How long have you known your oldest online friend?

[FriendsOnline]

I’ve been talking to the same person just about every day for 26 years and now they’re dying. They’ve been terminally ill for some time and are now in hospice.

They’re thousands of miles away and I can’t be there but they are surrounded by family and friends.

It’s so strange to think that we won’t ever chat again when we’ve talked for so long.

How long have you known your oldest online friends?

I don't have any online friends.
But I am sorry to hear your good friend is dying, I am sure you will miss them deeply. I hope it is a comfort to know they are with loved ones.

Do you mean someone you’ve never met in real life? I made a friend through a religious group online (nothing wacky!) 20 years ago. We had very similar political views and also hobbies and we both got sober around a similar time, so we have so much in common despite the fact that he’s a gay man and I’m a straight woman and we live in different countries. I actually forget sometimes that we’ve never met each other. 😂 I would absolutely never add randoms from a Facebook group today, but in the mid noughties, it was different.

My oldest friends who I have online who I do actually know in real life are childhood friends I met when I was around 6-8, nearly 40 years ago.

Sorry to hear about your friend. 🌷

About 25 years. We started talking on message boards back when I started at university and Internet access was a new thing to me, you still had to go and queue up at the IT suite to get on a PC, very few people I knew had home internet access then. We eventually followed each other on twitter, then became Facebook friends. We've seen each other get married and watched our children grow up even though we've never met in person and most likely never will.

26 years also! We do now meet IRL a few times a year too but they are also older than me and losing them is a very real fear of mine. Sympathies to you OP

That’s really sad. I have a lot of online friends I still talk to most days. We all met on Girland! That was about 23 years ago. I am meeting up with one of them this year which I’m looking forward to.

sorry to hear about your friend

About a year, girl I met on Peanut which is a "mum app". She doesn't live too far from me but I don't know if I'll ever actually meet her in person. She offloads a lot of her personal issues to me which I don't mind advising her on and chatting to her about daily life but at the moment I'm not really interested in seeing her in person. My previous experiences of people I've spoken to online is that they either don't show up or they have an excuse as to why they can't after arranging a place and time, and so I don't want to waste my time.
I'm sorry you are going to lose your friend. I think even connections that remain online can have value and you can get used to talking to the same people day in, day out.

Around 25 years. I've seen them get married, have families, some of the children are adults now, and the morbid thought has occurred to me that we're all going to start dying off sooner or later.

I'm sorry about your friend, it's very hard when you can't be there.

I don’t have online friends

I’ve never had an online friend.
sorry that you’re losing yours though 💐

Im so sorry your friend is so ill. I have been writing letters, then later messaging via Facebook, a friend I "met" when I responded to her ad in the penpal section of a Mother and Baby magazine! That was 32 years ago. We have always written about twice a week.

Since 2013 and we now try to meet up in person a couple of times a year too.

Sorry to hear about your friend OP, online friendships can be just as close and valuable as those formed in person

I'm so sorry about your friend. I recently lost a loved one who was thousands of miles away and it's tough.

The first time I 'met' people online was when I was pregnant with my DS, 13 years ago, on a different parenting site. I met one of those women irl soon after our babies were born and she's become one of my dearest friends. I'm Godmother to her DC and we've holidayed together. I have purely online friendships too but not close ones

I had a “bump buddy” from an online forum during pregnancy with my dd who is now 15.
We would speak/text/whatsapp and exchange pictures a couple of times a week for years, then less frequently, and now maybe only at Christmas.
She lives a couple of hours away, but we’ve never met in real life.
It’s odd to think that I know more about her than her Dh does

I also had a male friend many years ago, met him on a hobby group on social media. Again, never met him in real life, but it was quite a deep “friendship” if you’d call it that. We would text or email every single day for a couple of years.
His life circumstances changed, and we drifted apart.

Ultimately, I’ve learned that they can be quite unhealthy, and I had invested too much of myself into them. I wouldn’t allow it to happen again.

i realise how odd it sounds when written down, and I do have close friends and family in real life, so it’s not that anyone or anything was missing.

OP, I’m sorry about your friend

Interesting so many of these around the 25 years mark

I don't have an online friend and neither to my knowledge does anyone I know. You talk about it as though it is the norm, OP. Is it the norm to have online friends? I'm slightly surprised.

I only have real life friends. Stranger danger and all that.

I do think that it’s normal yes. We’ve been in the age of the internet for some time now and most people I know use forums, often relating to hobbies/interests and social media and make friends there, which often result in meet ups . It’s no different to using MN imo.

32 years is incredible!

I have quite a few mutual online friends that I've known for close on a couple of decades. One of them morphed into becoming my real life best friend.

There've been a couple of deaths of people in the group, who we all felt we knew, even if most of us hadn't had the chance to meet them. There's a different kind of grief when you lose someone who is part of your daily life, and you realise that you never will get to meet them, and you won't get to say goodbye..

I'm sorry about your friend.

No it can be someone whom you’ve met IRL too, I’ve met my friend, so long as you originally met them online(Or magazine)

I’m so sorry for the loss of your loved one.

14 years. Never met her, but talk regularly by text & call.

About 25 years, met through a parenting website. I’m still online friends with probably 40 or so people off that forum who I have never met but feel I know really well!

I have a group of friends I met online 20 years ago when most of us were having babies around the same time. Some have drifted away from the group over the years but there are still 20 or so that I speak to regularly, on FB or WhatsApp. I have met lots of them but not all. Most live too far away to see regularly.

We’ve supported each through weddings and divorces, parenting, illnesses and bereavements. I’m so grateful for them.

Still in contact with a canadian woman i knew when I was pregnant with dd2 who is 26. So that is about 26/27 years.

Never met her but we have spoken and sent presents.