his mother sometime after he has mentioned that she is home. If it is inconvenient, try again the next time. If it continues to be inconvenient, that is a bad sign. He shouldn’t come to your home unless you have talked to his mother.
Do you know what school he goes to? A little background checking wouldn’t hurt.
If you are underage and he is overage, do not see him. Don’t lie to your parents about this.
By the way, you are a very articulate young woman. You have intelligence. Be very, very careful.
Also I’d like to add that older teen to early twenties is a real pivotal point in the development of your social skills. Unlike highschool there aren’t any cliqeus to belong too. And it’s not like you’re going to know your coworker, college classmates or whatever since the third grade.
You’ll be on your own. So go out there and get all the social skills you can because you’re going to need them. This includes having a boyfriend that you can… dare I say… touch!!
Just thought I would add a story about on-line relationships…even though you are far too young and nowhere near this far in your relationship:
My brother met a woman on-line who became the love of his life, and he married her.
Oh, I suppose I should mention that he met her on-line - while he was still married to another woman.
And I suppose I should also mention that his wife at the time was his seventh wife and the woman he met on-line thus became his eighth wife.
Oh yeah, I should probably also mention he has since divorced her as well.
Current total = 8 wives, 8 divorces.
He is currently single.
I can only hope he is not the idiot you are chatting with on-line!
With his track record, I would not be surprised an iota.
BTW, I am Gay and have heard that the idea of me marrying my partner of 27 years is an affront to the sanctity of marriage, but that is another story.
My general advice to the OP: bad shit can thrive in darkness. If he’s a legitimate suitor, he’ll be happy to show up at your door in broad daylight, meet the folks, and all that stuff. Hey, if he knows where you live, you deserve to know where he lives. Safety should be your number one concern. Don’t go sneaking off to meet him secretly—if anything happened to you, nobody would know where to begin to look. Keep everything above board and don’t wander off from the safety of the herd.
This. Your parents will probably worry about you, and it’ll make them feel better if you meet him close to home so they can meet him to (as well as knowing where you are). I told my parents of my online love before we met IRL, but there was no way they would have approved of me going to see him before he came to see me, especially since there was half a continent and an international border involved.
As far as ‘is it real’ is concerned–of course it is. The physical component of a relationship is important, but it’s not the defining element. I think LD loves work better that way in that you can create the emotional and intellectual bond without the physical getting in the way. Communication is important in any relationship, and in a LD relationship, that’s mostly all you have, so it has to be strong to work. That said, they also royally SUCK.
It seems I did leave a lot out of my first post, so I’ve tried to go through and address some of the points raised.
-Yes, I’ve seen him on the webcam
-I’m not hesitant to have my parents meet him specifically. My concern isn’t over their reaction to him as a person, but rather their reaction to the whole ‘internet relationship’
-I felt a bit strange just waltzing in here and announcing our ages, but since some seem to find it relevant to their answer, I’m 17 and he’s 18, so there’s a 1 yr gap between us.
-It is long distance. We’ve over 10,000km separating us, so him just dropping into the area isn’t a possibility. Meeting would then obviously require organisation involving both sets of parents.
-It’s not my first relationship
-I’ve spoken to him on the phone
-We both acknowledge the possibility of it not working upon meeting.
-We’re both very aware of some of the dangers associated with meeting, which is one of the reasons he would prefer to visit me. We both think my parents would prefer it that way. I’m asking how I should tell my parents because I don’t plan to lie to them, and I do plan to keep this all as safe as possible.
That said, I’m more asking for advice on what would be the best way to approach my parents rather than questioning the validity or future prospects of the relationship. For instance, should I introduce it as a friend wanting to visit and risk losing their trust in me if I later reveal, or it becomes apparent, that there’s more to it? Or should I tell them straight up all about it and have them feel that I’ve decieved them for more than a year? Do I just tell them about him, and introduce the idea of meeting later? Do I approach one of my parents or both of them at the same time? And so forth…
It’s been interesting reading the different opinions and anecdotes so far, and thanks for both the concerns and the welcomes
I’d say the best way would be to “introduce” him before bringing it up, by that I mean:
Get into a webcam conversation with him and wait for one of your parents to come into your room (if you have a laptop, this is even easier, talk in the family room or something). When one of them walks by and asks you something, just say “oh, sorry, I was talking to my friend <name>.” They’ll probably say “hi” or write it off, do this a few times so they get used to it, and know the name. Next step is just bringing him up, they already know his name so just say “oh, that reminds me <name> <did something relevant to the conversation>.” After a month or two of them getting used to hearing about him just casually drop that you’d like to meet him in real life, by that time they probably have a picture in their heads from your descriptions and you’ll probably get an “oh, sure, when?” Response (just make sure you don’t talk about him all the time, otherwise they’ll know you’re up to something, just casually mention him now and then). I can’t guarantee anything, but it’s certainly more comforting than just shocking them with “I wanna meet a long distance online friend in real life, can I please? kthxbai”
Or, hell, you’re 17… just wait until you go off to university next year and meet then (though this removes the parental safety net, so you have to be more careful).
