Does online chemistry translate into physical chemistry?
Two stories: Way back when I used to use AOL, I got an IM out of the blue from this guy. He must have been searching for local people online or something. Normally, I just ignore IMs from strangers but his profile was pretty funny so I replied. Anyway, he was charming, funny, smart and we had complete chemistry. After chatting online and on the phone for a few weeks, we decided to meet. I wasn’t expecting much, keeping in mind that he was the sort who searched for people online to chat with (this was just before everyone and their brother got online and considered online interaction to be the norm). So we met and he was incredibly hot. INCREDIBLY. I was astounded. Chemistry all over the place! We ended up dating for 6 months or so but eventually it ended. He was in it for marriage, kids, house in the ‘burbs, the whole nine yards. While I considered him to be the perfect guy, I just wasn’t ready to settle down, especially not after only 6 months. To this day, I kick myself repeatedly fo
I met someone at work through emails and thought we were hitting it off really well. She seemed way different then anyone else I had ever met. Now I’m not picky, I am old and wise enough to know that looks aren’t everything and as long as she didn’t weigh 300+ pounds I wasn’t worried about it. I arranged to meet her and she turned out to be the ugliest person I had ever seen, she wasn’t fat she just had the ugliest face I had ever seen. Now I’m not all that good looking myself but it was really a shock. I didn’t let it stop me though I was still interested because she seemed really cool. Looking back on it I wouldn’t be surprised if she could detect some disappointment on my face when we first met. Anyways to make a long story longer even longer I kept pursuing her and about a week later she just stopped all communication with me. I finally got her to respond and she gave me the typical “it’s me not you” bullshit. As far as I know she may have not been interested in me because of my lo
Well, I’m afraid this one’s a happy one. I first “met” my partner at an online message board back in 1998. This was not any sort of dating site, it was a rough-and-tumble all-purpose board where opinionated gobshites like me thrived and the sort of people who love to whine about protocol on Metatalk experienced great and richly-deserved pain. Anyway. We had some lively exchanges. I admired her way with words, her wit and her vicious streak. I started to feel actual attraction based purely on those words. I was not surprised by this: it seemed perfectly natural and reasonable. Physical attraction is very nice but it is the way someone’s mind works which is the most attractive thing. I can’t be seriously attracted to anyone unless and until I like their mind. We started emailing. The emails became very long and increasingly frequent. We had things in common. We were about the same age; we had both undergone painful separations recently etc etc. After a few months our emails became… sor
I met him online in 2000. We’d only met face-to-face one time before he moved in with me, and that was 5 months after we started chatting online, and it was another year before I saw him again — the day he moved in. He moved in with me (from Arizona to Chicago) in 2001. We got married in 2004. I love him and he loves me. I would have never met him without the internet. I often think that since our “courtship” was all communication (email, eventually phone was added in) it helped a lot.
It’s definitely hit or miss. I have one of each. The miss: email and phone was just fabulous. I was sure I was in love with him. But in person, there was just no chemistry, and we knew it right away. I felt terrible about that and still do, I feel like I failed him, or misled him, he’s a wonderful guy and didn’t deserve that. I somehow thought that falling in love without meeting in person meant that you were really in love with the essence of the person, without the baggage of the preconceived notions you get from first meeting people in person. Now I think there is an essential chemical component to relationships, and you can only experience it in person (because believe me, there was loads of chemistry before we met in person). So I was pretty jaded when I started to think that this guy I’d been chatting to (and flirting with a bit) by email and phone was getting interested, and when he decided to come for a visit, I was panicking that it would be a repeat of the first time (which w
