The stigma of telling people you met your partner online? (dates, wife)
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Do you believe there is a stigma associated with telling friends or family you met your partner or significant other online? Perhaps with the assumption that folks won’t think your relationship will last long or that you were really desperate at the moment.
A lot of folks who have met on a dating app or website really hate to admit they did so and instead use an alternate location like some Starbucks, hiking, or a concert. A lot of dating biographies will say “don’t tell people we met here.”
So do you still believe there is a stigma out there or not really?
I don’t consider it a stigma. I don’t think it really matters where you meet someone.
If I met my significant other online at a dating website, I would never mention it. I'd just say 'we were introduced' or similar, if asked.
Although, it's become popular and commonplace for the wedding announcements with photo of the couple in the New York Times wedding section to include that they met at OKcupid or Match.com or Jdate.com or Bumble, actually naming the dating website or when not naming it, the announcement just says they met online at a dating website.
So all these couples in the New York Times find no stigma whatsoever - they announce it to the world.
How many times in a given day do you legitimately get asked how you met your spouse? Or in a month? Or a year?
If I was embarrassed about it I wouldn't outright lie but I might not provide full disclosure and instead say where you actually met face to face for the first time.
For example, if your first date was for coffee you could say you met at Starbucks or if it was dinner you could say we met at McDonalds (okay, you could class that one up a bit!), etc.
If I'm looking for pretty much anything these days my first place to look is on the internet. I think most people do the same so I don't see any stigma in meeting someone online.
There really isn't that much of a stigma with it anymore, but it's still easier to say that "we met through mutual acquaintances/friends" or "we met at a grocery store/gym/co-ed sports league/worked in the same office building for different companies" sort of thing.
I'm surprised so many people are saying it's not a stigma. I would almost guess these are a lot of 20-somethings who are telling other 20-somethings they met someone online. Of course it's not a stigma to other fairly young people.
But I'm getting close to 40, and if I told anyone in my family that I met someone online--all of my siblings are older than I am, and my parents are 70--they would all think it was crazy and would assume the person is less safe/more crazy than someone I could meet a "normal" way. My mother would probably say I was crazy for even taking a chance to meet someone in person after chatting with them online. None of my acquaintances who are my age do online dating, either, and the ones who are married typically met their spouse in school. I'm sure these people would rather set me up with someone than hear I do online dating (I don't, but just thinking about if I did and told them).
There is this sports talk show host I love to listen to, and I remember back in 2014 or so around the time the whole Manti Teo "catfishing" story came out (for those who don't know, a football player claimed his girlfriend died of cancer, and then it came out this was just someone he knew only through the internet and it wasn't even a girl...and then Teo tried to claim he got catfished) him just ridiculing online dating. This host was probably late 40s back then.
Do you believe there is a stigma associated with telling friends or family you met your partner or significant other online? Perhaps with the assumption that folks won’t think your relationship will last long or that you were really desperate at the moment.
A lot of folks who have met on a dating app or website really hate to admit they did so and instead use an alternate location like some Starbucks, hiking, or a concert. A lot of dating biographies will say “don’t tell people we met here.”
So do you still believe there is a stigma out there or not really?
No...I think it's great. I know two who got married!
I am 59, met my 68 year-old husband online at the very beginning of OLD, and neither one of us has ever had a problem telling people how we met.
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), etc.
Not all 'older' people think the same way
