The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: mozar on November 10, 2014, 08:09:48 PM
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For example, my mom's friend told me that she met her partner in law school. She saw that this woman had hidden a book about community organizing within her huge law book during class, and decided to approach and chat with this person.
Vague answers like we met at a party aren't helpful. Who approached who, what did you say? Was there eye contact first or did you jump on them? For online dating who wrote who? What did you talk about, why did you want to meet them?
I've started going to parties/ mingling with humans recently, for the first time in years, since my ex left.
I used to avert my eyes in public, but I'm learning that people sometimes smile at me. I tried smiling back these last few times. All very new to me.
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I met my wife on an online dating website. At the time, we were living about an hour and half drive away from each other, but I wrote to her anyway because she seemed really cool from her profile and I asked her if she would at least be interested in being pen pals. We wrote back and forth for a month and then decided to meet for lunch halfway between our two cities. Lunch turned into a visit to a museum, which turned into coffee, which turned into dinner and we've been together ever since. We'll have been together for six years in January and we've been married for over three years now.
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I met my husband at a social group for people who have a particular health problem. We both joined the group around the same time and attended several events such as pub nights, brunches and bowling. We chatted a bit at a few events and then my husband asked me if I would like to go bowling just with him. I said yes and we've been together for almost 9 years now. I thought he was very attractive and would have picked him out of any crowd - health problem or not - and he says the same about me.
Definitely smile back at people - it works. It shows you are confident and maybe interested.
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Met in class. This guy with a motorcycle helmet and jacket strolls in late to class, but this was an honors class that you needed permission to attend. That intrigued me. We worked together for the rest of the semester and got close. Did a summer and fall honor project together, got engaged while applying to grad school.
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Like Serpentstooth, we met in DW's first month/weeks in college.
Somehow I ended up in the pre-med track Chem track class and noticed this cute young lady. Don't know who made the first move after we flirted for a week or two, but by November of that year, 35 years ago, we were (well, I was!) talking marriage. We were 19/18 and "held out" until 23/22 to get married; unfortunately, no much help for the OP....
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Warning: long story ahead. But you did ask for details!
Was first introduced to him by my sister, at her workplace (they did, and still do, work together). Some months afterwards, she asked if I'd be interested in dating him, as we were both single and "marriage material". I said no, he wasn't my type.
Another few months on, she asked if I could introduce him to some of my single friends. I agreed to host a party where there'd be at least one friend who might be interested. Of course, he and I start chatting and can't stop. We just get along like a house on fire and have done right from that first conversation. So after he and my sister leave together, I text her to say I'm interested, meanwhile he was telling her the same thing.
He's too shy to ask me out directly, so she organises for both of us to have dinner at her house to get to know each other better. It was super awkward and horrible. Seriously. It's a funny story for another time.
Afterwards, she asks if I want her to give him my contact details and tell him that I'm interested. I say yes. She does. I don't hear anything for a few weeks and think he's lost interest after the awful dinner.
Instead he eventually emails me, asks me if I'd like to go out to dinner with him to get to know him better. I of course say yes. We go on quite a few dates before he tells me we need to have "the talk" (by email, in advance, so I had some warning), which we do have, and we agree that we want to be in a relationship. Importantly, we didn't so much as hold hands until we'd agreed that we wanted to be in a relationship. I think that allowed us both to get to know each other and feel comfortable together before muddying the waters. The kind of people we both are, I think we're better off having had a slow start to our relationship rather than diving in too quickly.
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Sing it with me: "In the Navy..."
We were both officers working in DC at the same organization. It was his job to organize the org family summer picnic. I was assigned to help him. I thought he was cute. I started just "happening by his office" and chatting when he was there.
Took him a few months to get the hint, but I didn't know if he had a girlfriend.
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We met in high school - we had each taken this particular class with a friend, so as to have some company... well lo and behold, our friends abandoned us to flirt with each other! So we hung out in class by default.
We gradually become friends over that semester, and by summer realized that the other made for very stimulating conversation, and started hanging out more and more.
I didn't tell him this until years afterwards, but I told my best friend I was going to date him eventually, about a month before it happened. He was shocked by this, as he didn't think he had a chance with me at that time. Funny boy. At any rate, late one night he (oh so polite!) asked if he could kiss me. And the rest, as they say, is history.
11 years and still going strong! (Finally got around to that whole marriage thing a couple years ago). I really can't overstate how wonderful it is to be partners with someone you're close (if not best) friends with, so, you know, keep that in mind if you're looking.
Incidentally, nothing ever came of the flirty friends from the beginning of the story :P
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We met via Craigslist. I wanted to go see a fireworks show and posted looking for someone to go with. My ad said something like "Looking for someone to go to the fireworks with tonight" and had my age and gender. I got buried alive in replies and his was the most literate. We met up at a busy coffee shop ahead of time to make sure each other were normal, then headed to the fireworks. Our conversation mostly revolved around his recent backpacking trip to Europe and my job hunting down people running from debts. We hit it off right away.
After the show we walked back to the transit hub together and he invited me to see a parade with him a few days later. We had fun and I invited him to a carnival a few days later. We had fun and he invited me to hang out at the beach with him and his friends a few days later. And so on and so forth.
Since we met online, the biggest thing was literacy. Seriously, if you're going to go that route, it really stands out to proofread your messages. If you want a demonstration of how bad it is, post a Craigslist ad pretending to be a girl looking for someone to hang out with and watch what sorts of messages roll in.
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We met at Uni. He was doing the same course, and we were part of a large group that played role playing games. It took about a year before we singled each other out.
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Met on Plenty of Fish two years ago. We'll be married in February.
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I was in Minneapolis for a weekend with my then-bf. We stopped in Panera one morning for bagels & coffee, and I remember thinking the guy behind the counter was cute. Maybe. He got my attention, anyway, with his bright-red curly hair sticking out all over under the cap. It was one of the few times in my life I've ever wanted to give a stranger my number, though I obviously didn't because 1) I was in a relationship, and 2) I lived a thousand miles away and would never see this person again. But I noticed him.
A year and a half later, I was living in Minnesota (Austin, this time, not Mpls) and future-husband was living in Iowa. We were both near the border, so we ended up being about a 2-hour drive apart. We actually met on OK Cupid. We started talking, which led to Skype "dates," phone calls, etc. He was quite straightforward about being tired of casual dating and looking for a potential life partner. That was my situation as well, so we pretty quickly started talking about the big stuff, testing for compatibility, I guess.
After doing the online thing for a while, we decided to meet in person. The night before, we were talking on the phone and he asked me if I was at all familiar with Mpls. I said I'd been there a couple of times, but only briefly, and mostly stayed downtown around the convention center. He asked if I remembered ever seeing a Panera on Nicollet Ave. I said yes, I had breakfast there once...
As fate would have it, he was the curly red-haired barista that morning. He doesn't remember me, of course, but it couldn't have been anyone else, and at the time, he was working every weekend, always that early shift.
I figured it must be some kind of sign. We got married 3 months later. It's been bumpy at times, mostly for financial reasons (we were both very bad with money in our younger years and came into the relationship with substantial amounts of debt; I have changed my money habits since, but he has not, or at least not much), but it's been 3 1/2 years and I think we're doing okay. :) First child is coming any day now.
