I've Tried Online Dating and I Like It!

I hadn't ever dated online. I met Jared  at a party when I was an itty tiny baby and we fell in baby love and then in normal grown human love. I never understood this online dating phenomenon, Jared is 28 and most of his friends are close to his age or older. Many of them are single (ladies?) and quite a few of them have taken up online dating. I remember being at dinner one night and one of our friends was telling us that he was seeing this girl. He really liked her and continued to praise her throughout dinner. After talking for about 20 minutes he mentioned that he hadn't really met her. They had been dating online and hadn't taken the step to meet in person, yet. I was baffled. I remember leaving the restaurant a few hours later and thinking YIKES, that's a disaster waiting to happen! I think that people jump to that conclusion often because they've never tried it and don't understand it. Just like people think popcorn and ranch dressing don't go together, TRY IT before you knock it. I decided that's it, I need to try this! Since, I am already in a mush mush relationship I needed to date online in a different way to try this world wide phenomenon. I had my first online "meet - up" this past weekend. Of course, it was a blog friend and not a man interested in this woman. I realized the two are incredibly similar though.
Courtney follows my blog and wrote me my first ever "fan" email. I remember reading her email and knowing nothing about this girl, but her email brought me to tears and I immediately respected her and felt a connection with her. She doesn't blog, but she's very into the blogging world. She keeps up with my blog and many others, we talk on twitter, follow each other on Instagram and if she had a Facebook  -- well we'd be friends there too! Over the past year or so Courtney and I have definitely built a friendship. The only different thing about our friendship is that she lives in New York and I live in Utah, that and we had never met.
When you start to blog, you definitely start an online profile. People can come to your site and see who you are. They decide if they like you or not and if they want to follow your life. Sometimes you'll find someone that you have a connection with. You can build a real friendship without ever meeting this person.
Courtney was visiting Utah this past week and asked me if I'd like to meet up. I can be a pretty shy person in an new situation. Of course, I wanted to meet Courtney, but that first meet up is awkward. Just like online dating, you're not sure what you're doing or who you're meeting. Regardless of how you met ; online dating site, Facebook or a blog the fact is that you're still going to meet someone in person for the first time even though you already have a friendship. Courtney and I exchanged numbers and we were texting about her plan while she was in town. We decided to go out to dinner on Saturday night, so I drove 25 minutes South to pick her up. The whole time I was a nervous and sweaty thinking about what to say or what it would be like. I finally got close and I called her to get directions. I saw her waiting outside and I legit felt like I was on a first date. Then she got in the car and after about 3 minutes everything was fine. We started chatting and making jokes just like we do online.


After we went out to dinner we decided we wanted to hang out again before she flew back to New York. Several days later we got together with my sweet husband and my older brother and went to play mini-golf. The second date was much more comfortable then our first date. It was like we were old friends that have been hanging out for years. After we said our good -bye's and I thought about my first online dating experience, all that came to mind were good thoughts!

Now I've tried online dating, and I like it!Have you ever met up with someone you met online? Was it a catfish situation or did it go over well??