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Well, I'll be the first to admit that I have no life. I spend way too much time on websites such as MSF and other chat rooms. It started back in college when a jealous, long-distance fiance would throw fits if I went out while he was away because he didn't trust me and/or our friends. So, I started perusing the net and have been addicted ever since. Every Dom and/or play partner I've met in real life, I connected with either on a forum, a spanking chat room, and occasionally from a profile hit.
Typically, I'm very slow to meet people. I've known most of the ones I have met for years, and even considered them very real and very dear friends, before I even considered meeting face to face. I know a lot of other's don't work that way, it's just what I'm comfortable with.
I've only made one big meeting mistake to date, and it was because I didn't follow my general rule of thumb. I was in a pretty desperate situation having just left college without my degrees, despite an extra semester spent working on my thesis project. I met this man in the SIN chat room and he told me that he was a professor at one of the Cleveland, OH universities (where I'm originally from), and that he was in a position to help me get access to the databases that I thought would help me finish my thesis project. BUT, of course he figured I needed a good dose of discipline before hand. So, after speaking to this man for only two hours, I actually got in my car and arranged to meet him at a local part around the corner from his house. Now let me tell you, every warning bell and whistle went off in my head when I met this guy. Everything about him screamed "creepy child molester". In my desperation, I never really listened to my head, though.
I'm not going to go into morbid detail, but long story short... trust your instincts. If something isn't right in your gut, don't proceed a step farther until it is. I don't want to scare anyone unneccessarily, though. For the most part, every meeting I've had has been wonderful. Just use a bit of common sense.
I'm going to leave the typical bible of safe meeting to someone else, i.e. safe calls, public meeting places, getting the full biography on someone, running the background check...because as some of you know (mostly the ones who lecture me mercilessly for it), I'm not the most likely to abide by traditional meeting guidelines.
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