>>5
People have sex for plenty of reasons short of love. I that, for quite some time, people treated one of my friends as if she had no sexuality. It offended her and made her feel undesirable, driving her to get physical comfort from a guy that notoriously slept around. It's sad, but not something she should lose my respect for. ...And it CERTAINLY doesn't make her a slut. She's now in a relationship with a loving man that does his best to ensure she never feels like that again. And I'm not jealous or disdainful of her past; I'm happy for both of them.

And, to the OP, I'm presently in a relationship with a man I met in person but, because of our families, lived in different places and kept in touch by the internet for nearly three years. By talking online for so long, the seeming "anonymity" of the internet let me open up to him more than I've shared with anyone else and he instilled the same trust in me. When he visited my university, our relationship underwent the same drastic change as yours and we're now dating. Go for it-- it could be one of the best relationships of your life.