In the era of digital friendships and virtual connections, meeting online pals in real life can sometimes take unexpected turns. We’ve all heard stories of long-lost friends reuniting joyously or internet buddies turning into lifelong companions. However, not every meetup unfolds like a heartwarming reunion scene. It’s essential to approach these encounters with an open mind, tempered expectations, and a healthy dose of realism. After all, not every online pal is destined to become your real-world confidant.
She flew into town to be a bridesmaid at my wedding. And she decided to cheat on her husband with one of the groomsmen and blame me for that. Because it was my wedding, so that clearly makes it my fault she was unfaithful.
Met her after gaming with her for like 1,5 years. My parents allowed me to have her visit me for a weekend. The unbelievably beautiful girl had had a lot of deep talks on the phone and were frequently flirting quite hard and stuff. She kind of was my first love interest.
We went out for a drink with a few friends of mine. Started hitting on my best friend the second she saw him. Didn’t even pay attention to me the whole evening and the first thing she said the next morning was “Let’s go to HIS place.”
It was my friend “Kate” who befriended this girl, “Jessica”, who allowed us to come and stay with her when we travelled to the US. Jessica was rude to me instantly and kept my friend away from me. I’d go upstairs and she’d find a reason for them to go downstairs. She had Kate share her bedroom and she’d lock the door for hours and so I’d just go off and do my own thing. We met her two (odd) friends and they both ignored me. When it was time for Kate and I to move on to another state, Jessica insisted on coming with us.
The lady we stayed with in another state, “Robin,” took no sh*t and called Jessica out on her strange behaviour. Jessica proceeded to lock herself in a room and demanded Kate stay in there with her. They were in there all day and eventually Kate came out and said to me that there’s something wrong with Jessica and she’s actually scared. We (Kate and I) had plans to stay with another online friend, “Matt”, in another state and Jessica demanded we cancel because she doesn’t like or trust Matt. We said no, this is our holiday and we’ve paid for flights, and Jessica said then she will come with us but we can’t meet up with Matt. We said no, she cried, and we left. Kate blocked her on everything.
Kate’s mother called us not long after saying Jessica contacted her crying, saying Kate is in danger and we abandoned Jessica, and she’s so concerned for my friend’s safety. It was actually incredibly scary. Kate found out later from another girl, “Jane” (they all knew each other from a forum) that Jessica had been telling everyone they were in love and had even slept together. I don’t know how much of that is true but I’ve known Kate for 20 years now and she’s never identified as anything but straight. She denied it 100%. Jessica was just obsessed with her, and months later Kate heard Jessica was telling everyone she was saving money to come to our country to find Kate. She never did, thankfully.
Met a girl I really liked on WoW but she lived in another country, after a couple of vacations there it turned into a relationship. Made the decision to move and start a new life there with her. After living there for 4 months I slowly realised she was crazy as h*ll. Huge mood swings paired with a lot of aggression. Needless to say; after getting out of the hospital I took the first plane back home, she’s still in a psychiatric hospital.
A friend of 6 years flew over to Australia to hang with me for a month, little did I know he was a bit taller than me.
I was 5′ 10″
He was… well… 6′ 7″
I never knew he was this tall, he never talked about it, and when I was at the Brisbane airport waiting for him, I texted him stating ‘I don’t know where you are’, to which he replied ‘Look up’.
Towering over everyone is this blonde guy who has the arm span of the airport lobby. I cried we laughed, and I regret bringing him over because my ceiling almost hit his head.
I met a girl who blogged on the same site I did. Let’s call her Sarah. We were the same age, but she lived in a nearby town and went to a different high school. We had been talking online for a month or two and then decided to watch a movie at her place. The date was awkward, but not awful. We kissed, nothing more. However, I could tell that she was more into it than I was. I didn’t want a relationship, and she definitely did. We had already talked about this.
So when she broached the topic of a relationship a few days later, I told her that I had fun on our date, and I liked her, but still felt the same: I didn’t want to get into a relationship before I left for college. She appeared to understand and took it okay (online). I knew she was disappointed, and I really felt bad for her because I knew how that felt, but she said she agreed with me and wanted to do the same thing (we were the same age). I still think I made the right call.