Well, have you talked about him to them? Do they know you’re close to him? Setting aside the friend/boyfriend distinction for the moment, do they know he’s an important person in your life? That’s the part I’d focus on teaching them, and I think jragon’s right that gradually is best. Share something he said, some conversation you shared together. Start using his name. When they stop asking, “who?” whenever his name comes up, then you can move into Phase 2: romantic feelings.
Note: I am not advocating *lying *to your parents at all. In fact, I hope you have the sort of relationship with them where they already know OF him and his impact on your life; if you don’t, I wish you’d consider cultivating that relationship. Either way, if they ask you point blank if your interest in him is romantic, or if he’s your boyfriend, tell them the truth about your feelings for him. If you speak with the same maturity with which you write, you will include the bits about your awareness that things might not work out in person, of course.
Delaying telling them while you establish a familiarity is one thing; lying to them is another. The former is to help them, the later is to protect yourself at their expense.
You are 17? Time for a frank and honest conversation with the parental units. Introduce your friend to them on the webcam. After a few weeks they will be more comfortable with him, or dislike him. From there you have to make a decision to go along with them, or follow your heart.
Several months ago I agreed to escort my 14 year old brother from New York City to a town just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee to meet a girl he met online and had been talking to on the phone constantly for a few months. (We took the bus. Ugh.)
When we arrived, the girl and her mother picked us up at the bus station and we piled into the car for the ride to our hotel. I’m making small talk with the mother when she asks us when it was that we lived in Tennessee. I tell her, truthfully, that both my brother and I had lived in New York our entire lives. Mom gives daughter the evil eye and says, “Gee, it would’ve been nice to know that.”
It seems that there had previously been some minor drama with someone this girl had met online, and her stepfather would blow a gasket if he knew that she’d met my brother online. So the girl had lied to her parents and said my brother was an old friend from school who’d moved away; apparently, my brother knew about this lie.
We managed to stay the weekend without a catastrophe, but mom was pissed at the girl, and I was pissed at my brother for dragging me to Tennessee under false pretenses. Both of their reputations took a hit. So, my advice is this: don’t lie about anything. Honesty is going to be the best policy.
Unless your parents are highly oblivious, they would figure out pretty quickly that you’re interested in this guy as more than a friend. But introduce the topic in small steps.
Tell them that you’ve met someone and have been corresponding, and that he’s become a friend. Then tell them that you’ve also been thinking about whether you might like him as more than a friend, and that the two of you would like to meet under safe circumstances to see where that goes.
Don’t oversell the guy. If you say, “he’s been my boyfriend for over a year,” they’ll freak out and they’ll wonder what else they don’t know about you.
And I understand you not wanting this discussion to get bogged down in your expectations for the relationship, but be prepared for your parents to jump right into that topic. In the short term, they may wonder whether you intend to be sexually active during the guy’s visit. More broadly, they may wonder whether you are unhappy in your life and are using this long-distance relationship as a shield to avoid exploring relationships closer to home. I’m not asking you to get into answering these questions here; I’m just suggesting that you be ready to respond in case your parents raise them.
As someone who had 2 internet relationships before dating someone that was strictly “real life”, I will echo this. I learned more about my RL SO in a month than I did of seeing my 3.5 year Internet SO (and, yes, I did see the Internet SO in person on and off).
I would say that the feelings of infatuation on Internet relationship are stronger, and in some ways, you can expose more of what is in your mind – but – isn’t the ego only a small part of who you are? We may wish we are only our egos, but you got to take the other 90% of a person that can’t be shown in an Internet relationship, warts and all. Your mannerisms, habits, quirks, “worst face”, etc.
So I guess my point is that even if you can’t see it for yourself, you (and everyone else) is a lot, lot, LOT more than the conscious thoughts that are put to words. An Internet relationship basically only captures about 10% of the person.
I eventually married someone off Match.com. Aside from the initial contact, our relationship is strictly grounded in real life. Sometimes, I miss the long, therapeutic, thought provoking exchanges I had with the Internet boyfriends. But in exchange, I have someone who knows and accepts me, all of me, and loves me for who I am beyond my ego.
I don’t have any advice on the parent issue specifically, but I do have a few thoughts on the issue of culture.
It sounds like you two are quite a ways from each other, and thus most likely to be from two different cultures. Be prepared for some mishaps - they are practically inevitable. Even though you have conversed on a webcam, be ready for misinterpreted facial expressions and body language. Each culture looks for different cues and he may not be aware of what he is projecting to you (and vice versa). You might even run into some hiccups when it comes to clothing - some cultures are very big about dressing up and putting on a good face to go out in public, even for little things like grocery shopping, while other cultures (such as America) find it perfectly acceptable to shop in sweats and flip flops.
And your parents have had no exposure to his culture (if it is different from your own) because they haven’t been talking to him over the Net. They will really be unprepared for any cultural/language quirks you have discovered and dealt with.
I have a friend who was, in a very similar situation to yours a few years ago. They were on opposite sides of the country, and had been talking and using the webcam for months before they actually met face to face. It had a happy ending; they ended up making a good connection as romantic partners.
My advice to you is an echo of the advice already present on this board. View your relationship as nothing more than a friendship with a potential for more. If he does come and visit you, tell your parents that it is just a friend that is traveling abroad (he’s in a different country, right?) and wanted to meet for an afternoon. To allay both yours and your parent’s fears, arrange to meet initially in either a) a public area or b) under the view of your parents.