I met Diva Despina on Match.com about 6.5 years ago. It wasn't too common back then, even in Silicon Valley where we lived. We talked about making up crazy stories about how we met, but we ended up just telling everyone. I tried to think of it as being an internet pioneer rather than being socially maladjusted. But I think anyone who knew me had a pretty good idea of just how geeky I was anyway.

I basically lie--or rather, "simplfy"--to my luddite friends and relatives about my online friendships. I often say, "I was talking to a friend of mine, and...," when what I really mean is "I posted this comment on MeFi, and...." That's obviously not as complicated as explaining the whole online dating thing, but I know what you mean.

I have no problems telling people that I met my wife online. Its just not a big deal to me and its better than "Yeah, we hooked up after meeting in a bar and having wild drunken sex on the beach."

Early on I got some stupid questions. Like, how many times did we have cybersex before meeting in person? Or, what country did I buy her from? And they were not joking. But all of that has gone away, we've been married for nearly three years and have two fantastic kids to show for it.

In that time, many of my friends have had numerous relationships that have blossomed, wilted and failed. There's something to be said for getting to know someone before you get to know them in person.

"Yeah, we hooked up after meeting in a bar and having wild drunken sex on the beach."

The napkins at my wedding will bear this legend.

I do that "I was talking to a friend of mine..." thing far too often. It's fails when someone close to me - like my mother - asks who and I respond: "uhm... dodgygeezer, frykitty, mudpuppie, fenriq?" I mean, I get away with stuff like Matteo or Taz.. ;)

My husband always says "I read that something something something blah blah", and I say, "Oh, really? Where did you read that?" and he says, "Um, on television?" Heh.

Anyway, yeah... it's kind of funny to say stuff like "I was talking to dodgygeezer..." We should get up an all-star cast of Most Embarrassing User Names to reference: If I Had An Anus, Hugh Janus, Fishfucker...

Oh yeah. I'm just forward about it now. You're all "internet friends". Hey - it's less embarrassing than talking about my "bridge friends!" Heh.

"Yeah, we hooked up after meeting in a bar and having wild drunken sex on the beach."

One of my coworkers met her husband exactly like this, except it was that they met at a party at a beach house, got to talking, got a little drunk and a little high, and went out for a walk. They've been together about fifteen years now, but the real story of how they met is still a highly guarded secret. It's more a "We met at the Shore" story, emphasizing vacation romance and de-emphasizing drunken hookup.

So it's hard to argue there's anything inherently superior about meeting in real life. Fenriq said it well. We'll get used to this internet thing.

I also refer to online folk as "internet friends" in conversation. Some may think this is weird, until I take them to a restaurant or play them some music recommended by an internet friend, or meet one of my internet friends for lunch while at a conference, or connect them with someone I know who can answer questions they have -- whatever. You can almost see the mental double-take they do - "oh, maybe she's not just wasting time on that computermajigger thingie; maybe there's something really going on there."

The above should read, in the first graf, third line, "went out for 'a walk'."

HA, I don't know how I missed that question the first time around.

Most of the friends I see regularly know I'm a member of an online group that meets regularly (most of them even know it's called Metafilter), so that's not an issue. But there are some people (mostly high school friends I'm not close with but see regularly) who I don't share that with, so I just gloss over the details ("What'd you do last night?" "Hung out at a bar with some friends", as opposed to "Went to an internet meetup"). Those friends are the ones I don't tell that I met my boyfriend as result of an internet group- when they ask ho we met, I'll say, "We run in the same social circles", "We have the same friends", all of which are not lies.

We should get up an all-star cast of Most Embarrassing User Names to reference: If I Had An Anus, Hugh Janus, Fishfucker...

Hehe, I was talking to my Dad once about my friend CunningLinguist.... he was like, ?!?

Shit, I met someone online and married her 16 years ago. We didn't hide if from anyone, never crossed our minds to hide it from anyone.

not that girl's response in that thread (about lying to a soon-to-be best friend about how she lost her virginty) reminded me of something similar.

In eighth grade, I developed this massive crush on a girl that didn't wear off until she actually moved away from town two and a half years later. I was obsessed with her. She was to me, probably still is, some sort of my paragon of female beauty, intelligence, and personality. She was never interested, though.

So, the summer after I graduated from high school I moved to the big city. In a long-distance phone call one night, my best friend tells me that this girl was visiting town and they hooked up one night and had sex. Now, if this had been another close friend of ours, I would have expected it. From this guy, it came out of nowhere and I was just unbelivably envious and also astonished. Wouldn't have expected it at all. We were great friends, still are actually, so it didn't harm our friendship.

But for more than twenty years I would occasionally marvel at this little fact, and not with much lessening of envy from the passing of years.

So, just two years ago, I'm at my friend's house and somehow I think of this and bring it up.

He's strangely quiet for a moment. Then, quietly, he says:

"I made it up."

I couldn't believe it. And when I asked him why, he answered, "I don't know, really."

Life is funny that way.

I make no bones about who I meet and how to anyone. I have "acting friends" and "online friends" and "prison friends" and "when-I-was-in-a-cult-with-my-parents" friends and "plot against the government" friends.

All above board. Shit, someone's at the door, um, GOTTA GO! (jumps out window).

("What'd you do last night?" "Hung out at a bar with some friends", as opposed to "Went to an internet meetup").

I don't really see it as any different. I wouldn't necessarily say "Hung out at a bar with some people I know from my pottery class" either, unless I thought the listener was specifically interested in how I met those particular friends.

Funny thing happened yesterday at work: someone was talking disparagingly about her cousin/roommate's awful boyfriend. "They met online," she said, "which apparently people do nowadays." I was floored by her sniffy tone and use of the word "apparently" -- she seems reasonably sophisticated, and I don't think she's any older than 32 or 33. How can she not know how normal this is?

The mister and I have always been upfront with how we met. It's definintely no worse than having met in a pub, library, grocery store, etc. I really don't understand why people would be ashamed or embarrassed by it.

We met online (in a chat room *gasp*) seven years ago and face-to-face six and a half years ago. In December we'll have been married six years.

I suppose my ex and I got very little grief about it because it was unheard-of at the time. Except among the sort of people who were online a lot back in 1989, that is. Friends and family, though, just thought it was an interesting story. I think.

Besides, everything else about our short courtship and marriage was completely non-traditional, too, so it was just part-and-parcel, I guess.

Maybe some folks are just envious because they don't have actual transcripts of the first words they and their beloveds actually exchanged with each other.

Or maybe not.

On Preview: also a "chat room".

I met my other major SO via the weekly alternative personals. That's been going on a lot longer than online meetings and has just as bad, or worse, connotations for many people.

But, really: I've never been embarassed about this stuff because I've always thought that in that last, say, two decades these sorts of non-traditional dating methods for the 30+ set has been much more widely accepted because of the concurrent decrease of traditional social dating milleaus in general and the increase of divorce putting so many older people on the streets and looking, as it were.

For a whole lot of we older adults, the only other pool of potentials is our work environments which is either unattractive or untenable, or both, in many people's opinions.