That’s when things got weird. One night a few weeks later, I was sitting outside a coffee shop in a crowded shopping center when an SUV pulled into the parking lot going about 45mph. Just absolutely flying. It was really dangerous. The SUV drives past me sitting outside the coffee shop, window rolled down, and I see Sarah in the backseat holding a plastic red solo cup. I hadn’t told her I would be there, but it was one of my regular hang-out spots, so she likely knew to look for me there.
“F*CK YOUR D*CK!”
She screams at me as they pass, and she throws the cup out the window. It hits the sidewalk in front of me, and I can smell that it’s full of booze. Then I left and drove back home to my parents’ house for the night.
Then at about 2 am, my Dad comes into my room. I was asleep (school night). “There’s someone out on the front lawn. They’re screaming your name.”
It turns out Sarah had figured out where I lived (maybe they followed me home?), and her drunk awful friends had driven her over to my parents’ house at midnight on a school night and just left her there. She was lying on her back out on the lawn, screaming at the top of her lungs.
My Dad got her some water and helped her to her feet. He contacted her folks and drove her to an all-night diner where they picked her up.
I don’t remember the details of our follow-up conversations. I remember that she apologized, and felt embarrassed. But it was also clear she had an unhealthy attachment to me. To be honest, I wasn’t very nice to her after that. I told her politely but firmly that I didn’t want her in my life.
Cut to freshman year of college, 4 hours away from my hometown. Who do I see on campus but Sarah?
She’d never mentioned she was interested in this college, and she knew I was going there. Fortunately (for both of us), that is where the story ends. I never did learn if she “followed” me there, or if it was just a coincidence. I didn’t see her much at college. We had different friend groups and she did her own thing mostly. She might have messaged me once or twice, but I didn’t reply, and eventually, she quit contacting me.
We met through an app that was advertised as a “meet friends” app and not a dating app. Well turns out, it was a dating app.
However, she put in her bio that she was married with 2 kids. I put that I was in a long-term relationship and looking for friends. (Btw, I’m a guy. She wasn’t)
So when we arranged a meetup, her husband and 2 kids were there as well as my girlfriend. Everything was going great. Hung out a few times and added each other on Facebook.
Turns out, she was super into the whole breastfeeding in public thing. Like, I get it. You go girl. But she was super obsessed with it. She got angry when you looked away when in public. Like, she WANTED you to stare at her while she breastfed.
Just got to the point that I was super uncomfortable with it and moved on.
When I was 19 I jumped on a flight to meet a friend I had known for about 4-5 months. We both went through family bereavements and were a shoulder to cry on for each other, via the phone or the internet, and we just decided to meet for a few days in a country between us.
Until then everything had been perfect, she was the coolest girl, really smart, the kind of person you want to be around all the time.
When we met things started great but a day later she confessed “You’re not what I expected” Erm, what? 19 year old and not very confident, this knocked me sideways. “I don’t know, just.. you seem different”
I never hid who I was before we met, was completely open and it put a real sour taste on the rest of my time with her. Instead of chatting nonstop and watching Jackass on TV in the hotel at night, we went quiet and straight to sleep, ate in silence. I put as much effort as I could into it but I still never got to the bottom of how I was different. We went our separate ways, texted for a few days then never spoke again.
When I was in high school I met a guy from a different high school in a local chat room. We hit it off and after a few days, we agreed to meet up at the store I worked at once I finished work.
Well, I guess he showed up a little early, with a friend, and came through my checkstand. I thought it was him (we’d swapped photos), but I was really shy and didn’t want to be wrong. I waited for him to introduce himself, but he never did, and he and his friend paid for whatever they had and left without conversation.
I was still hopeful that wasn’t the guy, so I waited up for him for an hour after my shift. Of course, he never showed, because that absolutely was the guy. He must have been disappointed when he met me in the checkout line and instead of being a decent person and saying he wasn’t interested, he just ghosted me.
If I could go back in time, I definitely would have said something to him at the check stand. That’s my one regret.
I was 13 and had a 20-year-old pen pal in Hong Kong, both of us female. We met on Tumblr and emailed each other regularly. My parents were CC’ed in all our correspondence, and we basically just talked about our cultures. About a year of us talking went by, and she said that her university allowed her to study abroad in Europe for a semester and she chose my country. Fun! I was excited. However, some time went by and our friendship kinda faded, to the point where I had forgotten she was even coming to my country.
