Can you fall in love with someone you’ve only talked with online?

Yes. You can.

It’s not that actual person that you fall in love with though, it’s the idea of that person. Think of it this way, you’ve never met this person before so you have no idea if he or she burps loudly in a busy restaurant or farts stinkingly and loudly in a public library. You have no idea whether they will irritate the shit out of you, or make you fall desperately harder for them. It’s a 50/50 chance and it’s why I say don’t go all in until you’ve finally met them in person and at least shared a bed with them for a few days.

I come from a time where internet relationships were frowned upon. The internet for me back in 1996 was like a magical source of awesomeness; I had finally found an avenue to talk to women and not desperately feel shy about it. In the real-world women were forward and scary and I had to do frightening things like ask them out on dates and, “oh, god, what if they rejected me??” Yeah, the internet was a way to bypass all that bumf and get straight to business. There were no social cues, no voice tone, nothing to make me feel like a scared little boy and I could use my natural charm and physical attractiveness to woo the ladies. I knew I had charm but it was the social stuff that screwed me up.

My friends were never accepting of my cavorting with ladies from the internet. To them it was a very expensive way to get laid. They didn’t understand that at the time it was the only way I felt I could hook up. It bypassed all the courting shit that I couldn’t get the hang of.

I was always one for commitment so I wasn’t looking for a quick fuck ’n run, I was looking for a long-term relationship. I managed that with a few of them but only with the ones that had never met me before. There was something that turned the ladies off like light switches when I met them, usually it wouldn’t last very long after the meet up. I had stupidly projected myself as a strong man. On the internet, I could be the hulk if I wanted to be, but in reality, I was just a timid little boy. I doubt that’s what they were looking for, and my physical appearance definitely didn’t match up with my personality. I was slim, toned and slightly muscular but couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag.

Now? Now everyone’s catching up. Suddenly the Internet has hit the mainstream and those of us that were sort of oddities and outcasts to society are now accepted as regular internet users. The people that laughed at us for sitting in the house with our curtains closed furiously masturbating away to some cybersex session are now intimately involved in some way themselves, or have been in the past. I sort of feel I’m hardcore experienced in this area now. My first ever internet relationship was with a girl from Milwaukee in 1996. We would phone each other up and have phone-sex and a whole lot of other deviant behaviours.

The women that I fell in love with online, and I’ll admit, there have been a few (one that I found myself crying in a counsellor’s office over) were never really the people that they actually were. I had worked up a fantasy in my head of the person that I wanted to be with — the blanks that existed I would just fill in with my own ideas of perfection. The women that I had never met existed entirely in my mind. See, she was there in skype, on the telephone, on my mobile, on the computer, but she was never actually there IN person. There were things I didn’t know about her, not big things, but small things that could have eventually broken the fantasy. My wife now, she is constantly grabbing my attention as I work, and whilst that’s not a deal breaker in itself it’s something I wouldn’t know about her until I spent time in person with her. There’s a whole lot of things you wouldn’t know about your online love. Confidence levels, self-assurance, humility, ego and a whole array of other things. After all, you only see them interact with you, what about when they interact with others? In real life?

So, to summarise…

Yes, you can fall in love with someone online but only with the idea of who they are, not actually who they are.

I’d recommend meeting up first before you make any crazy commitments.