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College. In the same club, but he makes bad first impressions and I was already dating somebody, so it took us a few months to get together. We took a class together and would regularly talk over dinner afterwards - that's when I started to get interested in him. Then we started working on a performance together. He tried to stay neutral about his interest in me because I was already dating somebody. That relationship wasn't going to well anyway, so I ended up breaking it off, telling myself it wasn't about now-SO, though we ended up together about a week later.
The actual relationship started at like 3am in a tree. I expressed my interest, and kissed him. He didn't expect things to move so fast, but I'm really forward about my thoughts and feelings. Perfectly happy now a year and a half later, and looking forward to the future.
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We had a class together. All term I disliked him because he seemed too cocky and he worked out a lot (it showed!) and in my mind I thought he wouldn't be too smart (sorry). The class party/loud girls flirted with him non stop...you get the idea.
On the last day of class I show up a few hours early to school for some quiet studying...except due to rushing in the am I had forgotten my book and since I lived across town I was stuck without my notes.
He noticed and tried offering his book for me to study. He had gotten behind me at the coffee line and spoke to me but I just shrugged him off. He persisted and this tine I politely smiled, made very small and limited talk and declined his offer to use his book as I thought it was just an excuse to get my # later.
15 minutes into my studying I realized my notes were shit so there I go to ask for his book. We spent about 1.5 hrs studying together before going into testing. I finished the test before him and I felt a big urge to stick around and keep talking to him but I didn't want to seem easy or be a stalker so I left bummed.
I get home, check my school email and there it was, an email from him thanking me for studying with him. Fast forward almost 5 years and we are now happily married :)
Funny thing? He turned out to be smart (top of his class smart), the least superficial man I've ever met, hard worker, totally loyal, and basically everything opposite of my first impression of him.
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Match.com hiking date with her chowchow running after a deer in the dark in the woods.
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We met via Craigslist. I wanted to go see a fireworks show and posted looking for someone to go with. My ad said something like "Looking for someone to go to the fireworks with tonight" and had my age and gender.
Since we met online, the biggest thing was literacy. Seriously, if you're going to go that route, it really stands out to proofread your messages. If you want a demonstration of how bad it is, post a Craigslist ad pretending to be a girl looking for someone to hang out with and watch what sorts of messages roll in.
This is hilarious because I met my DH on Craigslist 10 years ago. I got about 80 responses to my ad, and yes, many of them were not very coherent English or were canned responses. Hubbie at least said, "I can't spell my way out of a wet paper bag" to excuse his horrible spelling errors. Turns out we had a mutual friend, so I felt safe meeting pretty early on, and the rest is history. We even read part of the ad and his response in our wedding.
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We were on tour with our university's wind symphony. For some reason we hadn't met all year despite the fact that we were both in a few of the same classes and bands. She saw me and decided she wanted to be my friend. She introduced herself to me at Appomattox Courthouse and we chatted and hung out as we saw the sights on the east coast She made it clear that she was interested and I made it clear that I had a gf. I told her that I was leaving to go to Germany for a few years, and she told me she would write me. Needless to say relationship with the gf didn't work while I was out of the country.
We fell for each other through letters and emails. When I got back it took a while for us to get used to being around each other (and she was afraid of the marriage that would likely be the result of our dating). After a few months of awkwardness we started dating and after 6 months we were married. Now we have 2 kids and are in Germany for a few months in Germany.
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We met online. I had just come out of a long term bad relationship and was dealing with some full-on family shit. So I went online to try to feel like an adult again; my goal being to go on a couple of dates for fun.
I signed up to an online site, set the search filters for local to me and a smallish age range. The first profile I read, I laughed til I nearly cried. I wrote to him straight away, and pretty much wrote a mini-essay to him. That night I dreamt about him (and it was essentially the same as our second date <spoilers>).
The tl;dr version is I knew he was the one right from the start, although I tried many times to tell myself I was being ridiculous. We chatted online for several months, became FB friends etc. The chatting was entirely impersonal - just endless jokes and wordplay. I eventually (with the urging of an online friend who lived on the other side of the world to me) asked him to meet me for a drink and he said yes.
I broke all of the online dating rules, and nobody IRL knew I was meeting up for an online date (the only people who knew were online friends in other countries, but at least they were FB friends with me and had some way of interacting with my RL friends if something had gone terribly wrong). We met, had a beer and we were both stupidly nervous, and it was extremely awkward. He offered me a lift home cos it was raining and I said yes (going via my office so I could get my bags). We didn't click then, but I did trust him completely.
A week later, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see him again but realised, yes I did. So I asked him to an art show with me. Second date lasted 9 hours and we've been together nearly 5 years, married a couple of years ago.
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Wow, seems like everyone met either in school or online.
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Another uni meeting. Meet at a metal club night within my first month of uni and started going out a few weeks later. Together for 7 years and now married.
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I was 20 and had been ill for about a year. Was a bit of a recluse as a result. My first social event once I was better was to meet up with some school friends at a roller derby. He was there, along with some other new faces, but I didn't pay much attention to him particularly :P
We had a mutual love for a tv show, so when I had some friends over for a marathon a couple months later, he got an invite too. I was a little smitten after our second meeting...I don't often find people attractive, but told myself I had just gone too long without a date...! Anyway, I figured I never had a chance, he was a very confident guy in his late 20s ;)
Third time we met was at our mutual friend's birthday (the one who had introduced us & my best friend as a teenager). I didn't have any close friends there, so we ended up spending most of the night together. It was the first time we had the chance for a proper conversation. We are both big introverts, but it was a costume party, so I think it gave us both a confidence boost. We got kicked out at 1am. He convinced me to come with his mates to a nightclub in the city. My one experience at a club previously was as a 16yo overseas and was a complete disaster! So I usually avoided such places. (I also did not usually get in cars full of drunk strangers, fwiw)
We hung out until 7am, at which point he drove me home. A couple of days later I texted him, because I was worried I had been to vague about being interested. Turns out he had been stressing about how long to wait before he contacted me....four years later and he is about to follow me intestate to my new job :D
His version of the story is a little different...he noticed me straight away, and that mutual friend of ours was a bit of a matchmaker... :P
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He was taking a break from being an engineer, came back to school to take a few classes and see if teaching English to HS students was more up his alley.
I was a senior, almost done with my English lit degree.
We met in Modern American Lit. I was curious about this handsome guy in a 4000 level class. The English dept was small and I had never seen him before. We argued one day a out Freud's Civilization and its Discontents and its value to the class and other books we were reading.
He dropped out and started reapplying to engineering jobs.
Went to the OU/TX football game and saw one of our mututal friends there (a girl I sat next to in class- I played Polo with her, he ran cross country with her). He asked her to set us up on a date.
We have been blissfully together ever since! We even celebrate our first date (Oct 11) as a sort of dorky holiday. :)
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We met online a year and a half ago. I was the one who messaged him. We talked for about a month online before we met in person. (This wasn't intentional: we tried meeting up a week after messaging each other. He is the one who proposed we meet, but we both had trips planned, so didn't end up meeting right away.) Our messages--well, especially his--to each other were on the longer side, more like letters/e-mails then quick chats. We learned a lot about each other that first month and knew we could have a good conversation; all we needed to be sure about was the attraction! The first time we met in person was at a bar and we talked for about 4 hours. It was nice--it still is :).