About 2 weeks before she was supposed to come, she emailed me that her student accommodation had to be cleaned out, so she couldn’t access it on the night that she arrived. She needed a place to stay for one night. I asked my mam and she agreed to pick her up from the airport with me, and she could stay with us for one night. I mean, we trusted this girl. I was very open about my friendship with her, we had pictures and everything.
So 2 weeks later, we picked her up from the airport. And we didn’t click. She kinda annoyed me, but it was late and so we just went home. We get home and get her settled. We went up to my room, she gave me some presents and we chatted a little bit. She says “Thanks for letting me stay here this semester!”
Huh? Excuse me? This semester?
I asked her, like, what do you mean? You can stay here tonight. We can see each other during the weekends if you want to hang out, but you can’t stay here.
She goes quiet. We go to sleep. At this point I just wanted her to go away. And I got what I wanted.
The next morning I wake up, and she’s gone. I don’t even know how she got out because we locked the doors at night, but she just vanished. (We have special locks that you need a key for to open, and the key was somewhere else in the house. Yes, I think this is a fire hazard. No, my mam can’t be convinced it’s unnecessary) Her suitcase was still there. I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up. She eventually texted me, asking if my mother could drop off her suitcase at a train station 40 minutes away at a certain time. My mother brought the suitcase, and that was that. Never saw her or spoke to her again after that.
Now that I think about it, I have a theory about why this went down like it did. She most likely put down my address on her visa application as her place of residence during her stay and needed to stay in my house in case immigration was going to check if she was actually there.
Also, for those wondering why she annoyed me: she treated my mother like a taxi driver and she shot down everything I said to her. She was rude to me until she gave me the presents, after which she directly started talking about staying with me the whole semester. She didn’t want to talk to me after I said that I had told her she could stay for one night on that exact date. I told her we could discuss it with my parents in the morning. Her and my English were both great, and we had discussed specific dates.
I used to play counter strike 1.6 with one of the funniest and most lively guess I’ve ever met. He was a lynchpin for half a dozen other guys in a friendship group that he welcomed me into. They lived about 200 miles south of me in the South of England. For several years we talked and played games together. He would brighten my day. I’ve never loved a friend like I loved him. Before I met him I had no idea he was sick. Like… Really sick; he had muscular dystrophy for which there is no cure and is a progressively debilitating disease. His form started by paralysing his legs, and working its way up to his arms and eventually his lungs. It wasn’t until a few days before I had arranged for my first-ever trip down there that he told me about it. It didn’t phase me in the slightest, it made me want to go see him even more. I only saw him in real life twice before he died about a year later. I regret that I couldn’t go to his funeral. It was too far away and I couldn’t make it.
I met a friend on here (Ask Reddit), spoke for a few months online and then flew 2000 miles to meet them.
Unfortunately for our bank accounts, we fell madly in love and are now engaged to marry meaning we’re spending thousands on flights and (eventually) a visa application.
He’s the most expensive date I’ve ever had… but he’s worth every penny.
I met up with a girl I’d talked to online (BBS, back in the day).
I see a girl answering her description, at the meeting place we arranged, I walk up and say “Are you Jane?” … There’s a pause. She looks very uncomfortable. She says, “Uh … no”.
At this point, we both know it is her, but she’s taken one look at me and wants out.
There is another long pause. She walks away. So do I.
Met my best friend at the time on League of Legends. After talking every day for 3 years, I ended up moving to a state much closer to him, so we decided to finally meet. We talked before about all the things we’d do together and how awesome it would be. I loved him so, so much. He was there for me through so much and was a wonderful friend.
He had a new girlfriend at the time of our meet-up and he brought her along with him. I had no problem with this because I’d love to meet the woman who makes him happy.
It was abundantly clear from the get-go that she wasn’t a real big fan of me. I did my best to be kind, and still had tons of fun.
I didn’t hear from my friend much after that. A mutual good friend of ours messaged me and when I asked about my best friend, they said that his girlfriend was telling people that I was basically an awful person for whatever reason.
Three years later and he is engaged to this woman and I’m happy for him, but I haven’t spoken to him in those three years. I still miss him every day, and I wish I could be there for him on his wedding day.
