Internet Relationships & Why They’re Totally Not Weird:

When people ask me about my relationship status and I proudly respond, with a grin on my face, glint in my eye and exuberant tone to my voice, I am almost always met with a reply of shock and anger.

When people hear “Oh yes actually I have a boyfriend who is fantastic and wonderful and 19 and beautiful and lovely” they instantly assume that I’ve been gallivanting into numerous sunsets upon a motorcycle, singing anthems from The Sound of Music repeatably. They assume that I’m going to whip out a framed picture of my theoretical partner from my handbag and thrust it into their greedy little hands.

No matter how many times I utter “well actually we’ve never met” I will never, ever, get used to the look of confusion on the recipients face. Sometimes, it is hilarious. Other times, I want to run away and curl into a ball on the ground and forget I even exist.

One of the first things that I am always asked by a person is whether or not I have a boyfriend. I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is about women that screams “let me invade your privacy and suss you out as a potential man-stealing-threat” but what I do know, is that people will never ever take you seriously when you tell them you are currently in an internet relationship.

So what exactly is an internet relationship? 

It’s 9pm on a Thursday and I’ve just taken my makeup off from the standard date night with my boyfriend. We’ve settled down for our usual conversation about what it is that we plan to do with our future and we’re currently talking about the type of house we’re going to buy when we eventually move to Pasadena. We talk about the pool we’re going to have and the numerous amounts of cigars and Parliament’s we’re inevitably going to smoke together. We talk about lilac trees and gold chains. White bikinis and sunhats.

Our one year anniversary is fast approaching next week and I’ve spent hours painstakingly putting together the anniversary gift I have planned for him.

The only seemingly ‘bizarre’ thing about myself and my boyfriend is that he’s currently 6000 miles away and we’ve never physically met.

Whilst I live in a sleepy town in Surrey, England; he resides in Pretoria, South Africa. Is that nuts? Absolutely. Do I think it’s stupid? No. Do I consider it a real relationship? Most definitely.

I first met my boyfriend, Hadley, online in June 2013, when I was 16. I made a post about an illicit happening in my neighborhood and he replied and caused an argument. Something about ‘not judging people for their mistakes’ or something horribly cliché like that. A week later, we’d exchanged BBM Pins and we were sending selfies and pictures of cats. A year later and we’re planning a future together that we don’t even know for sure will happen.

Before meeting my boyfriend, I was skeptical about those women you always hear about, who abandon everything and move to Mexico to be with Juan; the man who they met on OkCupid 3 months beforehand. I really was. I always used to ask myself what it was that made people fall in love online. I didn’t expect myself to be in that situation and it’s made me realise that there is a lot of unnecessary stigma on internet relationships.

Every day people will ask me what it is that made me be in an internet relationship. Sometimes people get angry at me, sometimes they think I’m weird. Sometimes, they’ll try and persuade me that it’s unhealthy and that I should be getting physical intimacy from people I can physically see.

Sometimes these people get to me and I find myself wondering exactly why it is that I’ve stuck it out for a year. Is it because I’m scared of being in a ‘real life’ relationship? Is it the safe option? Does it provide a sense of security?

I realised I was in love with Hadley on June 26th. It took me a week to decide that I wanted to know more about this guy. Learn about who he was and what he liked to do in his spare time. Learn all about his childhood and what his favourite foods were. It didn’t take long. I found myself checking my phone every 2 seconds and getting excited whenever he messaged me. My friends noticed, my family noticed. A year ago I was slowly but surely falling in love with him with that wonderful feeling of lust you get. I still get that even now. I recieve a text from him and my stomach flutters in that same amazing way it did when we first met.

But what makes a relationship ‘real’? To me, personally, it’s the thought that you make each other want to be better people. To me a ‘good relationship’ is one where you can share and over-share, be yourself, discuss the important stuff, and generally just relax. It’s easier to converse through text messages when you’re less socially dynamic. My relationship has involved a lot of ups and downs, arguments, double chin selfies, worries about his female friends and conversations about having 14 children all called Moses. It’s involved a lot of tears, frustration, sadness and irritation. Its involved arguments with my friends, cancelled plans and thousands of Facebook messages and texts. It’s also involved sleepy voice calls, giggles at 11pm and that overwhelming sense of warmth and happiness you feel when you realise you’re in love with someone. I have that feeling every day and no matter how many tears are shed or how many times I’ve woken up alone, I wouldn’t trade my internet relationship with the most wonderful man I know, for anything.

Instead of filling awkward silences with hand holding and inane affection, I get to spend hours finding new things about him, learning about his aspirations and his day and it’s honestly fascinating. Building a relationship solely through talking creates the most unique bond. And let me tell you, there is no greater feeling than seeing your significant others face in video format on your screen. Hearing their voice, being sent a selfie, even them liking your Facebook post becomes a source of heart-jitters. And it is fantastic.

I heard his voice for the first time in the October after we started dating and ever since I’ve been wondering why it was that we didn’t find each other sooner. You start to love every little thing about them as a person when you take such a staggering amount of time to get to know them.

So, when people argue that ‘internet relationships just don’t count’, I hope you see it from a different point of view. We are capable of falling in love with how people present themselves to us, even if it’s over a screen. We fall in love with voices, characteristics, mannerisms and humor, before we fall for anything else.

My farmboy, the sweet boy I met on Twitter in 2013, is the most wonderful thing to have ever happened to me, and I have the Internet to thank. Maybe one day, when we’re ushering our children into the pool in the yard of our mansion in Pasadena, we’ll be able to un-stigmatize the current dark cloud surrounding Internet relationships. But who knows? All I do know is that although I’ve never held his hand, kissed his face or even physically stood in front of him, there is absolutely no denying that I feel the exact same euphoric sense of love for him than anyone in a real life relationship does.