Maybe You've Already Fallen in Love With Someone You've Never Met.

Can you love someone without ever meeting them? When was the last time you truly met someone?

It sounds like a simple question, but I'm no longer sure it has a simple answer. We still talk about "meeting" as though it only counts when two people occupy the same room or shake each other's hand. But in 2026, is that still true?

What if you've heard someone's laugh before you've ever heard their footsteps? What if you've spent nights discussing your essays, shared the poems you never thought anyone else would read, celebrated each other's biggest wins, cried together, or stayed by each other's side through a hospital stay, despite never having stood in the same room? What if you fight for the same ideas, dream of the same kind of world, and find that someone you've never physically met is happier for your successes than people you've known your entire life?

Did you never meet them? Or have we simply failed to update our definition of what it means to meet someone?

Maybe the question isn't whether you can love someone you've never met. Maybe the real question is whether "meeting" someone has ever been as physical as we like to believe.

So, when do we actually meet someone?

What does it really mean to "meet"? Is it that first face-to-face greeting? Or simply catching a glimpse of them? Ever since the pandemic, the way we connect has undergone a complete metamorphosis. Back in my first year of university, I didn't even see most of my classmates or professors in person; they were just pixels on a screen. The same went for every remote job I've held since. I was getting to know people solely through a digital veil.

Then, a few months ago, I met someone by pure chance. We were both so busy, and our schedules were polar opposites, almost mathematical impossibilities. Yet, for some reason, we kept sending each other things we wrote, read, or laughed at. We didn't talk for hours on end, but whenever I needed an opinion on a piece, he was the first person I reached out to. I valued his perspective more than anyone else's. We had formed a strange, beautiful connection.

A person I'd never met in the flesh was making me feel more seen than anyone in my physical proximity. It felt as though I wasn't getting to know him, but rather his mind. We had met through our minds before we ever met through our bodies. Being truly met by someone who had never even laid eyes on me, someone who connected with me purely through the landscape of my thoughts, left me completely shaken.

Ironically, it was my writing career that made me question what it really means to meet someone. As I started writing more and eventually joined the Roe team, I found myself surrounded by people I'd never physically met. We came from different countries, different cultures, different upbringings, and yet they became some of my biggest supporters. We had never shared a room, a coffee, or even a city, but we shared ideas, deadlines, victories, and failures.

I remember pitching new essay ideas to the founders before we'd even had our first FaceTime call. More than once, they'd laugh and tell me, "We were literally talking about this yesterday." It was strange, almost unsettling, how often our thoughts seemed to meet before we ever did.

That's when I started wondering whether proximity has been overrated all along. Maybe people don't become close because they share a place. Maybe they become close because they share a way of seeing the world.

Then along the way, something even stranger happened. We started telling each other, "I love you," without ever having met in person. And somehow, it never felt premature or performative. Every word carried weight because, in the ways that mattered most, it didn't feel like we were saying those words to strangers at all.

That's when it occurred to me that perhaps we had already met. Not through airports, cafés, or handshakes, but through countless conversations, shared values, vulnerable moments, and the quiet certainty of being understood. The physical meeting hadn't created our relationship; it simply became another chapter of one that had already begun.

As I continued writing, I connected with hundreds of women from all over the world whom I've never seen face-to-face, yet they support me fiercely. We discussed my essays, global issues, and despite all our cross-cultural differences, I found myself loving these people before I even knew the colour of their eyes. I kept coming back to the same thought... What is intimacy? Do we really need to know people physically to be close to them?

Is intimacy physical, or is it emotional? Does being close to someone require a physical embrace, or can support, presence, and conversation bridge the gap? Maybe it goes even deeper. Does understanding someone's art, reading their essays, or exploring their passions make you intimate?