The guy I knew in college met a girl online and spent every day talking about her. She lived about 6 hours away, so he planned to take a semester off and pursue this relationship.
He got a job in her town and asked if I’d help him move out there since my car would hold more than he could take on a bus.
I had a long weekend off and figured, why not? A road trip could be fun. I’d drive him out as a goodbye present, and on the way back I planned to visit Yellowstone.
Well… We arrive and it turns out he doesn’t have an apartment lined up and… He found a job posting in his girlfriend’s town, he hadn’t actually gotten the job. Or even applied yet. I make a bunch of phone calls and find him a room to rent that will let him move in that day with just first, last, and deposit, even without a job.
I’m tired and disgusted with his lack of planning, but figure it’s worth staying the night and trying to end things on good terms with my buddy. Then he breaks down and confesses that he hasn’t actually met this girl. The nights he spent “video chatting” with her were really just him watching her vlog. They’ve never talked. Never texted. Never even emailed. Heck, he’s never even left so much as a comment or “like” on one of her videos. She genuinely didn’t (still doesn’t) know he existed.
His plan was to hang out at this game shop she talks a lot about until she showed up and somehow create a relationship from that. He thought that they’d meet and she’d fall in love with him and move back to our college town to marry him… all before the next semester began.
That didn’t happen. Instead, I made my “buddy” buy a bus ticket for his ride back to school and left. He came back to school and got more cringey, not less. I lost track of him after that.
From the UK, I was a member of a large RP guild playing Dark Age of Camelot. We arranged a meet-up in town at a similarly named pub to our guild name and I strolled to find an amazing bunch of people, several of whom I’m still in touch with today.
The regret was that they were either then or have gone on to become massively great at something, really accomplished individuals, or have led fantastic lives.
And here’s me. 40+ and still browsing Reddit, while trying to figure out why my machine started black-screening during games. It’s probably the heat. Everything’s the heat’s fault here atm. Bloody weather.
My friends and I had this online friend (who lived in a bordering state) that we played games with all the time. He found out we were planning a ‘big’ LAN and asked if he could take the train down and come. We all thought it’d be cool, and I agreed to let him stay with me at my mom’s place.
The guy was 6′ something, 400+ pounds and I don’t think showered often (In the four days he was there, didn’t take a shower). Now, I’m not trying to rag on him, he was a nice guy and fun to play with, but it just goes with the story.
He ended up falling asleep on my bed at one point, which was next to the window. We lived in basically the desert and it’s about 100 every day during summer. The blinds happened to be open and he literally was roasting in the sun. The sweat had completely soaked the mattress (I so wish I was kidding) and the smell wouldn’t go away no matter how much we washed or scrubbed.
I was a member of an NFL football team’s fan forum. One of the guys who posted regularly had the most humorous and energetic online personality of the whole group. we decided to meet up at one of the games. He was the most boring person I’ve ever met in real life. I left at halftime because I just could not stand his company anymore.
Met a bunch of people through a movie website. Became really close to one guy to the point that he friended my wife on FB. We knew he was HIV positive but we thought it was under control. We found out he was hospitalized so we thought as a nice gesture we’d phone him. Had a great talk, we laughed and told terrible inside jokes. After about 15 minutes his nurse told him that he needed rest. We said ‘Goodbye’ and said we’d talk soon.
The next week he messages my wife and I to thank us for the call and that it meant the world to him. We ended the message with ‘I love you’ and a plan to visit soon.
Five days later we find out he died because his HIV had made him so weak that when he was diagnosed with cancer (about two weeks before we chatted on the phone) he had to make a choice to get radiation therapy (extend his life by about six months) or just accept his fate. He accepted his fate.
I regret not seeing him IRL but I’ll never regret that phone call or my last words to him being ‘I love you’
I was friends with a bunch of people I met through an online game. After about 2 years, I decided to meet 2 of them. The 2 I was meeting were a long-distance couple, one from one country and the other from mine. They had met many times and had spent 2 weeks together prior to meeting with me. We met in the city, said hi and hugged and did some touristy stuff, took their pictures etc etc.
But throughout the whole time, they weren’t really talking to me. At first, I put it down to anxiety as I was nervous too. But even after lunch, they were only talking to each other and I felt left out. I even took a sneaky video of them talking to each other and sent it to a friend, who agreed it was odd.
