He’s never even held hands.
Or they consider it too important to wait.
Let me change my answer from a cautious “yes” to a “NO”.
There are so many red flags, it’s like I’m in a forest of them.
If you’ve got patience and don’t mind being the provider, then maybe. He sounds a little immature for his age. I dated an older dude who lived with his mum (and always had) and never had more than a part-time job. Yeah, never again.
Because you’re a male? Because of testosterone? How the hell did you get that from what I wrote? Even if I preferred females I’d feel the same. Let me expand on it a bit: I’d prefer to be with someone who has been in sexual romantic relationship(s) in the past. Someone who wasn’t a virgin by virtue of having sex with short term partners (one night stands, relationships that only lasted a few weeks, sex with prostitutes) wouldn’t cut it for me. I’m only interested in men who’ve had long term relationships in the past. My marriage was to a man who didn’t have this prior experience and, even though I was only in my early twenties when we got together, it was often painful being with someone who was learning how to be part of a relationship. I had to revisit stuff I’d worked through back in my late teens with my first boyfriend, and I hated that. He also cited it as one of his reasons for cheating on me before he ended our marriage - curiosity about what it would be like to be with someone else.
:rolleyes: Yeah, that didn’t work out super well for me. Also, I don’t consider sex “important enough to wait” so that’s a view I’d rather my partner didn’t hold.
I agree with your sentiment. The idea that one’s sexuality is some sort of precious resource which one can “use” or “exhaust” or “misuse” is socially conservative propaganda and nothing more.
I have a feeling that if you don’t take a chance on meeting him, you’ll always wonder ‘What if?’ If your friendship is as good as you portray it, I think it can stand the strain of at least meeting each other. As others have said, be low-key about it, be honest with yourself, and see what happens.
For many people, it’s “I saw this person in a bar, he looked attractive, so we started talking and then decided to go on a date.” They don’t know much at all about each other. You know a ton about this guy and some of it may be more innocuous than you think…or not. The only way to find out is to take a chance.
Everybody has great points. The positive and the negative. I’ll read what one person says and think “yeah, they’re right, I should give it a go!”. Then the next person I’ll think “yeah, they’re right, there’s no way this could work”. Yes, no, yes, no!
Maybe I should stop making it a big deal in my mind and just meet as friends only. That’s sort of hard though, because I do have feelings for him and we have discussed our mutual feelings. Also, it’s been a while for me without sex and I’m really very horny. Mind you, sex with a 100% virgin is hardly going to be earth moving. Maybe I just need to invest in a good vibrator.
I don’t see how it could be propaganda, as there is no objective truth on the matter to be skewed in one direction or the other. If you want to save yourself, you do. If you don’t think it’s means anything, you don’t. I’m just saying that I, and a lot of people I know, won’t get involved with you if you are in the latter category. It’s our choice to have values that are different than yours. I just don’t like it when people assume that somebody who hasn’t had sex does so because he can’t, not because he doesn’t want to. Guys have the ability to abstain as well.
OP:
As for sex with a virgin being bad, well, everyone is a virgin at some point. Could it not be better that he has no preconceived ideas of what he should do? You can actually make sure that what he does is right for you. Sure, the first time would involve a lot of teaching, and maybe some disappointment, but it could go further than that. And, being a virgin, he won’t have any experience to compare yours to, either.
Oh, and having sex with a man and using a vibrator are not mutually exclusive options, ya know.
I really don’t see what you have to lose with this. If the guy you know and love online is the same guy in real life, then you’ll likely do well together, even if you aren’t romantic material. If not, well, do you really want to have feelings for a fake person?
Relationships can’t stay stagnant. They will either grow or shrink. You will not be able to keep the same relationship with this guy forever. If you are at the point where you want to meet, then that’s what you should do. If you don’t, the relationship will likely decline on its own from not taking it to the next step, anways.
Finally, I can’t see any down sides in saying you want to be friends first. This isn’t going to change his feelings for you, but it gives you as good an out as is reasonably possible if you don’t have romantic feelings for the guy. I’ve been on both sides of that, and we’ve always been able to salvage a friendship. (Okay, so a girl or two will still occasionally hit on me, hoping that I might have changed my mind. But as soon as I make it clear that I haven’t, it still works.)
Question: Does this guy have other (online or off) friends, notwithstanding his social anxiety? Are any of those friends women?
It sounds like there is a risk that if you are one of the few or only non-family members, particularly women, who has interacted with him over the years, there is a good chance that he has tied a substantial portion of his romantic hopes and interests in you, even though you only consider him a friend.
