My first experience with internet dating

The following took place in another time, in another world…a little under a decade ago.

We met in a chat room and got on very well right away. The next few months were spent chatting on instant messenger, writing each other long emails and eventually talking on the phone. I really liked her, but I was not looking for a relationship.

In fact, the whole notion of finding love via the internet seemed a little silly to me. We joked about that a lot, about those weird folks hooking up in the chat room we met. How people could fall in love without ever having met seemed a complete mystery.

As time went by and we continued to spend a lot of time talking to each other I started to get a little curious about what it would be like to meet. We discussed meeting up and wondered if what we would do and how it would be, however, we did not actually make plans to have a real life meeting.

That is, until summer came around and she mentioned that her parents were going on holiday. It would be the perfect opportunity for me to come visit and stay at her house.

I thought about it for a while, wondering if I should really get on a plane to go visit a girl I had never met before. I then decided that I had come to know her well enough to trust her. Moreover, because we had spend so much time talking to each other I really wanted to see if we would get on in real life just as well.

So I agreed to go visit her. I still did not think we would get romantically involved, it was just going to be a friendly visit. Or so I thought.

From the minute we met, we got on splendidly. We talked non-stop about anything and everything. We also laughed a lot. She had the most amazing smile, that lid up her entire face. All day we hung out, we had a great time.

At night we relaxed, and had a few drinks. I suddenly realized I really liked her. A lot. As it turned out, she felt the same way about me. I ended up staying the entire week at her house. We had an amazing time. By the time I had to go home again I was totally in love with her.

In the end we were together for only a few months, but while we were together it was amazing. I never thought anything like that would happen to me. It sure changed my opinion about internet romances.

Sometimes I think about her still, wondering what she is doing with her life and whether she might be thinking of me too.

Comments

I met Caty online. I would've been content with talking a lot more before we met in person (having not long before come out of a terribly destructive relationship and I was still kind of wary), but Caty only lived a few miles away and successfully argued that lunch was only lunch, right?
That was 4.5 years ago, and no, lunch is never just lunch :D