When it was time for me to leave, I told them I had to go but I had a nice time, and they continued to chat with each other. I said it again but no response, so I started to walk away until one of them said “Oh byeee”
I was really hurt. It was like they didn’t want me to be with them. I had spent a lot of money getting down, especially since at the time I didn’t have a job. When I got back, I stopped talking to them. The friend who I sent the video to sent a message to them asking why they were ignoring me, and they tried to turn it on me saying that I was the quiet one and that I was being rude to them, especially “leaving without saying goodbye”. I blocked them all on the game.
A few months go by and one of them finds my social media and tries to reconnect. Starts off well, and then goes back to blaming me. Haven’t met anyone on the Internet since.
I used to play a war game and I was friends with this other person (was a guy) and we became good friends and talked and all then out of the blue he asked me to be his girlfriend (he was a truck driver in the USA and I was only 12) it freaked me out a lot and I ghosted him. It was a terrifying experience and a real eye-opener for me.
I was on MeetMe and met this guy who was super cool. We ended up texting every single day and I took the train out to Los Angeles to meet him. When I got there, he was being kinda sh*tty and he told me that he hadn’t gotten much sleep because he was partying until 5 am. We walked to his house and when I walked into his room, I was kind of shocked. It was an 8×6.5 room. All he had was a mat on the floor and a small little jewelry box full of mementos on top of his suitcase of clothes. We took a nap together. Later, we went to get ramen and he asked me to pay. I didn’t mind. We went back to his place and we listened to music while we waited to go to a party.
Fast forward to that night..we met up with some of his friends and they were so mean to him. They kept roasting him and picking on him and he was visibly getting upset. I stopped him for a bit so his friends could walk ahead of us. I reminded him that it was all fun and games and to ignore them. Ended up at the party and lots of people knew him. I sat out on the patio with a few cool people that I had just met while I waited for my friend to come back from saying hello to everyone inside…he never did. I was outside on the patio with these strangers for about 3 hours. People kept coming up to me and asking if I was alright. I don’t know if I looked sad or if I just looked like a plain loner. I went to find him and it was so packed. Didn’t see him so I walked back. I saw his roommate and asked him to please tell my friend that I was gonna go get a motel. He went to tell him, came back and said my friend was being a d*ck & he would walk me back to the house instead so I didn’t have to spend money on a hotel. We got to the house and I thanked him for walking all the way back home. I went to bed in my friend’s room and he woke me up in the middle of the night kissing me. I simply said no. His exact words were, “Are you serious? What was the point of you coming here?? You’re such a waste of time!” My feelings were really hurt. I went back to sleep, woke up and left. Never wrote to him after that. He had texted me a month later asking to borrow $50. I simply ignored the message and moved on.
I was talking to a person online I’d known for a few years. We weren’t best friends, but we talked daily. Seemed like a nice guy. At some point he he asked where I was from, and I mentioned that I lived in Philly and I was going to the Art Institute there, living in the dorms. Didn’t give specifics other than that. Most people knew I was an art student at the time (I posted it about regularly on LiveJournal).
A few days later I come home from class and see a message on AIM. “Figured out where you live. I’m outside of the dorms at the cafe across the street. Meet me.” This guy lived on the West Coast, and after finding out where I lived, he made an unannounced trip across the country, tracked down the building where I lived in, and was camped out at the cafe across the street… asking him to meet him. All of this without any heads-up.
I immediately felt uncomfortable and didn’t really know what to do. It’s one thing to meet up, another thing entirely to make a trip cross country and camp out in front of a person’s residence.
I didn’t answer the AIM message right away and needed some time to calm down and think, and get more rational. More messages started coming through, each reading slightly more hostile than the last. Okay, this guy traveled all this way… it’d be a d*ck move to ignore him, but at the same time, I felt like I was seeing red flags everywhere. I was legitimately creeped out.
More messages came, and each time, they started to get more agitated, and more impatient. He started asking for my class schedule so he could meet me outside class, asking where I’d be going, where I usually ate, and what time my dinner schedule was. He started getting weirdly specific about wanting to know about every facet of my life.
I was getting full-on stalker vibes. So I lied and told him that I was visiting my sister and that I’d be back over the weekend, and I’d just miss him.
