I’m in the midst of a long-distance relationship that’s been going on for about six months. I am MADLY in love with this guy, although we’ve only been together twice. I have NEVER, ever felt like this about anyone, and he puts up with all of my shit and my depression and my anxiety and he TELLS me to go back to the doctor and get my anti-depressants if I need them, that he wants me to be okay and do what I need to do for ME. He doesn’t think any less of me because I need this shit. He’s handled my ignoring him for a week because I was embarrassed as hell about my depression, and he’s forgiven me for doing so when I called him bawling. He’s extremely special to me and I’m pretty sure we’re both in it for the long haul.
My two best friends both began a relationship around the same time he and I really started developing feelings for one another (online, they were just cemented when we met). Neither of them particularly believes in the online dating thing (even though my BF and I have ‘known’ each other through an email group for almost eight years now…), but they support me in my relationship to a point. When my BF was here before Thanksgiving, they met him and could see how good he was to me. My roommate, a guy whom I adore, is dating a guy that I adore. The roomie and I have a very special Will-and-Grace relationship. We’ve always said that anyone who dates us has to understand our relationship. Both of our SOs understand our relationship, which is amazing to both of us! And my other friend is dating this really nice guy who I’ve only met a few times, but he’s good for her—very good for her. For the first time ever, all three of us seem to be in the exact same place in our love lives—happy.
Yet while I listen to the gushing about their respective SOs, gladly, I might add, I feel a bit pushed off when I want to rave about my BF. As if “He’s not here, so big deal…you don’t see him every day, so you can’t possibly be in love with him as much as I am with my BF.” They’re wrong. We don’t see each other every day, but we do talk every single day and the things he says to me…he makes me melt. But because they don’t understand how a long-distance online relationship could possibly work, they act like they don’t particularly want to hear about him. Yet I’m expected to play the dutiful friend and say ‘awwww’ when I hear about what sweet thing SO did for them.
WHY is there such a stigma attached to an internet relationship??? And the BF and I have MET and are in love! Just because he lives far away doesn’t make my love for him any less important! Why am I not entitled to the same amount of gushing as they are???
I know this is a bit of a weak rant, but I’m more hurt than angry about this. I love my friends, but it seems that their idea of being supportive when I need them to be supportive (especially with my depression—I know they mean well, but they hate the idea of my being on meds) completely differs from mine.
I understand completely. I spend more time talking with my SO than most people who live together. It is the most significant relationship of my life, the only one in which I have worn a ring on THE finger in fact. We have been together for over 3 years with a lifetime of plans ahead of us. We have lived together for longish periods when life hasn’t put an ocean between us. I also have a full relationship with my SO’s child.
And my friends try to set me up because they forget that she exists. In my head I am married, in their opinions I am single and fancy free. Forget that everyone met and loved her last time she was here. I swear, some people thing of internet based relationships as imaginary friends or something.
If you connect with genuine, caring people, it doesn’t matter whether you met them at church, in the mall, or online. It’s real as far as the heart’s concerned. There are folk I’d do virtually anything for, they’re so good for my soul – and I haven’t met them, I don’t even know what their voices sound like, I’ve only seen their words on a screen, or gifts of kindness sent to me. Out of sight and hearing doesn’t matter. They’re still precious treasures in my life.
I don’t know…I have trouble taking an internet correspondence seriously as a relationship either. When you never actually see somebody it’s easy to idealize them. You never have a chance to get on each other’s nerves. You say you’ve only met this guy twice. In my mind that’s NOT a relationship. I think you’re in love with a fantasy not a real person.
Hardly. He knows everything about me that someone living in the same city would know. We talk every single day. We have idiosyncracies that already get on each other’s nerves, but we’re still in that first blush of love, so they’re easy to ignore. I’m definitely not idealizing him—and he’s not doing the same with me. We’ve been together twice, for four days at a time, non-stop and never once got tired of each other–and believe me, I can be a loner who really needs my ‘by-myself’ time. I’ve never been the kind of person who needs to be with another person in a relationship 24/7 anyway, so maybe being apart from him this much doesn’t bother me as much as it would others, although I miss him terribly. And we’ve been friends online for years before this. It was just after we started talking more than I developed feelings for him.
I am in love with him. That I know for sure. In my mind, this is as real as any relationship that I’ve ever had.
But reading your response, I get a bit more of a sense of where my friends are coming from (that’s not meant to be derogatory towards you, that’s actually a thanks for showing me what might be going through their heads). What I need them to understand, though, is that their feelings towards our relationship are irrelevant, especially since they’ve already admitted that he’s a nice guy and that he treats me well. It’s my feelings that count and I just want their support in terms of “I’m glad you’re in love and I hope it works out and because I’m your friend, I’ll listen to you gush about him just like you do with my relationship”.
