DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

I just finished reading "Just Us" and was really delighted with your story. In January I met online (ya it's sorta possible I guess!) a Christian guy from Canada through an online business. We have been in touch since then, and our friendship has had its ups and downs. Amazingly we have worked through it all. We are no longer business partners but instead really close friends.

I say close because we both have admitted that we care for each other deeply, but because we have not met in person (and it's not like I am around the corner, I am all the way in Colombia, South America) we are not courting. We both have amazingly transitioned from trying to suppress in one way or another the fact that we like each other more than just friends, among other important factors.

Now he is at the point where he wants to come to Colombia and meet me! But he's still getting comfortable with the idea. I'm praying a lot for us and he is starting to do the same too.

I would like to know if you can advise or suggest something at all regarding our situation. It is so hard that we are so far away from each other, but at the same time it has happened like this for a good reason.

REPLY

With the growing popularity of "meeting" people online, we continue to receive more and more questions similar to yours. I'm glad you wrote because it gives me an opportunity to try to give a little guidance in this area. I'm going to answer in two parts, with more broad strokes in this entry and more specifics in the next.

Long-distance "dating" and Internet "dating" are a little like taking a biology or chemistry course without the lab. You've got the information, and it all makes pretty good sense on paper, but then there's that whole part of actually slicing open the frog, or, if you prefer, mixing different chemicals to invent a new, beautiful fragrance (relationships are a little bit of both).

Obviously, there are certain limitations to getting to know someone by e-mail and photos sent back and forth. I don't doubt at all that two people can connect deeply with one another merely by information exchange — I suppose that's been going on since the invention of the postal service and before. And I can appreciate on many levels one's opinion of another person being shaped more on the content of that person's thoughts and heart (assuming they've communicated that well and honestly) than on how he or she looks in real life.

Back to my lab analogy, though, I do believe there are important aspects about a person that we can know only when we are able to observe them in "real time."

I remember in high school chemistry learning that the attributes of chemicals would be described at "STP," which means standard temperature and pressure. Those attributes would often change when the temperature or pressure applied would change, and the resulting chemical reactions could be harmless or dangerous — something might turn into sugar or, as my friends and I hoped, something might explode. And to take it one more level, get those chemicals out of the controlled environment of the lab and see what happens. Now that's real life.

I say all that to make this obvious point: The more you can observe someone in real life, under both standard situations as well as when the heat is on, the better picture you have of who they really are. I've heard a lot of good content come out of a person's mouth over dinner at a restaurant, only to watch them turn and treat a waitperson with complete disrespect (a major, major pet peeve of mine). Which tells more about the person? Gong! How does he or she interact with family? Watching someone spend an afternoon around his or her family is worth more than a hundred e-mails in terms of who he or she really is.

Words are great. But when I walk in my home at the end of the day and the air-conditioner is busted, the kids have left remnants of a tornado in the living room and my wife informs me that something is dead somewhere because the smell is unbearable and would I please find it and remove if far from our dwelling, I don't share with her my values statement or point to my seminary diploma (wherever it is) or discuss all the world's problems I helped solve that day. The guy that reacts at that moment is the real me. That's the laboratory of life.

One of the weaknesses of long-distance relationships (especially long, long, long distance, as in your case) is that you don't get to observe the "chemicals" in real life, or when you do, it feels very much like the controlled environment of the lab. Everything is perfectly planned and it's like a mini-vacation for both of you. That's not real life.

Of course, no one can be observed under every possible circumstance — that goes on for a lifetime — and people do hopefully grow and mature and change over the course of their lives and thus react differently to various circumstances over time. That's the wonderful difference between humans and chemicals. But I do think with some thought, creativity and planning you can make the face-to-face meetings more valuable in terms of discovering the "real" person.

In my next entry I've addressed when I think is the right time for that (those) meeting(s) and how to prepare for and make them as productive, and God glorifying, as possible.

Blessings,
JOHN THOMAS

* * *

If you have a question you'd like John to consider for this column, please send it to editor@boundless.org. Please note that all questions selected for "Boundless Answers" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.