Dear SpazKatt -- Please be careful. Predators lurk online.

Please remember that predators are sociopaths. They make people like them. They are con artists. All those women who went alone into the dark night with serial killer Ted Bundy did not go because they had a "bad feeling" about him -- they went because they were lulled into complacency. He was attractive-enough-looking. He was nice. What bad could happen by letting him walk them to their cars? Bundy is not the only one.

Again, please be very, very careful about this. If you are tempted to meet him, you must go in as big a group as you can put together.

If you are scared to tell people how you met, that it a red warning flag. You should not have to be ashamed of meeting someone online -- unless there are other red flags about this friendship. Perhaps even signals that you are picking up on unconsciously. If you believe in Guardian Angels and such -- your GA prompting you to ask questions and think this through before you do something potentially dangerous.

You sound young, and someone 13 years older than you can be a huge age gap.

Yes, SpazKatt, I believe that people can fall in love without knowing each other very well. I have a thought about it, only it's not mine, it's a thought borrowed from the writer, M.M. Kaye. I don't have my file of quotations with me, but this is a close paraphrase:

"It's not hard to fall in love with someone you don't know well. In fact, the less you know about 'em, the easier it is."

We fill in the gaps of what we know with what we wish -- gestalt, fantasy, call it what you will. Falling in love with this person is at least partly falling in love with your ideal as much as with a real person.

IMHO