Dan Savage gives sex and relationship advice over at The Stranger, and his 3/13 column had a very sound point. (Standard Savage Disclaimer: Not for the faint of heart; read at your own risk; skip to the one I’m talking about unless you want to read about foot fetishists and whatnot.)
First off, LAW, you’re not in a relationship. You’ve never met this person… and while two people can get to know each other via e-mail, two people who’ve never actually met are not “together.”
Read that again. If you haven’t met someone in person, YOU ARE NOT TOGETHER. So don’t go doing anything crazy for/because of them, because you never actually know until you meet someone in person. They may have crazy eye or terrible breath or pheromones that repel you or a completely different appearance than advertised or no ability to converse or (and so on and so forth). I’m not saying you shouldn’t meet up with people because of those what ifs; I’m saying it’s NOT A THING until you’ve been in each others’ presence. E-lationship all you want, but it’s not a RE-lationship until you’ve actually met, you know, in real life.