Being a "Nevermet"

Since my long distance relationship took place so long ago, there are a lot of terms that I'm only now learning about. One of them is "nevermet(s)". I didn't know that there was a way to talk about people who fall in love without having seen one another face to face. It feel like it is so much more of a mainstream thing when a label is created for a situation and I wonder if having a word that neatly describes your relationship makes it feel less strange to be in such a situation.

I was, at one time, a "nevermet". Of course, I assume that every "nevermet" hopes one day to change his or her status to "met". It took me 10 months to change my situation and that time carried with it unique insecurities and potent fears. It is one thing to be emotionally and psychologically accepted by someone who knows you at a distance. It is quite another to be accepted physically when you finally meet. The 10 months leading up to my being a "met" were some of the most difficult of my life. Fear of rejection gnawed at me every single day.

Beyond the fear of rejection, one of the hardest things about being a nevermet is that people have grave doubts about the legitimacy of your relationship. If you already knew each other face to face and had to separate due to life circumstances, people aren't concerned that the person you've fallen in love with might be an axe murderer or have plans to sell you into some form of slavery. Nevermets not only get constant streams of negativity as people who have never been in their shoes inflict their fears on them, but they also are accused of living in a delusional state.

Because nevermets face a particular type of resistance when they talk about their relationships, many of us choose not to talk about them at all—especially with family. I hid my relationship for as long as possible because my family was emotionally and verbally abusive. If they had known the truth, I was certain they would have used that information as a cudgel to hammer at me every single day until I abandoned the relationship. There was already enough pressure on me as I endured the difficulties of the distance. I didn't need their resistance to boot.

I wonder how many people who fall for someone at a distance eventually meet and how many break up having never met the object of their desire. I have somewhat intimate knowledge of two other distance relationships other than mine which began as "nevermets". One was a college friend of mine who carried on a phone and mail (written printed letters) relationship with a man and she broke it off when he finally told her what he looked like. Another was an acquaintance in a forum devoted to gaming who eventually met and formed a long-lasting partnership with another person from that same forum. In one case, the pairing was a dismal failure that ended with very hurt feelings and an embarrassing paper trail. In the other case, it ended with both parties being together physically and seemingly quite happy.

There are, of course, hundreds of distance relationships talked about in various places on the web, including Reddit's popular LDR subreddit. It's difficult to track how many are nevermets and how many are those who have separated after knowing one another face to face as the posts are infrequent and  scattershot, and user names change. My guess is that more of them trail away into nothing than change status, but I have no way of knowing.

There is something intensely romantic about the idea of two people who have never met falling in love, at least up until the point that they meet. At that moment, the road forks and one leads down the path to happily ever after. The other leads to disappointment and disillusion.