A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:This is going to sound crazy but I met an amazing man about 3 months ago playing poker on my phone through a live app. We have been talking and texting everyday since. The connection seems amazing. I feel like I have known him my entire life. Like this may possibly be the man I have been waiting for. I have yet to meet him in person because he is a trucker and travels across country. I guess my question is if it is possible to be in love with someone i have never met? I have not felt this way in a very long time and part of me feels this isnt possible but i know what i feel in my heart. I know i need to be careful when i meet him. I know sometimes people are not who they seem to be but if he is then he is the most amazing man i have ever met. Or not met in this case lol. But anyways is it possible that my feelings are real here? Can someone really love someone they have never met in person? Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read and answer.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
male
reader, idoneitagain  +, writes (29 August 2011):
Feelings are always real. What they mean is a different thing.
First of all, it is important for you to understand what you are in love with. You have not met this man, you have only communicated with him through technology. Therefore, you don't have a direct experience of him, you have an idea of him. That is what you are in love with. Even when we meet someone in real life, we project the things we want to see onto them, and this is even more the case with someone we are communicating with through technology or some other medium. I have met many people in real life that I first met online, and I would say in every case the reality of who they are was different to the idea of them that I had from having communicated with them online. Sometimes this difference was quite small, sometimes it was quite exaggerated, and in some cases they were actually nothing like the person I was communicating with. The person they are turned out not to be the person they presented online, not due to them lying or misrepresenting themselves, but that their ability to communicate in real life was very different from their ability to express themselves online, it was really like a different personality.
The other thing to understand is how love and feelings work. Often love is a risky feeling to have for people. Some people are afraid of rejection, or afraid of getting what they are after, afraid of intimacy, afraid of getting hurt, afraid of becomming overwhelmed and losing themselves in love, or the relationship. Because these emotions are complex, it is common for people to find a safer alternative to express their love. Some people fantasize, some people form online relationships, or fall in love with pen pals, some people fall in love with people who they know they can't actually have a relationship with and reject them before they can get hurt themselves. This sounds like a case of you genuinely finding someone you think you could love, but also in a context where it is safe to fall in love, because you haven't actually met them. Your feelings of love are tied up in fantasy, and this seems to be a safer way for you to express your emotions.
All of this is real. Your feelings are real. But it will be nothing like this in real life with this guy. It might be better, you might fall more in love with him than you are in love with the idea you have of him. You might find you don't connect as well in real life as you do through technology, and be devastated. You might find that all the things you thought about him are the same in real life, but as you get to know him you discover the depth of who he is in reality rather than the shallow experience of him you have now, and you realise that the fuller picture isn't as wonderful as the simple picture. He may be exactly like he seems. You may get on great but discover you have no physical chemistry whatsoever.
My advice would be to meet him in real life, get to know him over a long period of time, and follow your feelings that are based on your experience of him. In time, the truth of your connection will be revealed, as will the quality of your relationship.
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