That’s when he said “That’s fine. I can wait.”
And he did. Three days later, he’s still there, still messaging me that he’s “Still at the cafe. Waiting.”
What the f*ck are you waiting for? Why are you here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? My privacy was having huge issues with all of this, and it got to the point where I started feeling legitimately scared.
I made a decision. Rather than meet him, I’d log out of AIM, create a new handle, and pretend I never existed at that point. I completely abandoned my LiveJournal and started posting under a new name, and went so far as to change my entire online persona.
Back during WoW’s second expansion, there was this guy in my guild I’d become friends with mostly through other friends. We talked more and more over time and became fairly close. He had this a**h*le roommate, and I could hear the guy sometimes, especially when something went wrong during a raid. He’d scream and throw fits, he was pretty awful sounding. My friend told me he wasn’t just loud and obnoxious, but verbally and sometimes physically abusive, too.
I had my own apartment, so I said you know what, come stay with me. Just long enough to get you on your feet and into a place that’s safe. He showed up at my place with a trash bag full of his stuff and a laptop. I set him up in the apartment and started trying to help him find a job.
Well, he did not want a job. He did not get a job, either. He sat in my apartment, day after day, eating my food and slowly draining my savings. No matter how hard I tried to get him motivated, he would just dig in his heels and somehow become more sedentary. Eventually, I told him he had to go. I couldn’t afford to keep him there.
He was just couch surfing. I spoke to some people and eventually pieced together that his method of securing a new “temporary” place was playing on the sympathies of his friends to convince them he was in a terrible living situation. It just worked really well on me because he had that loud, obnoxious roommate to play off of.
He wound up calling a nearby relative to come and get him, I think his aunt. I don’t know what he told her I supposedly did, but I have never seen a more venomous look from someone in my life. As far as I know, he moved in with his sister and brother-in-law after that, but frankly, I don’t care where he ended up. He also stole a bunch of my stuff.
First and last time I have done anything like that.
I had a guy profess his love for me. Over Skype. He wanted to come see me. He lived in the UK. I Live in the States.
Except I had a Boyfriend at the time. I told him this. I told him that he was wasting his time and I had ZERO interest in him. He still is coming. I told him that there was no time to see him, as I had work and school.
He says it’s fine. He will wait until I have time to see him.
I told him not to come, he said he had his parent’s blessings.
So he came. He stayed in a hotel for 3 weeks while I had to deal with finals, work and spending time with my boyfriend.
I hung out with him twice, once with a group of friends and once with my boyfriend. He got mad because he said that he wanted to hang out with me, alone (in his hotel room) and when I said no, he flipped. He said that because he flew over here, I should at least “hang out” with him. He flew back home to the UK a few days later and blocked me on all social media.
My boyfriend and I ran a guild in Warcraft back in the day, and one of our guildies flew into town from across the country to meet his internet girlfriend. We invited them to meet up for drinks. He barely spoke the entire time, weird because he’d always been hilarious and witty in the vent (voice chat) and she was an unfriendly, snippy whiner. I asked her to come outside with me for a cigarette, I thought maybe she didn’t like him and didn’t know what to do about the situation, as he was staying at her house.
Turns out he told her I was his ex-girlfriend, and when she (rightfully) asked why we were all getting together for drinks, he said “We agreed that we have to make sure we’re really over each other.”
Never had such a completely confusing and awkward time, I thought we were going to have some laughs about PVP, and he was going for some sort of epic girl fight drama. When we came back in I said “I’d like to make it very clear for the benefit of everyone at the table that Mark and I never dated, I don’t even flirt with him in the game, I have other rogues for that.” Boyfriend was confused but laughed, Mark turned red and continued staring into his beer. He did end up staying with her that night but flew home the next day. Pretty sure he told her that long before the idea of meeting up was floated, and then just stuck with the lie.
Met a guy online on a character roleplaying and we got along really well, turned out we lived in the same city. He was really cute in person. My regret is not marrying him; we dated for nearly 4 years but I have a lot of issues from growing up in an abusive household. I’m in therapy now but it hurts to think he loved me so much and I just didn’t know what to do with it and became the abusive one.
The good news is that we still talk every day and he moved away but I’m using this time to better myself and maybe ask him out in a year from now because we are still pretty madly in love with each other.
