I mean to get to know someone how are you not going to have a fairly informed picture of them? Or what is there to love?
Shall you fall in love with them for their abstract views alone? Is that what love can be boiled down to? Love must find its base in the flesh mustn’t it, if to flesh it will then be retributed?
It is easy to doubt the words of another person without having met them. It is just as easy to accept the words of those looking you face-to-face. Actions speak louder than words, but it doesn’t mean that the initial words were false. In my case, I trusted my instincts, and yet we both held out for verification by giving the budding relationship time.
A US co-worker met their Russian spouse through a pen-pal e-mail exchange program. Both of their responses needed to go through an interpretor before they could understand what the other was saying. About 10 years ago, the US partner traveled to Russia and met the pen-pal for the first time. A proposal occurred and was accepted, and it included the family ‘blessings’ on both sides.
10 years later, they are still happily married and residing in the US. The Russian spouse home-schools their two young children, and the family goes to Russia every year or so to visit family members.
This may be more detail than you wanted, but it feels like it pertains to the question asked. In both my case and the co-worker’s, all four of us essentially based it upon instinct of the written word.