Going to college, have a lot of thinking to do

[raspberyl]

So, a bit of background. I met my girlfriend (let's call her Jessica) on an online game in June of last year. She was wonderful, cute, nice, and we had (and still have) so much in common, shared interests and everything. I asked her out about... 2 weeks? after meeting her, and she said yes. Yay, my first girlfriend.

That summer was probably the happiest time in my life. We were together, we were young (she was 19 at the time), we were happy. We live about 1000 miles apart so could not meet, but we texted, called, IM'd, played online games, and just about everything you can do in a long distance relationship.

Except exchanged pictures. Around 3 weeks into the relationship we began talking about doing so, and she said she was embarrassed of herself, so I backed off. Now, this didn't bother me. I really don't care about appearances, and she had an amazing personality. A week later I showed her my picture, she thought I looked cute, attractive, and everything, that made me very happy. So I asked if she would show me herself, admittedly a bit shyly. She started getting... sad I guess? Because she had low self esteem, parents, friends, etc, made fun of her, all that, so I said it was okay, because it was.

I'll pause for a sec and go into the causes for her self esteem problems. She had just gotten out of (pretty much broke up with him TO BE WITH ME) a relationship which was fairly abusive. He supposedly got drunk and would well... hit her, call her names, say she was unattractive, everything aside from or brutal violence that you could call abuse. More on that later, moving on.

So we started becoming more familiar with each other. We talked more intimately, started ting, calling more often, even phone . It was again my first time talking so intimately with someone and I loved it. Aside from ually, I felt that I could talk to her about anything, whether it be interests no one else but her had shared with me, problems in my personal life, anything. It was great.

Til my parents found out. Now, they're near 50 years old and don't know how to work a TV half the time, so meeting on the internet? A foreign concept. Their first response was that it MUST be some kind of ual predator. That didn't go over well with my girlfriend. Someone with already low self esteem, something like that is only going to make things worse. So, my parents demanded to see a picture of her. I already knew she was reluctant to do so, and again, I honest to god didn't mind. I asked her again, this time telling her the story. She basically went ballistic... and partially, you can't blame her, since my parents were being a bit insane. So basically, this ended in my dad calling her on speakerphone and talking to her, which went pretty bad, but things got better.

Background: my dad's a trucker, and I only see him about 1 out of every 6 weeks, which I don't mind, I hate him, but that's another story I don't want or need to get into. Anyway, so my girlfriend and I went back to normal. We started playing online games again more, and met some insane girl who believed in all sorts of fantasy crap. Long story short, I humoured her out of kindness, and my girlfriend got jealous. I really didn't give two ****s about the other girl, so I told her that we couldn't talk anymore and we stopped. Again, girlfriend overreacted, but it got better. Til my dad came back. He again insisted on a picture. Last time I had asked my girlfriend for this, she had said that if it came to that she would rather me break up with her... I don't understand, but it's a self esteem issue I suppose.

So again, I asked her. This didn't go over well. She wanted me to pretend we had broken up so she wouldn't have to but we could still talk. I'm a pretty level-headed person, so I told her straight out that this wasn't going to happen and that I needed her to do this for me. After much coercion, she did, and I showed my dad. This wasn't enough for him for some reason, so he decided without telling me that his next trucker-excursion whatever would take a detour to where she lived in Idaho. How I found out about this was a phone call from my dad to my mom that she handed me.

"I'm in *town*, and I'm with a police officer. No one named Jessica (again fake name) has ever gone to school where she said she did."

[smackie9]

Internet can be a dicey deceitful thing. Yes there are stories of predators. These predators are male and female and can even be older that your own parents. You can pretty much get away with anything over the net. You can lie about where you are from, your age etc. It's way to easy to manipulate people into falling in love. I suspect you are still in high school am I right? Which means your parents still hand down the law. A silly as you think they are, their fear for your safety is very real.

I think you dad if full of it and it's a play on you to stop this relationship. The police dept. has better things to do than to locate a girl that's having a relationship with someones son. In order for him to really find her he would have to dole out big money for a private investigator. So suspect your parents are willing to anything to protect you.

This supposed girl could be a 40 year old women, married with kids etc, for all you know. It takes nothing to spin off a fake ID, personality and past history. You say "Oh that's bull s h i t". Well I'm 46 and I have been playing on line for almost 3 years now. The average on line game player in Canada is 39. These games are not just for kids like yourself. I have watched a few news stories about this very thing, that young dudes like you are having on line affairs with women in their 30's and 40's. Some know about the age difference and some are unsuspecting. Like I said it's too easy to manipulate over the internet. You only hear her words but you have never met irl. So who knows who or how old she is.

Internet affairs are 1% reality and 99% fantasy. So sorry I'm on your parents side on this one. You want a GF? push yourself away from the computer/ game console, go out and meet someone irl.

[PrincessB]

Being that you're underage, I know that the police may follow up for your father in the USA. They probably wouldn't do much else unless you ran away to meet her in person. Let this be a lesson to you. Many of the folks you interact with online and in gaming are fakes. One thing many fakes will do, is go onto social networking sites and steal photos of real people then create a fake profile or personality using those photos. One in particular that duped a friend of mine stole some pretty convincing photos! IP addresses can even be deceiving! You never know a person until you meet and spend time together in person!!!