"So you've never met before?"

By: Mackenzie Harris/SATSC Contributor

I met my boyfriend online. This is a sentence that, for some, is a much bigger deal than for others. For the record, we have met in person — not that it matters.

Here is a quick rundown of our timeline. We met at the beginning of 2023 through a mutual friend and only interacted through an online game of Dungeons & Dragons. We started talking in October 2023 and by January 2024 he was staying at my house and attending my classes. In March 2024, he went home and we’ve been long-distance ever since. Have I mentioned he’s Australian?

Whenever I tell people that my love is so far away, I always get the same question, “So you’ve never met before?”, as if calling for hours every day, watching movies, playing games, giving gifts, and celebrating wins and grieving losses together isn’t meeting. I met him before we ever touched, held hands, or kissed. And for many, that is insane. Their tune always changes when I say that I have, in fact, met him in person.

Tradition dictates that a relationship involves meeting in person — if you go by books and movies, usually at a coffee shop or on campus — before dating, falling in love, moving in, and eventually marriage. My boyfriend and I are taking all those steps except the first one, meeting in person first. In April, I will be going to Australia to help him pack, as his visa has been approved and he will be living with me. For a lot of people, this is not “normal”. But when have relationships ever been normal?

Traditions change. We no longer marry for the sake of marriage, trade a bride for a cow, or wait weeks for letters to reach soldiers in faraway posts.

My parents met at college in northern Ontario. They dated throughout the school year until my father would go home to New Brunswick and then it was summers of calling, letters, and emails. My mother would wait at a payphone outside her work to talk to my father. My father would order flowers through his local shop, which would fax the order to a store in my mother’s hometown.

When they got married and had a kid, my father decided to go back to school in Toronto. They could not afford to both live in the city, so my father stayed with family and my mother raised my brother up north. They called every day. They broke tradition.

Now, technology is changing what is considered “normal,” just as the passing of time has always changed normality. It allows my boyfriend and me to spend time together through video calls, games, movies, and sending and receiving gifts. To be clear, it doesn’t replace physical touch, but it does allow us to continue growing our relationship in the meantime.

So, have I met him? Yes. We’ve dated in person and online, spent over a month living under the same roof, and are moving in together this summer. But even if we hadn’t, who says tradition should hold us back?