On The Joys & Struggles Of Meeting Your Partner For The First Time

According to a 2012 study, online dating is now the second most popular way for new couples to form, and with a dozen different social medias populating the internet, it’s become more and more commonplace for relationships to form before partners have met outside the virtual world.

From experience, and through talking with others in long-distance relationships, meeting for the first time is a major source of stress and anxiety. There are so many fears and unknown variables: what if they don’t like me? What if they look or act differently than they do on Skype? What if they find out I’ve been hiding all kinds of weird personality quirks? What if I’ve been “catfished” for the last six months?

When Elle and I first met, we had been talking for a little over four months. Originally the plan was to wait until the Christmas holidays, but as we grew closer and realized we weren’t getting sick of one another any time soon, it became clear we could not, would not wait another half year to test the waters in person.

This past September I got my very first U.S. passport (I had never left the country prior to this visit) and flew to Toronto, Ontario to stay in a downtown hotel with Elle for three nights. I bought a new suit coat, some fancy cologne, and made reservations at the incredible 360 Restaurant atop the CN Tower; I was determined that this would be the “first date” of all first dates.

Overall the trip was great! Meeting was easy and felt comfortable; we laughed and talked just as we had on Skype for months, like there had never been 2,500 miles between us. We went to the Royal Ontario Museum, ate some incredible poutine, saw Pixar’s Inside Out at an adorable second-run theater across the street from our hotel. The CN Tower was the highlight of the trip, with a three-course meal that will rank as the best food either of us have ever eaten.

But the trip was not without its hurdles. There were plenty of uncomfortable moments, silences, and awkward points of emotional friction. On paper our mini-vacation as two friends who cared for each other a great deal was incredibly fun and rewarding; as an aspiring couple, things were not so simple.

The first and most important thing you MUST realize before meeting your long-distance s/o is that the struggles you have from afar do not go away simply because you’re together, in person, able to reach out and touch one another. It’s easy to paint yourself in a certain light over the internet, even when you talk on Skype for hours every single day. But when you’re right there, face-to-face in a hotel room for the weekend, it’s all going to come out.

For example, I suffer from fairly severe anxiety disorder, to the point where silence and uncertainty can send me into a frenzy. Elle internalizes everything when she’s uncomfortable, to the point where sometimes she’ll just stop talking. These are two major, clashing aspects of our personalities, but aspects we had never really discussed or experienced before in each other. The result was nearly a train wreck.

So imagine me, sitting on the hotel bed thinking about life beyond the trip, growing anxious about the status of our newly formed relationship. Are we a couple? Are we exclusive? Does she love me? Does she even still have feelings for me after meeting me in person? Now imagine Elle, knowing I’m growing anxious, but not having any of those answers for me just yet. I’m trying to discuss it with her, and she’s growing more quiet by the second. The uncomfortable silences set in. My anxiety is growing as her silence all but confirms my worst fears.

But sometimes silence is just silence. Sometimes it means that a person cares for you so much - maybe even loves you - that they need to process everything and think things through before responding. Sometimes all a person with anxiety needs is to hear the words “everything is going to be alright. I’m here with you.” But these are things you learn about a person as you grow together. They’re not traits you immediately or instinctively know how to handle.

The single best piece of advice I can give any two people thinking about meeting IRL is this: you won’t know exactly how to be there for your partner at first, AND THAT’S OKAY. Allow yourself to be a little uncomfortable if you need to be. But it’s important to recognize that they may need you to be there in a way that doesn’t exactly compliment your own personality.

Elle needed me to give her time and space to breath, which is not something I’m naturally good at. I needed her to give me affirmation and comfort, and while she has become incredibly good at making me feel loved and at peace in the months following our first encounter, emotional empathy is perhaps not her natural state.

Relationships aren’t about being “perfect” for each other, in the sense that you compliment every flaw and “complete” the other person. That’s Hollywood. Life is never that perfect. In my experience, relationships are really about learning yourself; figuring out what you lack, and what your partner needs, and growing as a person so that you can better love and support them.

The second piece of advice I can offer is: DON’T RUSH.

Elle and I did not go into Toronto as an official couple, and we didn’t leave there as one either. For a very long time we were friends, and then friends with feelings, and after Toronto we were friends who loved each other, but the distance and our hectic schedules made making that commitment extremely intimidating.

The first time Elle called me her “boyfriend” was eight months into our relationship. She had used the term loosely in conversation with people before, when it was easier than explaining “he’s this guy from America that I really care about, but we’re not exclusive, and we’re still trying to figure things out”. But the first time she used the term in a conversation with ME, and we actually acknowledged each other as “boyfriend and girlfriend” was eight months in.

Now, some people will be more comfortable with distance. Some people want to jump right into exclusive LDR dating right away, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. It comes down to who you are as individuals, and who you are as a couple. But a lot of times it takes awhile to figure that stuff out. It’s not as if Elle and I didn’t want to be in a real, loving, qualified relationship, we both just needed the time to grow together and let things work themselves out naturally.

So DON’T RUSH. If you love someone, you’ll still love them tomorrow. You’ll still love them next week. The biggest mistake we made on that initial Toronto trip was putting so much pressure on ourselves to figure out the relationship right away. We thought we would see each other and just “know” it was meant to be. That we would meet, fall in love and change our Facebook relationship statuses before leaving the city. When it didn’t work that way, we both felt confused. I felt rejected. She felt uncertain.

I don’t want to get into sexuality in this post (another topic for another time) but suffice it to say that when you’re meeting for the first time, you’re going to have certain expectations and certain desires, and if everything doesn’t go perfect right away, it creates stress. It creates a LOT of stress. Elle and I ended up having a lot of fun together by the end of our trip, but it took some time and some conversations to get there, and our sex life is something we still had to work on during our second trip, more than three months later. You have to be really good at communicating your issues to deal with stress at that level, and that’s just not something most new couples are equipped to deal with.

So if you’re planning a trip to meet your long-distance s/o for the first time, the absolute best thing you can do is relax. Know that you’re probably not going to click perfectly 100% of the time, and you may have some minor (or major) hurdles to jump over. Be open to things not being perfect. If you’re honest with each other, and you don’t put enormous pressure on yourself to get everything right, right away, you’ll be fine.

Realize that day one of being together IRL is still your first date, no matter how long you’ve been together virtually, no matter how many “Skype dates” you’ve had, or how close you’ve become at a distance. So treat it like a first date. A first date with someone you’ve adored for a very, very long time. Relax. Enjoy yourselves. There will be pressure to figure things out, but do it together, and don’t fret if everything doesn’t work itself out by the time you leave.

I hope this was helpful. If you have anything to add, or any questions/comments, feel free to respond to this, send us a message, or leave something in our Ask box. Thanks for reading!