I feel a bit embarrassed with the thread title but wanted some opinions on how you can feel about someone you have never met "in the flesh".
We live quite long distance and got talking through work online and before I knew it we were talking every day. In that time we have clocked up hundreds of hours of the phone, endless emails and messages and fair bit of Facetime too.
I feel like I know him like the back of my hand, and he knows me the same way too and I "feel" as though my feelings for him are really quite real and that perhaps I even love him.
He is not my usual type by any stretch physically... I go for dark, he is blonde, I go for rugged, he is geeky but over the time of speaking to him he became the one voice I always wanted to hear, the one I could not imagine ever wanting to be away from and now I feel a little bit like ending up married to him is a fait accompli.
I feel a bit worried though that maybe without smelling someone or making love with them or cuddling up to them you might be missing a bit chunk of the puzzle - and although it is his mind and heart that has captured me, I wonder a bit about how much you can really feel.
I am a member of an online support group for something, with members all over the world and have been "chatting" online with 5 or 6 of those people for a couple of years and I can hand on heart say I count those people as truly some of my best friends, despite never meeting "face to face" so I do know "relationships" of value can definitely be built via a connection online but wonder how different it is with love.
Neither of us has problems getting a date in real life, neither of us is sad or lonely or desperate, I know he gets asked out a lot and I do too but we really just only want each other.
Yes there is very good potential for us "moving" so we live in the same place and once we meet we will look into that if all goes well. As for how he feels, well, he seems to feel that my heart / mind is what attracts him to me and he says that is what he has fallen for and while neither of us uses the words "love" or considers that we are in a relationship I think deep down we probably both believe this is going to be how we end up.
The time has come for me to actually meet him, will be happening in August and I could not be more terrified. From my end, I don't really care how his skin smells - it will smell like him - and I know I fancy the pants off him but I am worried a lot that he will feel let down by me in some way and I have avoided the big "meet" for so long with countless excuses because I feel a bit worried that he has a fantasy of me that I can't match up to.
Underneath all that, seeing him does not feel like meeting someone new, it feels more like finally seeing again someone I have missed forever so it's mixed feelings.
Does anyone have similar experiences? It has been almost four months since we first began to speak.