So you did the online dating thing, and surprise! You had some luck. Actually, you found someone you want to spend your time – and maybe even forever – with. Congrats! Now comes the tricky part. If you haven’t already told your friends and family that you met on the Internet, are you going to? And how will you do it?
We talk about online dating here so much that it seems like the norm. And truthfully, it is becoming much more common. But often, we forget that there are still some people who are entirely, completely, wholeheartedly against it – even if they still choose to partake in it. For every person who, when asked, will tell you nonchalantly that she met her significant other online, there are plenty of others who will stumble their way through a vague story about meeting through friends.
If you haven’t already figured out your answer to the “How did you two meet?” question, now might be the time to start thinking about it – because it will, undoubtedly, come up. The first thing you need to do is sit down with the other party in your relationship and decide together what you want to say. This prevents those awkward moments when people meet your new guy or gal for the first time and one of you blurts out, “Match.com,” while the other stammers, “at a party,” when asked how you got together. Take it from someone who knows – it can be a bit disarming when a family member asks how you met, and your boyfriend shrugs and says, “online,” while you stare at him open-mouthed because you hadn’t even thought about how you’d answer the question yet.
If you are both modern, tech-embracing folks and really take no issue with telling the truth about how you met, at least let each other know this ahead of time, before anyone even asks. If one or both of you isn’t, then figure out if you’ll be able to make yourselves OK with it, or if you need to get your “story” straight before the interrogations start. (Hint: You’ll probably know from the start if your SO is OK with admitting to online dating. If he has “We’ll say we met in a bar” or “Can we pretend we met at Starbucks?” as his dating headline, chances are he won’t be cool with throwing around the fact that you met on the Internet.)
Your friends and family will want to know all the little details about your first rendezvous, so be prepared – but not too prepared. Unless you both have amazing memories and can lie with the ease of con artists, it’s best not to create an elaborate tale. One of you will likely say you met on a Saturday night at a party, and the other will say it was a Friday and a friend introduced you at a bar. Once your story gets twisted like that, people will probably catch on and you’ll have to own up to the truth. Keep it vague, but not so vague that it sounds like something out of a romantic comedy.
So should you or shouldn’t you tell the truth about how you met? Ultimately, it’s up to you and what you both agree on. Just know that intricately woven stories can get tricky to tell over and over again, and that in this day and age especially, honesty is usually the best policy.