Perhaps people don't truly meet when they first see each other, but when they first feel understood. Maybe we only draw near the moment we choose to be vulnerable and open with one another. It's that moment of complete vulnerability. We encounter so many people in our lives, classmates, colleagues, even people we share a home with. Yet sometimes, none of them truly know us. Most of the people at my last corporate job didn't know me half as well as the boy to whom I sent my essays.

If working together on a project in a boardroom were enough to create intimacy, then those corporate associates would be the closest people on earth. But if that doesn't bridge the gap, then what does?

Does true closeness come from finally knowing someone? And when do we really begin to know a person? Is it the first time we hold their hand? The first time we see them cry? Is it the moment they choose to trust us with their secrets? Or is it the moment they choose to show us their flaws and inevitably disappoint us?

It left me asking... If physical proximity isn't the key, is intimacy simply the courage to let someone witness the cracks in our armour? And if we can be this exposed without ever being in the same room, maybe the real "meeting" happens long before the first handshake, right when we first recognise a kindred mind.

In the old days, people wrote letters. They had pen pals, strangers across continents who became the keepers of secrets they couldn't dare tell their own families. They were confidants bound by ink and distance. Today, we do the exact same thing on the internet. The technology has evolved, but our fundamental need to connect remains untouched.

So, if someone understands you better than almost anyone in your physical life, but you've never held them, never felt the warmth of their presence, can you really say you haven't met?

I kept coming back to the same thought... What if meeting in the flesh isn't the beginning of a relationship at all, but rather the moment our imagination ends?

When we don't have the physical reality of a person, we fill in the blanks with the best parts of our own souls. We build a sanctuary for them in our minds, constructed from their words, their insights, and the way they make us feel seen. We fall in love with the essence before we ever have to deal with the messy, mundane details of the physical world, the way they walk, the way they drink their coffee, or the space they occupy in a room. Perhaps when we finally meet in person, we aren't creating a new connection; we're simply testing whether the human being can hold the weight of the version we've already created in our hearts.

Is it possible that we've been chasing the wrong kind of "meeting" all along? Maybe the most profound encounters are the ones that exist entirely in the realm of the intangible, where there is no physical armour to hide behind. If intimacy is the bridge between two minds, then perhaps physical presence is just the final, risky step, or perhaps it's the moment the beautiful, limitless mystery of the unknown finally comes to a halt.

Does the magic fade the moment the digital veil drops? Or is that when the real work of loving a human being actually begins?

If intimacy can exist without physical proximity, perhaps no relationships test that idea more than long-distance ones. They've always fascinated me because they force us to ask an uncomfortable question: if you've never shared the same city, the same routine, or even the same time zone, do you really know each other? And yet, no one questions whether those relationships are capable of producing real love, real grief, or real commitment.

The same is true for friendships. Some of the people who have changed my life the most have never sat across from me at a café. They have celebrated my victories, stayed with me through hospital rooms, challenged my ideas, read every essay before anyone else, and believed in me long before people standing right beside me ever did. If that isn't knowing someone, then what is?

Perhaps we've been asking the wrong question all along. The question was never, "Can you love someone you've never met?" The real question is: what does it actually mean to meet someone?

If meeting someone only means occupying the same physical space, then millions of long-distance relationships, lifelong pen pals, online friendships, and digital communities should be impossible. But they aren't. They are proof that emotional proximity and physical proximity are not always the same thing.

Maybe meeting someone has never been about geography.

Maybe it's about being witnessed.

Maybe it's about being understood.

Maybe it's about finding someone who recognises parts of you that even the people sitting next to you never notice.

And perhaps that's why the first time we stand in front of someone isn't always the first time we meet them. Sometimes, it's simply the first time we discover whether the person we've come to know through their mind can exist in the same reality as the person we've imagined.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised... Maybe we've spent years believing we meet people with our eyes. Maybe that's because we've been measuring closeness by the wrong metric all along.

Perhaps we've been meeting them with our minds all along... and only later with our bodies.

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Photo ©  Yesly Photographed by Anastasiia Burak (@nastyalisenko)