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Met online, chatted for a bit (she turned 17 the night we met). She stopped talking to me for like a month and I figured it wasn't gonna go anywhere. Then out of the blue she contacted me again. 5 months later we started dating. She lived an hour away, but it wasn't too bad. We moved in together last year after graduating college and getting a job. It'll be 8 years next month. Marriage is on our minds (she wants it sooner than I do), but is at least 3 years away.
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I stalked her in university for a few weeks. It helped that she was in the same program and had all the same classes.
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I looooooove all of these stories!!! I'm such a nerd for cheesy romantic shit :)
ours is kind of long and very trashy (but also doesn't involve college or the internet). a month after I moved to Pennsylvania I joined a running and drinking club (previously discussed on another thread) which he was also a part of. we were friendly acquaintances for almost a year. I guess he was into me pretty much from the beginning (the second run I attended, some girl got lost in the woods, and he made a point to email me and say DON'T WORRY, THAT SERIOUSLY NEVER HAPPENS, PLEASE COME BACK AND DON'T BE TERRIFIED, haha), but I was obsessed with some other lame dude who was stringing me along, so it took me a while to realize that he was super cute as well as being one of the nicer, more thoughtful people I knew. eventually we had a group camping weekend out in the woods with lots of beer involved, I grew increasingly flirtatious, and we had drunk sex in a tent. the next day he asked me out to lunch, which we had two days later, and we enjoyed lunch so much that we met up again after work for happy hour. we've been together for a little over four years, and two years ago he followed me to Oklahoma... he's a keeper :) it kinda makes me laugh because all the women's magazines are always like, "don't sleep with him too early!!!" and, well, oops.
also, when we started dating, I was 22 and he was 30, which I thought was like THE OLDEST EVER. I'd talk to my friends and say, "I went on another date with the 30-YEAR-OLD!!" LOL. when I told my mom, she said, "is he divorced? no? does he have kids? no? then I wouldn't worry about it too much!" her parents were 11 years apart, so I guess she didn't think it was that weird :)
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Wow, seems like everyone met either in school or online.
College is an amazingly efficient place to find a partner. You're surrounded by hundreds of people your own age who have been filtered to be of similar intelligence. Where else are you going to get that unless you go to graduate school?
As a somewhat recently single postgrad I certainly understand that now haha
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So my husband and I met when we were sophomores in college.
Basically, there was a ball for the engineering school (which he was part of, I was not). My friend asked if I would go with him - and I did, because I had just finished complaining about another male friend awkwardly trying to ask me out and my frustration with male friends assuming I want to date them just because I like them as people (hello, attraction is important!), so I knew it was purely a platonic date. We (me & my friend date) basically spend most of the night hanging out and dancing with some friends of ours ... and there's this guy who tags along with our group. He came alone to the ball. I actually thought he might be gay - my first impression is that DAMN is he attractive, but he's smiling all the time and wearing a bright shirt, and also he seems to not have any friends. But he's also really nice - I used him as a support when I need to fix my heel at some point, and he was really nice about it.
Anyways, at the end of the night my friend offers to walk me home, and I'm like ... nah, I'm ok. And then the guy (who's been hanging out with us) offers to walk me home ... and I say yes. So we get to my place and I invite him in for some tea (I'm Russian, it's just ... what we do). Then I make sure to change out of my beautiful dress into sweatpants and a cardigan because ... I love being fancy AND dressing like a scrub, and I'm not going to hide any part of myself. Then I offer to give him a tour of the house (because that's what my parents always did with a new guest and seemed nice). Later he told me that he thought I was showing him my bedroom for ... other ... reasons ;). So we have tea and when he leaves he asks for my number (which I give).
He texts me the next day about getting lunch ... which end up being dinner b/c I have an obligation to table for a gender/sexuality conference I helped organize. It's not super great of a date -- I insist on paying for my half (which isn't much, this is a cheap Chinese place near campus) because I don't want to feel in debt/obligated. I rant a bit about Twilight (great date material, right?) ... after, we go to a poetry reading that I needed to attend for class. We get there a bit late, enter just as this woman is reading her graphic poem about phone sex while sitting on her operating/vibrating washing machine ... haha.
So my now-husband was a total stranger before we started dating (we ran in entirely different circles), and subsequently it took us a while before we found our groove - it was my first relationship and the first year wasn't the greatest. But it's been quiet wonderful since then - he is the kindest person ever, very intelligent, and still super hot (although he's going bald which sucks). I know a lot of people swear by dating people who were originally friends, but I dunno ... I almost felt like there was a window when I met my husband, for things to get romantic, and if we hadn't kissed on our second date that ship would have sailed and I would have been disinterested. Plus, I have to be honest -- I have a ton of really great male friends. But the reason we're friends and not something else is because while they're awesome as people, I don't find them attractive, so I have a hard time seeing how I could go from being friends with someone to dating them. Obviously a lot of people have different experiences, though. Maybe I'm just a shallow asshole. ;)
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We met through choir in high school. A long-time friend of mine who hated my previous girlfriends was urging me to ask my wife out, so I asked her to our junior prom. I botched it so badly that she didn't even know I was asking her! Friend cleared it up and we went together, had a good-enough time, but she didn't want to date me because one of the previous girlfriends was her best friend in choir. Summer arrives and we talk more and more on the phone. We hang out a few times and I ask her to be my girlfriend (because that's what you do in high school) that July. The rest of the relationship goes something like this:
July 2006 - Become "official", boyfriend and girlfriend
December 2006 - I decide to accept admission to school 1,800 miles away, she's gonna stay home
August 2007 - We decide to try the long distance thing
May 2008-December 2008 - Rough patch, we break up, see other people, get back together
June 2011 - Graduate, move home, back in with parents
September 2011 - Get job in hometown, cementing my location
May 2012 - Buy house together
June 2012 - Get engaged
May 2014 - Get married
Boring summary for an amazing 8 years.
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I love stories of how people met.
I met my DH when a roommate of mine bailed on her ultimate frisbee team, and I took her place. DH was on the team, and I remember thinking he was cute, but didn't know much about him as he was so quiet.
At the end of season bar, we got to talking and I was interested in him, but I failed to give him my number and he didn't ask.
A few months later he emailed to ask if I played broomball and left instructions for a park and a time the next afternoon. The email was written at 4AM, and I normally would not have gotten it, but I had gotten a smart phone the day before.
This is where me and DH have different versions of the story.
After playing, he thinks he asked me for my number, but he did not. He was fumbling around with his phone, and I told him that since we lived close to each other we should carpool the next week, and I put my number in his phone.
Three days later (as I was driving to meet a different fellow who I didn't have the heart to turn down), DH called to ask me on a snowboarding date. A year and a half later we were married.
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At work. I noticed him after the third day, he says he noticed me first... I kind of doubt that. :D
I think overall it was a natural "talking to your coworkers" type of thing that ended up with me being friends with several of them - and we all ended up chatting on our breaks and such. We went out in a group for lunches (around 3-4 people) and at a certain point, he asked me to a friend's party. It was not obvious that he was asking me on a date - we went as friends but we both discussed after the fact that we did like each other at that time, so it took us both about a month to work up to dating. It was while hanging out as friends that we got to talking more and lots of flirting going on, and I did actually did tell him at one point that I had "feelings" for him that went beyond friendship, and I guess that pushed him into taking a leap and he kissed me shortly after that... so not sure who really went out on a limb there. ;) Started officially dating, engaged later that year, married the next, been together for going on 14 years total.
