I’m a 21-year-old female that hasn’t had very much dating or relationship experience. I’ve recently been trying out online dating apps for the first time, including one called Her, for gay and bi women. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone that I’d have a strong reaction to, but I came across one girl who really captivated me for some reason. She lives in my city and even goes to the same college (though our school is very large and it’s unlikely we’d have ever met there anyway). Because I was so intrigued, I looked her up on Facebook and it turns out we share a lot of the same interests and political views, which is very important to me.

On an impulse, or perhaps because I suspected she doesn’t use the Her app much, I sent her a friend request, and to my surprise, she accepted. Now I really don’t know what to do. I feel like if I message her and ask her out that’ll seem really creepy since we’ve never actually met, but I don’t want to let this chance go since she’s the only person on one of these dating apps that I’ve truly been interested in. Furthermore, I’m worried that she only accepted my friend request because she thought we might have met somewhere before, since we go to the same school. We don’t have any mutual friends, though.

How should I approach this? Should I reach out to her through Facebook or just not do anything at all? I really don’t want to seem like a creeper or a stalker or anything like that. I’m still not entirely sure why she accepted my friend request and I don’t want to make any rash assumptions. Please help!