Are long distance relationships a good option?

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As someone who struggles with face to face social interaction and someone who needs a lot of time to my own, I find that long distance works better for me. And getting to know someone online is way easier for me to slowly break out of my comfort zone, starting with texting, then voice or video calls, and finally meeting in person.

Many people regard these kind of relationships as unrealistic, or unsustainable, but it's what I want in my life right now, and works for me much better than dating "IRL" or through local dating apps (I've only had two serious relationships and they both started by meeting online, long distance, and eventually meeting in person)

Is this a stupid goal or should I learn how to deal with relationships in a more normal way?

~Chloe

I have always said that I believe socialising online first is a better way for those on the spectrum to establish relationships.
This especially applies to someone who has an anxiety problem that you have said you have.

I think meeting people online to date can be good if you have anxiety or social issues, but I have reservations about the general viability of international online relationships.

Finding somebody online to establish a romantic connection with can be fulfilling when one doesn't have anything else going on, but there's a lot that needs to be worked through to make a serious long-distance relationship viable.

It seems to me that there are things you can't know about people you're talking to online until you meet them in person. Nuances in behaviour, attitudes and lifestyle that don't get captured in online interactions. I think, assuming your ultimate goal is to move in with this person and be a real-life couple, you need to physically spend a fair amount of time with this person to adequately determine whether they're somebody you'll get along with in a shared living environment.

You might want to take things slow and not meet this person for months, but when you finally decide to do so, restricted opportunities to meet in real life will make spending a lot of physical time together significantly more difficult. Then there's also the logistics of who's leaving their country to come and live in the other person's country. If neither party wants to move to the other's country, that relationship can't go anywhere serious. Even if that can be agreed upon, and two people in a long distance relationship move in together, one person of course moving to a different country, what if it doesn't end up working out? That puts the person who moved in a tricky situation.

And with these potential pitfalls that could arise, somebody in the process of building a committed online relationship is unable to pursue potentially more viable local opportunities if they present themselves.

I think you should pursue what makes sense to you, but those are my concerns about LDRs.

if you at least can hear each other over the phone or see each other via skype, that is a good start.

I met both my exes & current girlfriend on online forums, the latter two were this one. All 3 relationships were long distance until I moved in with my current girlfriend after 8 months. I struggled MAJORLY to get a romantic relationship & I was single & looking for 8 years straight after me & my 1st girlfriend broke up. I tried various things including trying to get dates offline, trying numerous dating sites, & asking friends & family to set me up & I never got so much as a single date. The forums were the only method that worked for me but I was posting about being single quite aLOT on this forum before I got my 2nd girlfriend.

In my experiences LDRs can be a great way for some of us to start relationships but the distance can majorly s#ck when things get more serious & your not able to see each other in person nearly as much as you'd like. My personality within a romantic relationship is kinda the opposite of the stereotypical Aspie because I love spending a lot of time with my partner. The distance was very hard for us to handle, especially me & it was a major reason my two previous relationships ended. Being apart was very painful & it contributed to me being unstable, demanding, & controlling. I felt trapped living with my parents, I hated various things about the area where I lived, & I didn't have much going on when I was in those relationships so I was very willing to relocate but it would not of been possible to move in together with both my exes for a long time due to them being in school & dependent on their parents.

I think LDRs have a much better chance of being sustainable long term if the both of you are only wanting something casual with no intention of getting serious or one of you would be willing & able to move 1ce things got serious. It would probably be best to discuss this at the beginning of the relationship; be upfront about only wanting something casual if you are or discuss the possibility of who would relocate if things were to become more serious.

I woulda pursued the mail-order bride/aka international dating route when I was single if I woulda had the money & resources to assuming I woulda still been struggling just as much to get a girlfriend. I researched it a tad & I had some online friends who met their wives that way. The general way international dating usually works is that one of the people(usually the woman) is already open to possibility of moving out of their home country before the couple decide to start a relationship. Sometimes the women pursue those relationships because they are wanting to leave their home country due to it being 3rd world, having a lot of war fighting(I'd bet a bit of the women living in the Ukraine & Russia right now would be interested in being mail-order brides), or the women in their home country have very few rights compared to the men. The men who pursue those relationships tend to have major problems getting girlfriends(like I did), hate the values & attitudes of the women in their own country, or they find foreign women more physically attractive.

When I said international dating, I meant two people from different countries who find each other online, rather than mail-order brides.

I thought the mail-order bs thing was ended in 90s.

None of the requirements or preferences you list implies that you and your interlocutor have to be a long distance from each other IRL. So why constrain your optimisation problem in this way?

Do you mean people who are not seeking out an international relationship but fall for each other after chatting online as friends If that's what you mean, I don't think a lot of people would let the relationship become romantic nor let the relationship become very serious unless they have a discussion & idea about who would move out of their home country if things were to get more serious.


It was probably within 10 to 15 years ago when I looked into it. It seemed fairly popular with guys who struggled to get relationships or guys who found the women in their own country very frustrating. Plus plenty of women live in sh!tty countries & come from cultures that have different values like believing in supporting & making their husbands happiness a priority so I'd bet mail-order brides are still fairly popular with people from certain backgrounds.

This is what has worked for me most consistently. Even relationships with people who I first met in person and are local often ended up resembling that pattern somewhat. Texting or IMs are my preferred way of communicating with people, especially at first.

It would have been lovely had I dated a woman with the name of Chloe. Most of the women I dated had "normal" names---like Jessica, Pamela, Theodora, Angela. Never had a Chloe or a Phoebe or a Gemma.

I've always liked these classical sorts of names.......

It worked well for at least one person here on WP.

Are we boasting?

Nope....I'm lamenting that I never dated a woman with a name like Chloe. I was complimenting Chloe on her name. I feel like she should be proud of it.

I haven't actually "went out on a date" with anybody since 1995.

i could count on the fingers of one hand how many times somebody wanted to go somewhere with me, and have digits left over.

Idk I did get to know my boyfriend a little bit from messeging on a dating site, and then moving to giving my number so we were texting. But I did want to meet up sooner than later which we did and it certainly worked out. So I can see the wanting to get to know them a bit before going on the date...but long term long distance I think would be difficult, like how do you know its real if you never met the guy in person?