ETA: The place we worked at was an odd one - we were all night/graveyard shift artists, so everyone there was weird in their own way. I have never before or since found a place where I loved practically all of my coworkers and many of us are still friends to this day even tho I haven't worked there in over a decade. I do think the fact that were were all Island of Misfit Toys material made a huge difference in finding someone that I got along with so well....
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We met at a mutual friends party. We didn't talk much at that party, but a lot of the people at the party (including myself) do community dancing, and he showed up a couple of weeks later at the dance. We went out to for drinks with a couple people afterwards and talked about our favorite books. I was about to travel, so he recommended that I read "The Diamond Age" and I recommended that he read "Northanger Abbey". I went out to get his book the very next day and we chatted on facebook for the next month, first while I was out of town, then while he was, then while he was sick. We saw each other a couple of times at dances and when he (and several other people) helped me move into my apartment.
I had a big crush on him, but a friend advised that I ask him on a casual pre-date to a baseball game since we'd mostly been e-mailing and if that went well I could ask him out. I think she was worried that I would scare him off with a grande romantic gesture. The day after I sent him that e-mail, I got a physical letter from him written in (a poor imitations of) the style of Jane Austen saying that he liked me.
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I was 8 and had moved to a new state. My family went to a new church and DH and a couple other little boys hid behind the doors and waited until I walked past to jump out and corner me into talking to them because I was so shy. Our families became close so we would hangout a lot growing up. He turned into my best friend and went to high school together. We didn't start dating until after high school because we were both to shy to admit our feelings. After a year of dating we were married. I think it has helped our relationship that we were good friends before entering the relationship because we got to know each other without doing the typical trying to impress the other dance.
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I looooooove all of these stories!!! I'm such a nerd for cheesy romantic shit :)
ours is kind of long and very trashy (but also doesn't involve college or the internet). a month after I moved to Pennsylvania I joined a running and drinking club (previously discussed on another thread) which he was also a part of. we were friendly acquaintances for almost a year. I guess he was into me pretty much from the beginning (the second run I attended, some girl got lost in the woods, and he made a point to email me and say DON'T WORRY, THAT SERIOUSLY NEVER HAPPENS, PLEASE COME BACK AND DON'T BE TERRIFIED, haha), but I was obsessed with some other lame dude who was stringing me along, so it took me a while to realize that he was super cute as well as being one of the nicer, more thoughtful people I knew. eventually we had a group camping weekend out in the woods with lots of beer involved, I grew increasingly flirtatious, and we had drunk sex in a tent. the next day he asked me out to lunch, which we had two days later, and we enjoyed lunch so much that we met up again after work for happy hour. we've been together for a little over four years, and two years ago he followed me to Oklahoma... he's a keeper :) it kinda makes me laugh because all the women's magazines are always like, "don't sleep with him too early!!!" and, well, oops.
also, when we started dating, I was 22 and he was 30, which I thought was like THE OLDEST EVER. I'd talk to my friends and say, "I went on another date with the 30-YEAR-OLD!!" LOL. when I told my mom, she said, "is he divorced? no? does he have kids? no? then I wouldn't worry about it too much!" her parents were 11 years apart, so I guess she didn't think it was that weird :)
This is hilarious. Running and drinking club? Lol made me think of the movie "yes man".
Also, ditto on the sex. We had drunk sex within the first month of dating! It was in the night he got to meet mt friends for the first time so still on the testing period. Oops as well. Lol.
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Although I'm ten years out of college, I still enjoy the stories, and all the other ones too. I do wish I had found someone to marry in college but the advice I got was more of the "you need to date as much as possible to find yourself" variety. Maybe I'll try craigslist.
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Although I'm ten years out of college, I still enjoy the stories, and all the other ones too. I do wish I had found someone to marry in college but the advice I got was more of the "you need to date as much as possible to find yourself" variety. Maybe I'll try craigslist.
I met him when he dropped by my room to talk to my roommate, with a drink in hand. I disapproved of my roommate and of anything resembling "frat culture" so I wrote him off as a loser. Or, as he prefers, a "shady character."
I made friends with him in differential equations class, which was really boring (and surprisingly easy). None of my other friends in the class would whisper/pass notes with me. After a few weeks I realized we were into many of the same things, e.g. outdoorsy activities and he wasn't actually as boozy and shady as I thought. Soon I had a crush.
[Insert 4 years of my unrequited love, ups and downs, etc...except during that time, we both grew up in compatible ways. We don't believe we would have worked out in college.]
Then he came around and realized how awesome I am. 3 years later, he's moved across the country with and for me.
Everyone I know whose relationship started in college and is now married or in a steady relationship, started out as friends, or at least friends of friends (so they encountered each other in group social situations). Unfortunately the kinds of gatherings that lead to such relationships are less common after college... but I guess if I was giving advice to a college student, I'd tell them to hang out and make lots of friends, not date...which is basically what my mom told me.
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OKCupid :) He messaged me (a thoughtful, coherent message that was pertinent to something I wrote in my profile). We messaged back and forth for a few weeks, then we met up for a date. I had been up until 2 am the night before with some friends, and had to get up at six for work. We met for supper and we walked around the shopping mall plaza for a bit, but it was quite cold, so he asked if I wanted to see a movie and I told him if I sat in a darkened theatre I'd be asleep in 10 minutes. He thought it was a polite dismissal, but on four hours of sleep, I was exhausted! He asked if I thought I'd want to see him again and I told him definitely :) We had our second date a week later, our third date four days after that, our fourth three days after that....we essentially moved in together after about six weeks, and we celebrated the 2 year anniversary of that first date yesterday. He intended on proposing then, but he's been out of work for the last four months, so it'll have to wait a bit longer.
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Although I'm ten years out of college, I still enjoy the stories, and all the other ones too. I do wish I had found someone to marry in college but the advice I got was more of the "you need to date as much as possible to find yourself" variety. Maybe I'll try craigslist.
Honestly I would try a dating site before Craigslist. I used Craigslist 10 years ago, which was before the dating sites were popular, and the reason I posted was more out of necessity - I had just moved to a new town with no job and I only knew three people. So my ad was actually trying to reach people who worked in my industry, which it did. Meeting my husband was just a side effect (which happened after we were friends for a while).
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A lady I was dating was ready to dump me but, being civilized and courteous, fixed me up with someone she thought I might like better before she did so.
I think she was surprised at what a good job of fixing us up she did...
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Three months after moving to South Korea in my late 20s, I heard a sexy British voice in a cafe and looked up to see who was speaking. He looked my type and sounded it too. He was speaking to a western woman with respect, like she was a full-fledged human being - this attitude can be rare in straight western men in Asia. Couldn't help eavesdropping: he was due to leave town in 3 weeks for a job in Hainan, 'China's Hawai'i'.
Later it turned out we were both thinking: "Why haven't I seen this person before?"
A few days later I was at a bar, chatting with a new friend. She called a colleague and invited him down for an impromptu farewell drink. After asking her a few questions I realized it was the Hainan-bound guy, and ordered another beer - though I'd planned to go home.
When he came over the chemistry was immediate. The new friend did the introducing. We went out for karaoke and vile 'lemonade soju' till 7am, but didn't 'hook up' till Hallowe'en - a mere few days later (hah! against all textbook advice). We have two anniversaries, our Hallowe'en hookup and our elopement 2 years later in Thailand.
