Have you ever met and/or dated someone you met on a forum?

[melodicintention]

Have you ever met someone on a forum and/or dated them? It doesn't have to be this forum. If you did, did you plan to use the forum to meet people, or did you just happen to get to know this person online and decide to meet one day? I know people use Social Networking sites in place of dating sites since anymore so many of them are fraudulent, so I was curious if anyone has ever used a forum to date.

[Feelin Frisky]

Yes. And no, I didn't come to LS looking to "hook up" and never expected what happened to happen. It's not a good idea to get too crazy about someone unless one or the other is ready to pick up roots and move close enough to see each other regularly if not move together and marry. If you feel like you have this bond and want for each other and then after some time meet and it goes great, everything changes and you can't return to being satisfied with imagination. And then harsh reality sets in.

 

The first forum I got into (2005) I connected with a woman who had something special too and I was intoxicated with the neat little ways she webbed in tid bits of messages to me and me her in our posts and everyone thought we were on a crash course for love. She brought out the best in my humor and occasionally said "I effing love you". I had a different screen name there and she posted a picture of some elaborate artistic graffiti she did thematicizing my screen name. She was an artist and searched hi and low for a piece of media that contained a song by a group which had my screen name as their band name and she painted the records and sent it to me in an envelope full of lipstick kiss marks. I sent her flowers in appreciation for doing that for my birth day. One day she called me in the morning and said that the forum owner was gonna stay at her house and she didn't want me to be jealous so she was calling me as if I mattered. Then the very same day she posts a thread that she's in love and images were allowed and she had all these pictures with some third party dude where they were all over each other.

 

I was OK with her finding someone where she lived, just as I was ok with the more recent person finding someone where she lives (just as I had always said not to pass up available love for this kookie technology love that has no long history or even experts to consult with about because it's such a relatively new phenomenon), but this first one just blew my mind with these mixed messages--calling me to say she's putting up this dude we both knew (and I did not like him at all, he was a gaping a-hole), then publish a photo-spread the same day of her and someone else that looked so posed and professionally photographed. Private messages poured into me saying WTF? and sorry, and didn't see that coming. And a few days later I had a few drinks in me and this other girl started bad-mouthing the one I had this crush on who treated me with all this attention and real phone calls and hand made gifts and lip stick and I let it be known that it bothered me that she did what she did. Well, this one turned on me and started implying I was a stalker. We had a forum meltdown and I brought up the hand made art work and the lip stick and she answered "oh, I do that for everybody". I told her she might wanna re-think that.

 

I had nothing more to say to her but she went on for about a month acting outraged that I should have anything to say--implying again and again that I ran with my own impressions and blah blah, insulting crap that was unfair and untrue. And I finally just had to say, hey get over yourself. I was never interested in her, I could have driven to see her any time--I lived in NYC and she in Philly. That's two and a half hours. Though I loved her attention, her sense of humor, how she made me feel, I knew she was a pole dancer, was full of tats, had a big ass Rottweiler named Lucifer, was crazy with bumper stickers on her car saying "honk if you need an abortion". She was into being "suspended" by hooks through the skin in a ceremony called the Sundance. I'm not into any of that kind of stuff. I'm a card carry-ing liberal but I'm very down to Earth and reserved. I wouldn't date a stripper and definitely not one covered in ink which I can't stand as it is.

 

So, if you started this thread for some information, I hope I've given you more than your monies worth. You can encounter someone on line--maybe go through thousands before there is something that just grabs you about someone, and it can feel like compelling love. I've only met one and we had a wonderful time. But you can't know anyone through technology. You have to know them in reality to get a real sense of where their real loyalties are and whether you really mean something to them or do they expect you to stop existing when they turn off their computer.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Feelin Frisky

[CarrieT]

Yep - I am very active on a lot of food and wine forums. The wine forums was a great place for a middle-aged woman to meet men because it was such a male-centric hobby for some reason.

 

It never turned into much, because I found the guys there to be a bit too stodgy and stuck in their ways, but I had some interesting dates out of it!

[ptp]

Nope, not on this forum.

 

However, I have met people in the past from another forum I used to be an active member of.

[Imperfectionsbeauty]

I met my boyfriend of 2.5 years on a forum. Due to my current post I can't say we are happy at this very moment but it is only because of typical relationship issues.

 

We met on a social networking site and texted as "friends" for a month or so. I was crazy about him and found out he lived an hour away. We confessed our feelings to each other and texted everyday for 6 months. I think I might have just loved that he didn't come off wanting a relationship he seemed to want to start off as friends. I then felt comfortable to meet him and I did:)

 

He came to visit me at a busy park 15 min away from my house. I saw him sitting on the trunk of his car as I pulled into the parking lot and immediately fell deeper in love. We were both so attracted to each other. We walked and talked for hours until we had to both leave. Not even 5 minutes after we were texting and we were both on cloud 9.

 

Ever since then we have been dating. It took us almost a year to actually have sex. I think I got one of the few lucky NORMAL men on the internet.

[carhill]

I don't participate in forums to meet people but have met a few LS'ers, as well as people from other forums, over the last decade. A few have become close friends, mostly those who share my interest in vintage cars and racing. Probably my best anecdote was a birthday present a few years ago from a forum friend in Germany, advising me of a mistake airfare deal to New Zealand and another forum friend, a doctor in Wellington, picking me up at the airport when I arrived there and spending a week showing me around. Pretty impressive performance for someone one has never met prior.

 

Dating partners have either been met IRL, either locally or while traveling, or through OLD. Never dated anyone from a forum.