Meeting online seems to be the way of life now, even if we hate it. But on rare occasion, if serendipity is on our side, you might actually meet someone special in real life. You might want to hold off on your Tinder swiping (or at least take a break from it) to try your luck in 3D.
- You have a great “how we met” story, which is rare now. Most of us have had that awkward moment where someone asks us how we met the person we’re dating and we awkwardly murmur “Tinder” under our breath (if we don’t lie about it altogether). When you meet in real life, you get to be one of those couples that gushes about the cute way you found each other.
- You stop perusing your online “catalog.” When you don’t meet online, there’s less temptation to continue swiping (just in case) because you’ve gotten a sense of who the person is in real life right off the bat. You get their true physical appearance (not a 5-year-old picture or perfectly angled selfie) and overall vibe from the moment you start chatting. Your initial attraction is genuinely apparent in real life.
- There’s way less anxiety and overanalyzing. You won’t wonder as much if the reason they’re not replying to a text is because they’re chatting up some other girl online or on a date with one (although that could happen to anyone). You’ll just feel more at ease overall with the relationship progression and less of a sense of urgency for assurances because you’ll have taken the cataloging mentality out of the equation, which is a brutal reality to online dating — you’re never truly focused on one person at a time.
- It’s natural, which makes you act more natural. Meeting face-to-face right off the bat instantly sets the vibe for natural development of not just the relationship, but of who you are, because he already saw who you are in person. He knows your voice, your body language, and your style. Even when you go from meeting in the physical world to communicating via text, you’re less likely to carefully form your response, which do a lot online because we want to stand out. When you meet in real life, you know you’ve already stood out in the crowd, which is why you started dating in the first place.
- You feel less guarded/jaded. Because we’ve all been burned at least once or twice online before, we have walls up and we keep our feelings locked in for a longer period of time before we feel at ease. When you meet in the real world, you’ve taken that mentality off the table right from the bat. That’s not to say you won’t still have walls up, but you don’t feel as much like you’re in a competition, and you feel truly like two people who are interested in getting to know each other more.
- You don’t feel rushed in getting to know him.Because there’s less sense of competition and needing to stand out as the nicest item in the catalog, you’ll feel calmer in taking your time getting to know the person, and in what you reveal about yourself. Even if in the beginning we’re all putting our best foot forward to be best-in-show, we’re all a little more ourselves when we start out in the real world.