Really enjoy reading all of your stories. Agreed there are many filters in them: whether university, or online dating, or our situation - where living outside one's comfort zone (yet socializing within it) means the selection of people you encounter are likely to have the same interests.
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I'm on OKC and match.com, didn't want to stick around PoF.
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Wow, seems like everyone met either in school or online.
Nope! Met at work. I went to visit a friend's office, and who was sharing her cubicle but this very shy guy with amazing eyes. Co-workers said he was creepy - including my friend, who recommended I avoid him - but my gut said he was alright. When I got him to talk, he was articulate, shared my sense of humor, and put me at ease. And those eyes kept me coming back.
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Met my wife on a trip to climb Mont Blanc when we were both in our mid 40s - we were both on the same week long trip. The main problem was that she lived in Egypt and I lived in UK - after a year of visits, skype and facebook chats she came to live with me - after another year we got married - that was 21/2 years ago
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Considering how much I loathe the place now, I met Mr. Mandalay at ... Walmart. I was working there at the time and he was going to school in the area; one of the girls I worked with was in some of his classes. He came by the store with an assignment for her, saw me, and apparently next time they were in a class together he was asking about me. He eventually worked up his nerve to say hi to me and we'd make small talk. He then REALLY screwed up his nerve one January afternoon and asked me if I'd seen Titanic yet. I said no, and he asked if I'd like to see it with him. I said yes, and he beamed. After the movie, we went to Denny's--not many places to go in a little Kentucky town on a Saturday night--and didn't leave until six in the morning. We were engaged seventeen days later, married seven months after that, and celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary this past August.
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We worked in the same office, different departments, for about a year. We were both dating other people that we weren't that excited about but enjoyed enough to keep them around until we had a reason to end things. Our paths to innocently crossed at work rather frequently, and we were both slyly collecting whatever intel we could from our co-workers. It all came together when he accepted a position faaaaar away from where we were working, to begin in a couple months. Now that he was working against a deadline, he kicked it into high gear with me: long talks on the phone, inviting me out after work. Within a month, we had both ditched our exes, begun our own torrid affair with each other, and booked a ticket for me to visit him a few weeks after he moved (not necessarily in that order). After every visit out to see him, we would book a ticket for another visit 4-6 weeks later. Six months after these visits, my contract was up and I agreed to launch a 3-month job search from his apartment in NYC. I had some whiplash from how fast we went from 0-60, but ensured I had lots of contingency plans for if it didn't work out (friends in TX who would take me in if it didn't work out in NYC, I only applied for jobs in NYC that paid enough to allow me to get my own place if I needed to, etc.) We were in love, but also a little intimidated by the pace of our relationship. I got a job, we found our co-habitation rhythm, and a year and a half after we moved into together, we got hitched and celebrated our brilliant romantic judgment with our family and friends :)
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Another pair who met in college! I was 20; he was 19. We dated for three years, then spent a year engaged while I finished my master's degree and he got a master's degree in England on a Rotary Club scholarship. We got married at 24 and 23, and we celebrated our 25th anniversary last December.
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It was graduate Thermodynamics. I noticed him the first day and thought he would be quite attractive if he was cleaned up. However, I was happily living with someone else at the time. At some point in the class, I pointed out to him that an ideal gas expanding in a vacuum does no work. He didn't believe me and I decided he was an idiot.
Fast forward two years, my partner had flunked out and moved for a job. I was kind of interested in a friend of future SO and did some wiggling and jiggling in that general direction. The honey caught an unexpected fly, we had drunk sex and got married a couple of months later because I was leaving to do my research at another facility and I realized that if I didn't marry him we would lose track of each other and I would never meet another person like him. I was absolutely right. I have never met another person like him. He's solid gold.
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DW and I met in medical school, over the anatomy table...hah, that's too cliched, we were actually at neighboring anatomy tables, and since you only get one cadaver, male or female, you have to work with your neighbors once you get to certain parts, you understand. Even then, that just brought us into the same group of friends, and the next semester we all decided to join the pool/billiards league at the student center, and everyone else paired off leaving us the two odds ones out, so we paired up, decided to practice together a little, yadda yadda yadda, and it's been nearly 12 years together and just over 10 married.
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I looooooove all of these stories!!! I'm such a nerd for cheesy romantic shit :)
ours is kind of long and very trashy (but also doesn't involve college or the internet). a month after I moved to Pennsylvania I joined a running and drinking club (previously discussed on another thread) which he was also a part of. we were friendly acquaintances for almost a year. I guess he was into me pretty much from the beginning (the second run I attended, some girl got lost in the woods, and he made a point to email me and say DON'T WORRY, THAT SERIOUSLY NEVER HAPPENS, PLEASE COME BACK AND DON'T BE TERRIFIED, haha), but I was obsessed with some other lame dude who was stringing me along, so it took me a while to realize that he was super cute as well as being one of the nicer, more thoughtful people I knew. eventually we had a group camping weekend out in the woods with lots of beer involved, I grew increasingly flirtatious, and we had drunk sex in a tent. the next day he asked me out to lunch, which we had two days later, and we enjoyed lunch so much that we met up again after work for happy hour. we've been together for a little over four years, and two years ago he followed me to Oklahoma... he's a keeper :) it kinda makes me laugh because all the women's magazines are always like, "don't sleep with him too early!!!" and, well, oops.
also, when we started dating, I was 22 and he was 30, which I thought was like THE OLDEST EVER. I'd talk to my friends and say, "I went on another date with the 30-YEAR-OLD!!" LOL. when I told my mom, she said, "is he divorced? no? does he have kids? no? then I wouldn't worry about it too much!" her parents were 11 years apart, so I guess she didn't think it was that weird :)
This is hilarious. Running and drinking club? Lol made me think of the movie "yes man".
Also, ditto on the sex. We had drunk sex within the first month of dating! It was in the night he got to meet mt friends for the first time so still on the testing period. Oops as well. Lol.
Actually it is billed as "A drinking club with a running problem". And very true to it's name :-)! Also a great place to meet people. Although I may now know how Rockisinthehead got her nickname!
haha! it really is great for meeting like-minded people since you automatically know they like running, beer, and irreverent humor, and are comfortable making fools out of themselves and not easily offended. all qualities I like about my boyfriend :)
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Met wife at the very end of college. My roomate's very cute friend came by to use our washing machine one day because hers had broke. I struck up a convo and then 'accidentally' ran into her a few times at various events until she agreed to go out with me. Been together 10 years this fall, married for 4, 2 adorable kids.
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I made an OkC profile because a friend of mine met her now-DH on there. She was engaged and so happy, and I was like, well - what the hell? Signed up.
Long story short, my DH had messaged me on OkC but it never turned into a meetup. BUT it certainly gave him the confidence to say hello when we ran into each other at a party! Pretty awesome :)
Non-stop hangouts turned into dates which turned into moving across the country together and three years later, getting married. Awwww <3
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Met my wife back in kindergarten. We ended up at the same school again in middle school, and then between our sophomore and junior year we started 'officially' dating. We got married two years ago. Life is good.
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TL;DR version: Met at work, I was married to someone else.
