Ive done the long-distance thing a few times. I have mixed feelings about it. I've met some really nice people online and some downright scary ones.
I can work or it can be a major waste of time and money. It can also leave a person very vulnerable to someone who uses others, cheats, or isn't ready to commit. I knew a few guys who'd "date" several women at once online, except each woman we're told that they were "the one". And somehow the guys got the women to fly in to see them (and of course the women put out). Then these two guys would go so far as to say they were "dead" or something crazy to get rid of the women they were bored of. Sometimes they'd work together, acting as the "friend" who is helping his shy friend talk to the woman. One of them made a game of it, by trying to get women from all over to fly in and give him nookie; he wanted to have sex with someone from every state. Be careful!
The overall problem is that it takes so much longer to really get to know the real person. In the beginning, it's like dating a facebook page or a Yahoo profile. No matter how honest one tries to be, the online persona is just not the complete person.
In the process of trying to find out what the real other person is like, people take them self off the market for months (or years). How many missed opportunities is that? How many [real] local people could one meet in the 6 or 12 months spent trying to arrange a day here and there to visit the long-distance romance?
I believe that in life, our biggest asset isn't money or power, but time. Considering the low probability the real person turns out to be just like his MySpace page.... and considering long-distance relationships can take months to years to really discover the other person... it doesn't seem like a good trade-off.
Just my opinion.
