My boyfriend and I have been together for more than four years, and we’ve answered that question many times with the same short phrase: “We met on the internet.” Once in a while, we get a follow-up question -- "Where on the internet?" Then, we look at each other, smile, and lie. On a Yahoo or AOL chat room, we'll say. And we did meet in a chat room. But the entire truth is something no one knows: we met on AdultXXXDate’s chat room.
We both have healthy attitudes about sex and kink and between us, we’re not ashamed that we met on AdultXXXDate. But for some reason, it’s just not something I want our relatives to know about. And we’ve kept it a secret for all this time.
Now I’m going to share the real story of how we met. It was back in the day when many more people attached a stigma to internet dating, and let's face it, adult dating sites are even still considered taboo. But as my partner and I can vouch for, real people visit AdultXXXDate, and it worked for us.
When I first signed up for AdultXXXDate, I was a full-time graduate student with a heavy course-load. I didn’t want to date anyone on-campus and become part of the rumor-mill, so I spent my weekends on the computer, and I found AdultXXXDate by accident.
I took my time about joining and putting up a profile, but the minute I did, I started to receive emails and messages from men looking for a quick hook-up. Over the course of a few visits, I went from feeling overwhelmed, to weeding out the emails and replies, to hopping into the AFF chat room. After a brief period of lurking, I dove right in chatting with the others. In the actual live chat, members tossed questions back and forth at each other. Some people made overt invitations for sex. Some flirted back and forth and made casual small talk. I admit that I was a flirt! I enjoyed chatting with both men and women. There were a few aggressive men, but overall everyone was very friendly and laid-back -- which is my style exactly. I mainly visited the regional chat room designated for my area of the country. Sometimes while I was in the room, I would look up random profiles of either gender just to see what people in the room were doing in their profiles. That's really all I had to do as a female. I didn't have to make the first move.
It didn't take long before I met a nice guy who lived about three hours away from me. We talked, we emailed -- for a few months actually -- and then we met. To my great delight, he was very attractive, not to mention fun, and just my type. Every time we hung out we had a great time. And then, he moved away. And to tell you the truth, the whole thing got me a little depressed. I suppose we could have kept up our friendship, but basically, I’m not fond of long-distance relationships. To cheer myself up, I went back to the AdultXXXDate chat rooms. On the one hand, I was young, single, and eager for a new adventure. This time, I told myself, I would find myself a nice boy toy and have some fun. But on the other hand, I still missed the previous guy. And so chatting just didn't seem the same.
When I realized that, I decided to quit AdultXXXDate. My luck had run out. With the mind-set of saying goodbye to the good old days, I went into the chat room for one last lurk, just to see what was going on. Not much, it turned out. Discouraged, I left the room for the night. A few minutes later I was checking my AdultXXXDate email, and there it was. A short, polite email from a guy who had been lurking in the same AdultXXXDate chat room as me, minutes before. In his friendly email, he explained how I had logged off the chat room before he could say hello. He didn’t try to impress me with his penis size. He wasn’t overly aggressive or obnoxious. He simply introduced himself and attached a link to his AdultXXXDate profile. Since he seemed so pleasant, I looked up his information. I liked his physical description, and I liked his no-bullshit profile. He was upfront about what he was looking for, and I could tell he wasn’t into playing games.
Just minutes before I was planning to log off AdultXXXDate for good, and now, on a whim, I was emailing this man back with more information about myself. That same night, and again in a friendly non-pushy way, he replied. He didn’t insist that we meet right away. We chit chatted via email about hobbies, sports, and other interests. Even from the emails, he seemed to be my type of guy: educated, laid-back, interested in sports, and ambitious. I thought that I wouldn’t mind meeting him face-to-face.
After emailing for about a week, it felt natural to move to a phone conversation. The first night, we talked for more than two hours! Again he didn’t pressure me to meet him right away. We talked about everything from movies to sports to Bill Clinton. We talked on the phone regularly for about a week. We were honest with each other from the very beginning. I mentioned that I had just ended a short-term relationship, and I wasn’t looking for a “boyfriend.” At the time, he had a full-time job and went to school in the evenings. He was lonely, but he didn’t want the pressures of a committed relationship. It felt comfortable to get our priorities out in the open.
Later he asked me when I would feel comfortable with meeting him. I responded by asking him if he was free that upcoming weekend. "Of course!" he said, and he sounded surprised. As if he never expected in his wildest dreams that our first date would be so soon. (He didn’t realize that I had previous experience with online dating.)
Our first date was unbelievable. I didn’t think I could click so well with someone I met on the internet. From the first moment I saw him, I felt the sparks. I know that the rule books all say that you shouldn’t sleep with someone on the first date, but I’ve never been good at following rules. We slept together on the first date, and we’ve been together ever since!
I know our story may sound too cute to be true. We'd probably have thought the same thing when we first started chatting on AFF because neither of us expected to find a relationship. He was supposed to be my boy toy, and I was supposed to be his girl toy. Good time friends with benefits, nothing serious. Who would have thought we'd still be together today? We are lucky we both logged into that chat room on the same day and it's funny that we weren't even involved in the conversation -- we were both lurkers! So that's the true story of how we got together, the version our families will probably never know. And if it wasn’t for AFF, we would never have met.
(Formerly: aziangirl -- AdultXXXDate handle)
In addition to being a former AdultXXXDate member, Kis Lee is also a freelance writer in Orange County, California. She has published erotica on literotica.com and forthegirls.com.