I was recruited for a job by a friend of mine. The first day, they had me go to a local photographer to get my headshot for the local paper, and my now-DH was there.* He was also recruited by my friend, and we were starting work on the same day. He was sitting there, reading the paper and he looked up at me -- hazel eyes, prematurely grey hair, big smile, so cute. I ducked into the back to fix my hair (I'm always a mess) and the photographer asked if I was ready. I was running late for another meeting, so I asked DH if he'd mind if I went first. [His version of the story is that I shoved past him and insisted on going first, but he didn't mind because I was so hot.]
Our mutual friend and DH used to play music together, so they were starting up a band. They needed a drummer and our friend asked me if I'd like to learn. It sounded like fun, but mostly my marriage wasn't going well and I needed a distraction and an excuse to get out of the house. We'd been in therapy for a year and it wasn't working. I knew I'd have to leave, but hadn't gotten up the nerve yet.
So we started rehearsing at DH's house a couple of times a week. I fell hard for him. I used to stick around afterwards and have a beer, and we'd talk. [Apparently, he was falling for me too, but our mutual friend insisted that I was happily married. Um, no.]
A month later, we were still pretending that we didn't have feelings for each other, but we drove together to a company outing -- the county fair -- with his 3-year-old son from his first marriage. We drove in his old Volvo 240 wagon. He bought me a hot dog. I bought him a beer. We held hands. On the way home, his son fell asleep in the back seat, and we talked all the way home about how we were in such trouble.
A week later, I told my then-H I didn't want to be married anymore, and I moved out. DH helped me move into my own place, and we talked about how long we'd have to wait to get married. We were most concerned about his son and getting him used to the idea.
This was all in October. In a single conversation, I told my parents about my separation from then-H and asked if I could bring now-DH to Thanksgiving. They were very dubious, but after meeting him, they agreed that he was perfect for me and that he was just as wonderful as I thought he was.
I moved in with DH after 6 months, and a year later we were married. We have three kids, and we just celebrated the 14th anniversary of that county fair. :)
* Because we met at the photographer's studio, we have pictures of practically the very moment we first met. :)
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Myspace. I messaged her, we talked a bit, and then went on a date. Been together about 6 1/2 years now. Been married about 1 1/2 years. We also went to the same university (couple years apart, and in different programs, so we never crossed paths).
I went to a commuter university though, so I think it's a different subset of students (lots of adults, and parents, and people rushing back home to family). Plus i'm a shy , awkward introvert so I wouldn't have met someone anyway. Thank god for the internet.
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Match dot com! But this was back in 2001, the dark days of the interwebz. :)
My siblings both met their spouses in college.
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Love this thread. So romantic.
My own story is not useful (met in high school, dated long distance through college, got married after college), but some of the best advice I heard for meeting someone came from a radio show psychologist. This was her advice:
Tell everyone you know that you are looking for someone to marry (yes, be that blatant), and by everyone I mean your friends, family, coworkers, dentist, regular customers, and basically anyone who might know your name and how to reach you. This had the added benefit of pre-screening crazies, married persons, and other mutually incompatible persons. The radio host herself literally went on hundreds of blind dates before her landlady set up the now married couple on a blind date. She also always emphasized that dating is a numbers game, so don't be discouraged if you have even years of "failed" dates.
Good luck, OP.
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Love this thread. So romantic.
My own story is not useful (met in high school, dated long distance through college, got married after college), but some of the best advice I heard for meeting someone came from a radio show psychologist. This was her advice:
Tell everyone you know that you are looking for someone to marry (yes, be that blatant), and by everyone I mean your friends, family, coworkers, dentist, regular customers, and basically anyone who might know your name and how to reach you. This had the added benefit of pre-screening crazies, married persons, and other mutually incompatible persons. The radio host herself literally went on hundreds of blind dates before her landlady set up the now married couple on a blind date. She also always emphasized that dating is a numbers game, so don't be discouraged if you have even years of "failed" dates.
Good luck, OP.
IIRC, most people marry friends of their friends. You generally don't marry a friend because if you wanted to date them, you already would be. But your friends probably have similar taste in people and know people who might be compatible. My husband and I meet at the apartment of a girl he knew from theater and I had freshman Italian with. Later, when I went through his Facebook, I was astounded we hadn't gotten together sooner. He was close friends with my study abroad roommate, lived across the hall from one of the first friends I made in college, we used to work for the same department, etc...
I've found friends this way too. Elaine (who used to be active on the forum here) and I hit it off in person, only to later discover that my husband and I went to school with her BFF and she used to spend weekends on campus when we were all students there. I met another close friend of mine through a mutual friend when we all shared the same hobby. If you are like most people, there are several hundred people within a degree of separation and odds are great that you'll hit it off with several of them.
This all totally makes sense to me, too. Incidentally my parents met on a blind date (my mom worked with my dad's sister, they went to a hockey game) and they've been married for 29 years next month.
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I made an OkC profile because a friend of mine met her now-DH on there. She was engaged and so happy, and I was like, well - what the hell? Signed up.
Long story short, my DH had messaged me on OkC but it never turned into a meetup. BUT it certainly gave him the confidence to say hello when we ran into each other at a party! Pretty awesome :)
Non-stop hangouts turned into dates which turned into moving across the country together and three years later, getting married. Awwww <3
libraryjoy also held my hand (figuratively!) while I was going through the process of considering proposing to my now-fiance, looking/shopping for an engagement ring, gave me courage, and other such helpful things. I have the PM's to prove it. So, big thank you to libraryjoy! :)
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I made an OkC profile because a friend of mine met her now-DH on there. She was engaged and so happy, and I was like, well - what the hell? Signed up.
Long story short, my DH had messaged me on OkC but it never turned into a meetup. BUT it certainly gave him the confidence to say hello when we ran into each other at a party! Pretty awesome :)
Non-stop hangouts turned into dates which turned into moving across the country together and three years later, getting married. Awwww <3
libraryjoy also held my hand (figuratively!) while I was going through the process of considering proposing to my now-fiance, looking/shopping for an engagement ring, gave me courage, and other such helpful things. I have the PM's to prove it. So, big thank you to libraryjoy! :)
Thanks, I needed this. I've been doubting myself lately, and this was just the boost I needed :) So happy for you and your fiancé!!!
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OKCupid. He instant messaged me, which I usually hate to do with strangers, but we ended up talking for 2 hours that night. We texted and emailed and went on our first date a week later (split the bill evenly -- I refuse to date anyone who has some paternalistic reluctance to let the woman pay half on a first date). He says he knew from that first meeting that he wanted to marry me, but I was pretty reticent to become too emotionally entangled in a serious relationship (I referred to him as "Door #2" to family and friends for the first 2 months of our relationship)... But he was stubborn and patient and gave me as much space as I demanded while being utterly charming and reliable. It's been 3 years since our first date and 8 months since our wedding, and I'm so happy with the partner I've found.
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Good friend told me fairly seriously I was going to marry his sister (who I had not met).
Eventually, I drove a few hours to go on a date with her.
Turns out he was right.
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Work.
We were on the same team at work. I met her on my first day -- she had been there all of two weeks.
Ummm...on one of my accounts she reported to me.
It was a slow boil -- took quite a few months for us to become even friendly, about nine months for us to "cross over," (our first kiss was in front of a nasty assed liquor store) and about seven additional months for our managers to find out and pull us off the same account.
