I think our story will be of interest to you, if you have ever met and fell in love with someone over the internet, or if you have ever been involved in a long-distance relationship.

I was online (AOL) January 12, 1997, minding my own business, when I received an Instant Message: "Hi, I am Ralph from Germany" Most of the time I have instant messages blocked, or else I just hit "cancel" the minute one of those annoying boxes pop up. I don't know why I didn't on that particular day...

Anyway, the fact that this man was in Germany caught my interest and made me feel "safe", so I chatted with him for a few minutes. He seemed like a very nice fellow, but chatting went slooowly, because his english was very bad. Soon I got bored. So I told him I had to go, but he could e-mail me if he ever wanted to. Goodbye, I sure didn't think I'd ever hear from him again, and I dismissed the whole brief encounter from my mind.

Well, a few hours later I signed back on and there was a letter waiting for me. Very short, about 6 lines (Ralph later told me it took him 2 hours to write it). I wrote back. And that's how it all began.

I've read the stories of many other couples who met on the internet, and one common thread that we all seem to share is the feeling of "we were meant to be" or "it was destiny". I'm not particularly fatalistic, nor is Ralph, but we both remember feeling that "something" had led us to each other. When my mind tries to consider all the factors that had to come together at exactly the right moment in time for chance to explain our meeting, it just doesn't seem to be a logical (or mathematical) possibility. What if I had gone shopping that morning, instead of signing on? What if there had been a good movie on HBO? What if one of my 2 teenage sons had had the phone line tied up that day, as was their normal weekend proclivity? What if I hadn't bought a new modem for Christmas? What if I hadn't been able to get online at all that day? (This was, after all, during the worse period of AOL's problems with access.) What if... what if... what if?

Then, factor in all the events that had to happen at Ralph's end, in Germany, for us to meet at that precise moment in time. Ralph was born and grew up in EAST Germany. Why, the Berlin wall itself had to come down for Ralph and me to meet!

I later asked Ralph how he came to pick me to send an "Instant Message" to. He said he was playing around with the AOL Member Directory, looking for people currently online in the US to talk to (with the objective of finding someone to send him jeans!) How many people must have been online on that Sunday afternoon? 10,000? 100,000? What made him click on my name on that long directory list, and change both of our lives forever?

This is a subject I often ponder - how time sweeps us along, and by chance or by choice, we live a life that might have been completely different if not for one specific event. Is there such a thing as fate? Maybe the human mind creates the idea of "fate" because it is too frightening to think about how easily two people could miss each other if only random chance is at work. I know it certainly makes me shiver to think of the opportunity, the love, the man, the LIFE, that I could have missed.

Ok, enough philosophizing, back to our story:

From those very first letters exchanged, Ralph and I felt a connection, despite the fact that he barely spoke english. Over the course of the next 8 months, our whole relationship, from meeting, getting to know each other, exchanging photos, first feelings of love, "dating", becoming crazy about each other, getting engaged, exchanging our cybervows (in an online wedding), etc., occured entirely through the internet, via chat and e-mail. We didn't even talk on the phone, because of the language barrier. (Ralph had self-taught himself to read and write english, but could barely understand spoken english, and I speak no german beyond "geshundeit"). People who haven't experienced the intensity of cyber-relationships just can't understand what they are like. Or how well you can get to know someone through daily e-mails and online chat. But although I expected the friends who I told about my cyber-romance to think I was crazy and heading for trouble, surprisingly, most were very supportive and excited for me. Due to the distance between us, the costs of international travel, and our personal job responsibilities and vacation schedules, we knew our first face-to-face meeting wasn't going to happen until September of 97, 8 months after we met. The waiting was sweet agony. But finally the day came, and on September 21st, Ralph arrived in St. Louis, his first trip to the U.S. By this time, we were not only deeply in love, but commited to each other as well. Plans for a future had been made, promises of undying love had been given.... Of course there was tremendous fear on both of our parts, that the cyber-chemistry we felt for each other wouldn't manifest itself when we finally stood before each other in all our 3-D flesh and blood glory. The potential was there for the most devastating heartbreak two people could ever endure. But I wouldn't let myself think on that too much. As the day grew nearer and nearer, I had a hard time thinking of anything other than how he would feel in my arms for the first time. But although I can remember my knees feeling like butter as I watched his airplane taxi into the gate, all the worry was in vain. We were comfortable with each other from the very beginning. It was immediately evident that the physical chemistry between us was going to be even better than our cyber-chemistry had been. Ralph spent 5 weeks with me; 5 glorious weeks during which time we tried to "soak up" as much of each other as possible. Oh how we cried on the eve of his return to Germany. And watching him walk away through the gate to board his plane to leave was unbearable. That's the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. At that moment, it was no consolation to me that in a not-too-distant future, we would be together forever. But thankfully, for the sake of my mental health, we had another F2F planned: Our next meeting was in Bremen, Germany, where I went to spend Christmas with Ralph. It was my first time in Europe, and what a wonderful adventure that was, and how special to get to spend our 1st Christmas together. Ralph showed me around the lovely river-port city of Bremen, near the North Sea ...and I got to visit Becks Brewery, where Ralph worked. On Christmas day, we traveled to Schwedt, part of the former East Germany, to meet Ralph's brothers and their families, and I got to see the orphanage where Ralph grew up. And we spent one day in Poland. We had a little excitement at the border trying to re-enter Germany - The Polish border guards made us pull over and questioned my paperwork for a long time. Evidently, they don't get too many American tourists at that particular border crossing! But the best part of my trip to Germany was visiting Berlin. What a fantastic city! As we approached the Brandenburg gate from the east, and Ralph showed me where the guard towers used to be ("this is as close as you could get without being shot", he told me) I found myself wondering how it felt for Ralph when the wall came down, and he walked through that gate to freedom for the first time. I can't really describe how profoundly it affected me to walk through it myself from east to west. At that moment, it really sunk in how different our lives had been, and what an amazing miracle it was that we had ever met. All the waiting to be together ended this past April 6, 1998, when, fiancé-visa in hand, Ralph came to me, never to go away again. On April 26, 1998, we had a lovely, private, chapel with about 25 guests in attendance. What makes this whole story all the more amazing to me, is how dramatically my life has changed. For one reason or the other, I hadn't had a boyfriend in over 10 years at the time I met Ralph. Life was work, and taking care of my 2 sons, 2 dogs, and a house. I really didn't have a life, and at age 39, had come to pretty much accept it. In fact, I was sure I would never get married. I often joked to friends that my destiny was to become one of those eccentric old crazy-ladies, who live alone with 30 stray dogs, and all the neighborhood kids are scared when they have to walk by her house. And suddenly, I'm Cinderella with this wonderful, handsome new husband starring in this amazing, fairy-tale story of a life, that just gets better every day. I still can't believe it. I still wake up with a start every morning and look to see if Ralph is really beside me, or did I dream the whole thing. But it's for real. In light of the fact that so many relationships that start on the internet don't work out when the couple meet F2F, Ralph and I were recently asked why we thought our relationship has been successful. I've had time to give that some thought. I'm certain the "secret" was the 8 months we spent getting to know each other before we met. One thing that happens when you first fall in love with someone, is you tend to idealize that person. Until you get to know him or her better, there is a tendency to view that person as being exactly the way you want them to be. They are kind, polite, honest, witty, or whatever it is you're looking for. And maybe they really are, but only time will reveal the true person, imperfections and all. Needless to say, this process of idealizing the object of your affections can happen much more easily and extensively with someone you meet online, simply because you have so much less actual information to go on. When you first meet someone on the internet, there is SO much about them you don't know. And what you don't know about the person, you are likely to make up. Your mind "fills in the blanks", so to speak, with your wishes and desires. This image created in your mind of the other person can be very appealing and very powerful. In fact, without "facts" to muddle up your impressions, it could be one of the most powerful attractions you've ever felt. But... If you meet F2F for the first time while still in this idealistic phase, disappointment is inevitable. No one can possibly live up to being the perfect person of your dreams. So I do believe the 8 months Ralph and I were forced to wait for our first F2F was the "secret" for avoiding this disappointment. By the time we met, Ralph and I had exchanged over 700 pieces of e-mail, in which not only had we completely revealed ourselves, but we had come to be a part of each other's daily lives. We knew and loved each other on an intellectual basis first - something that is hardly possible in "real life". That intellectual connection - the meeting of the minds - is also in my opinion the reason why we were so instantly comfortable with each other physically at the time of our first F2F. If you can accept that the most important bodily organ involved in love and sex is the brain, not the sexual apparatus, then it doesn't seem so strange at all that true feelings of affection, intimacy, even sexual attraction, can develop across thousands of miles of cyberspace. Even though the main focus of my web-site is to share our K-1 visa experience, I wanted to share the story of our romance too, because it seems like you hear a lot more horror stories about cyber-relationships that ones with happy endings. But the internet is probably no better or no worse a way to meet someone than any other way is. No way comes with a guarantee. Story Source