You say he has been there for you for 10 years, spending hours and hours communicating online, “He just accepts me the way I am”, and “He just quietly lets me take the friendship where I want it to go.” It sounds like he has lurked there for years, being extremely accommodating to whatever you want or needed, in the long-term hope (perhaps for lack of other options) that you would finally come around and take a romantic interest in him. You may have had a highly unequal relationship (probably through no fault of your own) where he was content to serve as your doormat in the hopes that you would one day recognize and reciprocate the deep longing he has for you (or more likely, his idealized version of you in his head).
I could be wrong about this, but I’ve seen several of these types of situation, none of which has ended particularly well.
I think you’re dead on. I’ve thought that very thing about him. But if someone is willing to wait 10 years for me to come around, isn’t that a good thing?
On one hand, he was sweet, into you, and willng enough to wait 10 years for you… on the other hand he had nothing better to do for 10 years than wait around for you.
Your choice to pick which one you want to go with.
I would be inclined to say no. It seems more pathetic than noble to me. I don’t care how much I liked someone (particularly someone I’d never even met), if he wasn’t interested after a reasonable amount of time, I would move on because I have a life to live.
He doesn’t sound like he’s been doing much living of life. I get that he has some issues that he struggles with, but even if he has good reasons to be how he is, you’re still left with a man who isn’t really much of a peer to you because he lacks the life experience that someone his age normally has.
I’m horrible at relationships so what do I know, but it just seems like if after 10 years you still haven’t even felt compelled to MEET the guy even though he doesn’t live extremely far away, he’s probably not the one for you. Have you even talked to him on the phone?
It sounds to me like he’s just safe to you. He doesn’t have much frame of reference or room to criticize you, so that feels comfortable sometimes. But it’s not much to base a relationship on.
We have spoken on the phone. For the first 5 years of our friendship I was married so it would have been inappropriate to meet. I’ve lived much farther away from him for most of the last 10 years, almost on opposite sides of the country.
I would say that before you decide to “date”, you first need to “meet”. Have lunch somewhere. Talk face to face. See how that goes. I’ve had the experience of meeting people IRL that I’ve told personal things to online and yet been unable to have a simple conversation with them, and likewise I’ve met online friends and become even better friends. It depends on the people involved.
However, make sure that HE knows that your meeting is a “meet” and not a “date” (nor even a “prelude to a date that will absolutely happen”). If he can’t handle that, he’ll be a nightmare to actually date.
I think there is a big difference between polite friendship and romance / relationship.
This guy has never worked, lives with his family (presumably he’s lived at home all his life) and has never been in a relationship.
You say he ‘owns a car’ - but no doubt his mother bought it for him.
It seems to me that he will be unalterably fixed in a relationship with his mother. She brings in the money, probably cooks and cleans for him and doesn’t want him to leave.
So he lives in a sheltered environment where he makes no decisions, doesn’t face any pressure and has never looked after himself.
This means he can give advice and be a sympathetic listener as a friend over the Internet.
But it’s got **‘relationship disaster’ **written all over it - unless you want to have a ‘man child’ who expects you to earn money and look after him.
If the flags aren’t dealbreakers for you, then I’d say meet with caution and low expectations. Meet somewhere safe, around people, all the same precautions you’d take with someone you’d only known over the internet for a short period of time.
I think meeting in real life will give you a very clear idea of whether he’s the sort of person you want to get romantically involved with. However, I’d recommend you frame the meeting very much as a ‘getting to know you’ meeting, not a ‘hot date’. He sounds like quite an immature and inexperienced person who could easily mistake ‘let’s meet up’ with ‘let’s have hot and heavy sex,’ and you don’t want to end up in an awkward and potentially dangerous situation.
OK, I AM a 47-year old virgin who lives with his mother, both started driving and had my first romantic kiss (with a living adult human woman!!!L) at age 38, BUT on the other hand, I’ve been gainfully employed for 20 years, have a pretty good stock/401K fund, and have real life-friends, which include women.
He HASN’T EVEN HELD HANDS?!?!
I really doubt he’s had a chance to have sex then.
Give him a chance, but proceed with caution!
This needs to be repeated.
Have you guys at least considered a face to face chat on Skype or Google Chat? Outside of purchasing a webcam (roughly $30 - $40), it’s free to do. That could tell you right off if there is no conversational chemistry outside of chat.
Outside of that, I agree with the others that you should be quite leery of this beforehand. At the very most, meet him for a no-pressure lunch and see how it feels. But as the saying goes, “if you run through a forest of red flags to get to the relationship, expect to be hit by every one of them on the way back out.”