Later, in a different office in another part of the country we were intentionally put on the same account because we work so well together.
Married 16 years + 2 months + 2 weeks.
Best thing that's ever happened in my life by a wide mile.
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On a cruise! A group of my friends and me went on it and next door to us was a group of her friends and her. It turned out that we only lived 30 min away!
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He was doing a jazz gig with my younger brother (he broke all the rules!!! You NEVER date a band member's sister!)
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Interesting thread, I hadn't seen it before.
To answer the question, I was dating her daughter.
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I guess we'll go with the long version.
I was in my first semester of college. I had put off studying for my chemistry exam, so in true college fashion I decided to try a Monster energy drink for the first (and last) time to help me stay up all night to study. I had no caffeine tolerance at ALL at the time, so it blasted me awake and made me jittery to the point that I felt like I was on drugs. I got through my studying, and was still wide awake at 5pm the following day to take the exam. I took the exam (and conquered it), got back to my dorm room, was mentally exhausted and wanted to crash, but I couldn't. I was still physically very very awake and sleep was not going to happen.
I started killing time online, tried to watch an episode of some show but just could not enjoy it, and after lots of fairy mindless clicking, I found myself on Omegle.com around 11pm. It's a site where it puts you in a one-on-one anonymous text-only conversation (instant messenger style) with another user of the site. At the time, it was fun to mess around on there and troll/talk to random people. (Nowadays, it still exists, but it's a bunch of spam, horny people, fake hot singles in your area, etc. Back then it was still interesting and had real people.) So I had a few short conversations with people, nothing too terribly interesting, so I decided to start opening conversations with quotes from The Simpsons, for fun and to sniff out Simpsons fans.
"Don't you hate carpet stores that charge extra for the underpadding?" was the first sentence I ever said to her. We went back and forth, being increasingly very silly and fully expecting the other to disconnect and move on. Eventually that collapsed under its own weight, we became instant friends, and had a real conversation that lasted an hour or two. We then established a more permanent form of communication via email, Yahoo messenger, and Facebook, as we both realized we wanted to be more than "single-serving" friends. So we became real friends. She was in Arizona; I was in Illinois.
She quickly became one of my closest friends and we helped each other through tough times. Just under two years later, I went to a concert in Chicago, and got back home around 1am and instead of going to sleep like a sane person, I jumped online to talk to her. One thing led to another, and we expressed our romantic feelings for each other.
Three weeks later I hop on a plane to Phoenix. It was a very surreal experience actually being on that plane, knowing I was actually going to finally see her in person. I got out into the airport and out to the curb. Somehow I had it in my mind that I was waiting for a black Kia. I stood there, looking down the mass of cars, scanning for a black Kia as the cars all went by. Then right in front of my face, a BLUE Kia loudly honks its horn at me and I whipped my head around and made eye contact with her for the first time. We went back to her place, and her sister's dog barked in my face for half an hour. We watched Hot Fuzz and played Apples to Apples with her sister and her friends. She and I shared a bed that night.
Five months later, we bought our first house together (at 19 and 20), and she moved across the country.
We have lived together for almost three years now. Everything is wonderful. Life is good.
"We met online but it wasn't a dating site." is usually the short version we tell people.
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We met at work. We've been married for 4.5 years.
More info: she caught my eye as soon as I started working here, but I crossed her off as a potential romantic partner because 1) she was in a long term relationship and 2) her partner was a woman (I'm not). They broke up, and we hung out a few times. To be honest, I think the fact that I thought she was totally not interested was helpful. Instead of being nervous or trying to impress her or whatever, I was just myself. After hanging out a few times, she "casually" mentioned that she was bi (I had assumed she was a lesbian). It still took us another couple of months to actually begin dating. We were both a little scared -- we both felt that, if we started to date, this was likely going to be "it". Plus, we worked together and were leery of what might happen if things went bad. Fortunately, everything worked out great.
Good friend told me fairly seriously I was going to marry his sister (who I had not met).
Eventually, I drove a few hours to go on a date with her.
Turns out he was right.
I love this!
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Relatively short version:
University. Mrs. Doom shared the same major as me (Computer Science), so she was in a few of my classes. In one class we had a semester-long 2-person project and I asked her to be my teammate because I thought she was cute. Blam! A couple of months in and the details of our assignments seemed.... less important somehow...
She later told me that in a class of about 20 guys that over half of them also asked her to be their partner. (Makes sense... women are a scarce resource in my field.) Really no idea why she picked me. Probably assigned digits to each man and ran a modulized random number generator.
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I graduated from engineering school and got an engineering job and was bored out of my mind. I was connected to a job teaching English at a Chinese college and jumped at it. Perhaps unusually for a single male in that position I wasn't there to pick up chicks; unlike some of my college friends I wasn't into Asian women. I was just bored out of my mind.
She was one of my students. Fortunately for ethics we didn't have anything to do with each other. I would walk into class and say "good morning" and she would say something very loudly in Chinese, and then she and the entire class would bust up laughing. Something like this happened every week. I thought she was irritating (when I told her this a few years later she was hurt). However, during one of the holidays she asked me to visit her family's house, and I somewhat reluctantly shortened my Tai Shan climbing trip with some of my other students and friends and stopped by for an awkward two days. The next semester I started teaching at a university in a different province. For some reason we continued to meet up in different Chinese cities during every holiday. Eventually we realized we were dating. A little later I realized getting an engineering job back in the States was more respectable and much higher paying, but I saved up every day of my vacation time for a return trip to China. On that trip we realized we had to be together. We have now been together for five years and married for two, and we are still closer with every passing month.
The whole thing seems so unlikely I barely believe it. I was always bad in romantic settings and never did anything along those lines. We are complete opposites of our cultural stereotypes; I am a quiet engineer who likes spreadsheets while she is loud, charismatic, outgoing, and doesn't have a Chinese accent. Even the Chinese zoological calendar says we shouldn't be together. I feel strongly I that I could not have met a better person in university, online, or the entire world (I have seen enough of it to have an idea). If I could find the most perfect person against all odds in such an improbable way, it should be a cake walk for everyone else!
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I appreciate the long version of the stories.
FLBiker- what do you mean you were worried this might be "it"? Also was it tough for your partner to go from being perceived as a lesbian to being perceived as straight? I am looking to date people who are the opposite gender of what I usually date.
It seems like approaching people in social settings is the way for me to go. I'm working on that. I haven't gotten much (any) traction online.
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I did a very old fashioned thing and married the boy next door (well, across the driveway anyway)!
I lived in an apartment block for five years while saving to buy a home. From my balcony I could see the townhouse complex next door and they looked about what I was looking for and I obviously knew the area.
I actually signed a contract to buy a place about 20 minutes away and when I got home there was a For Sale signing front of the townhouses. I contacted the agent, saw the place and had a accepted offer three days later, withdrew from the first contract and settled on the townhouse. I did what I thought would be the shortest distance house move ever.
Two months after moving in I was on my way out but had to wait while a car came out of the garage opposite mine. There was a person guiding the car out and afterwards he apologised for delaying me. We introduced ourselves, spent a few hours chatting and got takeaway pizza for dinner. I cooked him dinner the next night and our relationship just developed from there.
Eighteen months later he proposed and we got married five months after that. I did an even shorter house move, setting my own personal record by moving across a driveway. We have now been together four years.
