Virtual v. Real Relationships

I started meeting people in real life (IRL) that I'd met online before most of my friends ever did. Does that make me a pioneer? Maybe. All I know is that when everyone was still using AOL, I was still single, and every so often, I'd meet someone online that I wanted to get to know better IRL. We'd go out on a date or several, and then that would be it.

I was always - ALWAYS! - safe about it in the years I lived on my own, especially. They didn't pick me up at my own home until we'd been out more than once and I knew them a bit better. We'd meet in a public place. I'd make sure my friends knew what I was doing, just in case. My friends (many of them safely married to people they'd met the Old Fashioned Way) thought I was a bit crazy, but it all worked for me. And I actually got to meet a couple of really neat people this way.

Fast-forward to 2003, when I moved to the Northeast to live with my parents before I started seminary. I'd had a profile on an online dating site for a while, but it wasn't until I got to New Hampshire that I came up as a match for Steve. He emailed me, I responded, and within a few exchanges, we both had a really good feeling about each other.

I remember when he included his cell phone number in an email, it freaked me out. I was talking with my friend, Daniel, about it, and he encouraged me to call Steve. "What do you have to lose?" Daniel asked. He got me, with that question. So I called.

We talked for hours that first night. And then the next night. And then I gave him a special ringtone on my cell, which meant that every time he called, my mom would hear it and say (in That Tone of Voice), "Oooooh...there's Steve calling!"

[insert eye roll here]

When Steve and I went out on our first date, we Just Knew. We Just Knew, the way people Just Know in the movies. That was the beginning of our dating, which led to an engagement, and then a marriage - a marriage which just passed its ten year mark. But that first date wasn't the beginning of our relationship, for that had begun earlier.

Lately, I've been seeing lots of discussions around "virtual" v. "real" relationships, as if the relationships we can build with people online aren't real, or the relationships we have in person can't be virtual. But the more time I spend online, the more I realize that some of the relationships I have with people online are rich and full and deep.

There are some online that I communicate with daily. We share joys and sorrows, laughs and tears, prayers and venting. I am at a point with some of these people that I actually cannot refer to them as "virtual friends" because applying that term to them isn't only inauthentic, it's actually painful. They are real friends.

I'm meeting them IRL, one by one, and it's really wonderful. Sort of like with Steve, it often begins with a phone call, and I get really nervous. Then, I remember Daniel's advice of "what do I have to lose?" and so I take that plunge and we have that first conversation. Meeting an online friend IRL is even more nerve-wracking for me, but I've never regretted taking that step.

I remember being at our wedding reception, standing off to one side with Daniel. We were talking about that phone conversation, and he asked me, "Do you remember when I asked you what you had to lose?" He pointed to the room full of people who were there to celebrate with me and Steve, and he said, "This. This is what you would've lost."

This morning, I went to worship at a church pastored by an online, now-IRL friend. Before I got there, I was nervous as hell, thinking, "What am I doing, anyway?!" But then, I got to watch him preach, and not only listen to his podcast. I got to touch the plants in their butterfly garden, and see the gentle creatures flitting their way among the plants. And that is what I would've lost.