Online Relationships: Real? Worth it? Dangerous?

Hello all!

I recently met a guy online that I’ve become quite close with. We’ve been talking for just under a month, and we’ve gotten to know each other quite well. A few weeks ago, he admitted to having feelings for me, and I too had been starting to feel as though I was catching feelings for him. However, I had always told myself I would never be in an online relationship. I’ve always thought and been told that they never work, they just hurt you in the end, and it’s impossible to truly be in a relationship with someone without the physical presence. You can’t know everything about a person online, so you don’t know whether or not you’d like them. They could very well be a sexual predator. These were all things that I thought to be facts and things that have prevented me from even considering an online relationship in the past.

However...

I really do feel like I genuinely like this guy, and we’ve been talking for a while now. I’ve been being extremely cautious, not giving away any important personal information, trying not to rush things, taking things at what I hope is an acceptable pace. I’ve also told him that I’m unsure if I’ll ever be okay with an online relationship, and we are both very aware of the situation and where we stand on things, at least as of right now. That being said, after talking with him for a while, snapchatting, video chatting, etc. I’m pretty sure he’s not some 80 year old man seeking his next predatory victim. I’ve done my research on avoiding catfishes, and I haven’t found any warning flags... yet. I say yet because I know you can never be too careful about this stuff.

I’ve been toiling over this for a while now. I really feel like I like him. My heart skips a beat when he texts me, I get all happy feeling inside when we talk, and every time he sends me a snap I can’t wait to see his face again. If we knew each other in real life, I wouldn’t doubt that I’d have feelings for him, and want to pursue something more than friendship eventually. However, this is not “in real life”, this is online. We are both 18/19 years old, college students, but we live on near opposite sides of the US. (He lives around LA and I live around Chicago.)

So my question for you is this...

Do online relationships really live up to this toxic image I have of them in my mind? Are they truly as dangerous as my parents have made them seem? Do they really all fail like I’ve been told? And lastly, are they true relationships, or is it genuinely impossible to be truly in love over a phone screen? I’m basically just looking for some advice and some help on figuring out my feelings, because this is something I have no experience in and something that I never thought I’d ever have to deal with. Thanks in advance for all of your help, and if anyone would be willing to offer more insight via DMs, please feel free to do so! Thanks!

 

I definitely am mindful of the risks. My parents would constantly warn me of the dangers of the internet, so much so that it made me hardly ever even want to talk to anyone on the internet. I’ve also done my own research and so I feel pretty stable on internet safety. I like your point about giving into pressure, because I do sometimes feel as though there is pressure for me to say yes. This mostly stems from not wanting to hurt him by saying no, but also because I would worry that I led him on this whole time if I said no...

I definitely understand this point, as there was a guy I met on a dating app that I got rather close to, but when we ended up meeting irl, there was a lot that I realized I didn’t like about him. That’s my biggest issue with this current situation as well. I’ve made sure to maintain open communication with him, because in the event that this does work out, relationships are built on trust and telling the truth and open communication. So he knows why I’m apprehensive of any sort of online relationship, and he’s talked about possibly meeting irl a good amount of times. He definitely seems interested in meeting. My only issue with meeting in person is that we live so far away from one another, and both are busy college students, so it would be costly and quite a significantly big deal to meet up as opposed to if we lived only a few cities away. I wouldn’t want one of us to spend a whole bunch of money to meet up, only to have to tell him that I don’t really like him as much irl.

All that being said, my thoughts have always been the same about online relationships, which are pretty much exactly what you said. You cannot truly know someone online, so you can’t know if they’re right for you or not until you meet up. He seems to be very mindful of my concerns and very accepting of whatever my decision will be, but he does often ask just to be given a chance- to try things out because he feels bad that there’s literally nothing he can do about this situation, it’s all up to me at this point, and he talks about how if we try and fail, then we can still be friends, but if we don’t try, we’d go right to just being friends and never know what might have been able to happen.

It’s all just really confusing to me because the more he talks about how online relationships can work out, the more I want to say yes, but I also know all of the negative sides to them, and know that it’s really hard for them to be true relationships, as you can hardly do anything over the internet that you could irl. I guess I’m just really stressing because I realize I have to say no, or at least that we have to be just friends until we can meet irl, but part of me also feels really bad about having to say no, and then yet another part really does want to say yes. I’m sorry for the long rant, but it helps me to write down my feelings and such, and I know that I probably should say no, it just helps to hear others say it I guess.

 

Thank you for all your insights and positive examples! I definitely am going to work on getting to know him better, and I’m not going to just start dating him after less than a month of knowing each other, so I think that will be plenty of time to figure things out. I guess I’m really stressing over nothing since it’s not like there’s a due date on when I have to be ready to commit (or not commit). I think I’ll wait on any decisions until I’ve known him a few months, but even then I do feel as though I’ll have to say no, as I don’t foresee myself being financially able to make long distance trips often...

That also said, I’ve told him I want to wait a bit longer, and he completely respects that, but kind of had a counter argument at the time that went something like this:
You can learn a lot about a person in less than a month, and you can also learn a lot about a person in more than a month. Same is true for learning only a little bit. It depends on quality of time spent than quantity, so even if there’s one couple that’s only known each other for a month but talks a lot every day, and another who’s known each other for five months but hasn’t talked as much, the one month couple may know more about each other than the five month one. I didn’t really know how to respond to this, as I felt he did make a good point, but I did say I just felt more comfortable waiting, and so I think that’s where I stand for right now. It’s still super confusing though because it feels like nowadays everyone is always in such a rush to start dating, that it seems like nobody wants to wait anymore, which kind of worries me. Though he has said he is willing to and understands the need to wait, he definitely does seem to be a bit anxious about wanting to start things sooner rather than later, so I do feel a bit of pressure to not keep him waiting forever for an answer...

 

Thanks again for your help! I think that’s definitely the best option here, so I think I may just tell him that until we both feel we are ready, I can’t really foresee any relationship happening at this moment, but I do want to stay friends and learn more about each other and perhaps one day a relationship could happen? I feel like that wording sounds more like a rejection though, so I don’t know how to word it without making it sound like I’m flat out rejecting him completely...