Well, Dio, I married my fantasy in July, after 4 years of an online relationship. We moved in last week. I’ll keep you updated
I never thought he was perfect, or even really CLOSE, but I think that the quirks we each have are things we each can work around. Sounds like a pretty real relationship to me.
ava, sounds like your man is a lot like mine was - I had the same problem. Have the same problems. Might have had worse ones but he understood and we worked through it - so here we are.
I’ve been with Gunslinger for over two years now. In that time we’ve seen each other… probably a total of a month or two, on somewhere around eight separate occasions. I’m moving across the country to be with him in July, and we’re planning to be married once things settle down and fall into place for us both career- and education-wise. In the meantime, we talk for hours every night. I know where you’re coming from here.
But for some reason, he doesn’t seem to exist to most of my friends. They, too, try to set me up with people. Or do other things which annoy me. So I know where you’re coming from here, too.
*I’m Canadian. He is American. Several trips across the border and immigration issues later, we are married. You keep it going, honey. People simply do not realize that you get to know someone better, much more quickly, online than you do in person.
When I went for my K-1 Visa interview, three of the four of us had met our US SOs online. You tell me how ‘unreal’ that is, now.
Hell, even if you have a LDR that you met “live,” friends have a tendency to ignore his/her existence. When I moved away to college, my friends knew that I had a serious boyfriend three hours away, but he didn’t “count” because they didn’t see him every day. Even though they’d met him, and I talked to him on the phone for the proverbial ten-hours-straight.
So I know what you’re talking about here, Ava. People suck. Even friends can thoughtlessly suck, too. I wish I had advice for you, but honestly unless you make a Big Huge Deal out of this–in which case they’ll get defensive–there’s not a whole lot you can do.
Good luck with you and your man. It sounds like a very good thing for both of you.
Broadly speaking, whatever floats your boat. I just think that people are likely sceptical of a relationship in which you don’t inhabit the same space a lot of the time, physical presence generally being important to people. In the few long-distance relationships I’ve had, the sentiment has always been wanting to be with the other person, and not really being satisfied when you weren’t. This isn’t just the sex thing either: to be as clinical as I possibly can (probably inadequate to the subject, sure), presence carries emotive weight. For most people, loving someone isn’t just loving talking to them, it’s loving being with them, and they see a relationship that can’t involve contact as much as others as insufficient.
This isn’t to say that your relationship is less legitimate than anybody else’s, since relationships fundamentally are about fulfilling what each individual wants in their contact with other people, and, individual tastes being as diverse as they are, YMMV, inherently. This is probably why people consider your relationship less legitimate, in fact: they have their own impression of what love entails, and yours is outside theirs.
Short story? Audrey beat me to it, but people suck.
Would you bail them out of virtual jail, or take a virtual bullet for them?
But seriously, regarding the OP. I kind of agree with Diogenes and I kind of see where you’re coming from. It’s definately possible to meet someone online and fall in love with them, as people in this thread have already given personal examples, but it’s also possible to be in the situation that Diogenes describes. It’s one thing to overlook someones flaws for 4 days, it’s another thing to overlook them for 40 years. But if you’re really confident that you know this guy and not just his online personality then firmly state your position to your friends and they should be cool about it.
As for the whole stigma of internet dating, well, the internet is still young and it’s already becoming less and less taboo. Nobody is going to think any less of you 10 years from now if you marry someone you met on the 'net.
Met fiancee (fizzestothetop) online in early August (the story is told in more depth in MPSIMS, if you want to go look for it. Probable around a month old at this point). Met her in person in late September. We were engaged not two months later (mid-ish November) and I think we’ve spent a collective two weeks apart since that weekend in September.
Happily, many of my friends have had long-distance relationships, so they understand this is every bit as real as a geographically closer one (the fact that we’ll be living together come January helps;)). And the majority of my friends are on this-here board, and I find most people here are at least accepting enough of an LDR that they’ll either be nice or shaddap:)
Thanks, everyone:). I can honestly see where my friends are coming from, and I don’t blame them for worrying. But this has been going on for six months now, and it’s been extremely serious for two months (in fact, we just said “I love you” for the first time tonight and I couldn’t be happier). I think part of it is that I am so supportive of their relationships and so happy for them, I wish they could be the same for me. Surprisingly, my family is a lot less apprehensive of this than my friends are—and I’ve never really dated much. The family just wants to know when they can meet him. My friends are…well, they’re just being protective. I just wish they could be happy for me at the same time.
It’s really nice to hear the stories of how LDRs have worked out for others. I’m glad for all of you:).
Can it work? of course. Plenty of examples to ignore.
However, Diogenes has a point. When you’re in an LDR, the visits are special- you’re always on your best behavior, and you’re always considerate, etc… It’s when you live with the person that you become less polite. (This can also be said about the transition from dating to marriage/living together).
Anyway, good luck with it.