If it had not been for our real estate agent (the same one sold both of us our homes) and his grandparents who were his visitors that day we may have never met.
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We met at a climbing gym. I was puzzling through how to get up a bouldering problem, and he gave me a suggestion for how to try climbing it differently. That started us chatting (this is what bouldering gyms are like...you try a route, then you sit around and recover, and people are often there by themselves since it's the one form of climbing that doesn't require a partner, so everyone is pretty friendly and chatty talking about the routes), and since we both went to the gym a lot, when we saw each other, we'd usually say hi and talk some. I thought he was pretty cute and charming, so eventually, I started inviting him out to eat afterwards with my group of climbing friends, then to a couple of other non-climbing outings we were doing around town. After that, he asked me out on a date, I said yes, and the rest, as they say, is history...
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Apparently little_owl had the hots for me starting in 7th grade when she saw an 8th grade picture of me in the yearbook that year running CC. I didn't learn of her existence until my senior (her junior) year of HS when I sat in front of her in physics class that year. Still nothing happened other than being lab partners a few times...I thought she was too much of a partier to even consider her a romantic interest and she actually thought I was a little pompous in class. Nonetheless, I guess her feelings persisted and she convinced my sister (a sophomore) to get me to ask her to my senior prom. I did, and that was our real first date.
I went to college the next year and we continued to see each other - I would drive home every few weekends to visit her since she was then a senior in HS and lived with her parents, of course. That was the start of our long-distance relationship. The next year she went to college, about 80 miles form my school, so we saw each other on and off on the weekends. Eventually her sophomore year of college she dumped me in search of greener pastures. I remember the months leading up to that inevitable day and it was a train wreck I knew was going to happen. She broke my heart and I was devastated. About 1.5 years later, we started talking again and it was clear whatever she was hoping to find had been a complete failure and she really wanted to get back together.
I was hesitant and had other relationship options as I was working full time at that point in the Detroit area with a lot of new friends. She eventually graduated college and moved to the DC area but kept after me. Eventually one day back home in Ann Arbor at Mongolian BBQ, "Foreigner - I want to know what love is" came on the radio and it was like lightning hit and I knew that she was the one. It took me yet another year to find a job in the DC area, but I finally moved down there and the rest is history.
One thing, I'm so fucking over long-distance relationships. I hate them, they suck, and I never want to go back to that again. I'm in Indonesia for work for the past three weeks and the ache I feel being apart reminds me of the olden days. I fucking hate it. Only a few more days to go though...
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At a party in college. He gave me a fake name, and we argued about the upcoming Presidential election. Then he and his friend gave my friend and me a ride to another party. The two guys supported Ross Perot, and they kept calling us two girls "Clintonites". Dang I'm old :)
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I met my partner at work. We were work friends for about two years during which time his wife cheated on him and he came to me for support because he knew my ex had done the same thing to me. We discussed our dating stories/nightmares and the challenges of single parenting. After many discussions, I thought, "Huh. Too bad there is this age difference, because we think alike." At the time he was 26 and I was 39.
Six months after they split, we decided to hang out as friends and went to see a movie together. Later on my couch we'd had about three bottles of wine and as the cliche goes, one thing led to another.
We took things slowly and really didn't expect things to last, but here we are seven and a half years later.
As far as living frugally goes, he's not too spendy, but I'm glad we don't live together. We plan to continue in this relationship living apart and as long as we are happy. The fact that our kids only get along for no longer than a day and a half makes this essential for our happiness.
As for the eye contact thing, I think that's pretty important. My son does not make eye contact when he feels intimidated and I've wondered if that will impact his dating life some day.
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I was living in Hawaii and on a two week vacation traveled to Seattle to stay with an old friend for a week. I was then scheduled to fly down to southern California to stay with another friend for the second week. While flying to SoCal, I had planned a 24 hour layover in San Francisco to see the sights. I was traveling alone and my Seattle friends' girlfriend suggested she get in touch with an old girlfriend of hers in San Francisco and she could play tour guide for the day. I really had no interest and did not want to impose. My friends' girlfriend in San Francisco had the same response. Reluctantly, it was set up anyway and she picked me up at the airport. We immediately hit it off and I ended up staying in San Francisco with her for the second week instead of traveling down to SoCal. With me living in Hawaii and she in San Francisco we did the long distance relationship thing and were married just over a year later. We just celebrated our 20 year wedding anniversary this past June.
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"We met online but it wasn't a dating site." is usually the short version we tell people.
+1! Here's my long version:
We met in a Yahoo chat room about an unusual interest we shared. We were both 'regulars' but never really spoke to each other for various reasons:
- We lived in different continents and different time zones.
- We came from different cultures.
- I was 18, and he was 46.
- He was married with four kids.
One night, I wanted to talk to start a private voice chat with someone else in the chat room and mistakenly clicked on his name instead. It almost ended there, but we went on talking for hours. It was just SO easy to talk to him, and I always loved his Australian accent. Still, because of the issues mentioned above we remained only friends for two years, talking through big events in our lives (like his divorce and my solo move to another country for uni). Then, quite suddenly, we weren't just friends.
He hemmed and hawed because I was so much younger, but I was (am) stubborn and wanted to meet him IRL. Unfortunately, as a poor student, I couldn't really afford to. Then, by chance, my father mentioned that his company was going to send him to Australia for some work there. I jumped at the chance and got him to agree to let me crash in his hotel room, but he refused to give me the money for my plane ticket. I thought all was lost until I coincidentally won a contest with a cash prize --- JUST enough for the cheapest, low-frills, budget, economy airfare to Australia.
What was supposed to be one week of crashing on my now-husband's couch (he had actually made it for me on my first night there - but by then I had no intention of staying there) turned into two, and then every summer and school vacation after that. Then a visit to meet his kids. Finally, two years later, I graduated, but I skipped my graduation ceremony to leave everything behind and move in with him and his kids in Australia.
There are so many reasons why we should never have worked, much less continue to work, but it's been ten years since that fateful misdirected voice chat request. We are so different in so many ways that I think we could only ever have met online, but we've found our personalities are complementary rather than contradicting. Our age difference, which seemed like such an imposing obstacle in the beginning, seems smaller every happy year we spend together.
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"We met online but it wasn't a dating site." is usually the short version we tell people.
Our age difference, which seemed like such an imposing obstacle in the beginning, seems smaller every happy year we spend together.
Yep- I'd agree that has been my experience (but in my case the age gap is only 17 years, LOL).
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IIRC, most people marry friends of their friends. You generally don't marry a friend because if you wanted to date them, you already would be. But your friends probably have similar taste in people and know people who might be compatible. My husband and I meet at the apartment of a girl he knew from theater and I had freshman Italian with. Later, when I went through his Facebook, I was astounded we hadn't gotten together sooner. He was close friends with my study abroad roommate, lived across the hall from one of the first friends I made in college, we used to work for the same department, etc...
I've found friends this way too. Elaine (who used to be active on the forum here) and I hit it off in person, only to later discover that my husband and I went to school with her BFF and she used to spend weekends on campus when we were all students there. I met another close friend of mine through a mutual friend when we all shared the same hobby. If you are like most people, there are several hundred people within a degree of separation and odds are great that you'll hit it off with several of them.
Twice last week single friends were talking to me about dating, and I was reminded of what you said in this post and shared it with them. It's so true, but so easy to forget.