How did you meet your spouse?

In My Humble Opinion
21

He sent me a random IM on AOL, when I was 19 and he was 21. I was just coming home from a party and was a touch tipsy, or else I never would have responded, but I did and ended up talking to him long enough that by the time the conversation ended, I was stone sober.

We met 3 weeks later, spent about 6 months as friends with benefits, and then split up amicably. We both dated around but e-mailed back and forth about once every year and a half or so. Eventually I got engaged, and at some point during that we started talking online again every day. We managed to become even better friends than we were before. Things with the ex got rocky, I kicked him out, and I needed a place to go while he was moving out. Patrick offered to let me stay with him for the weekend, and since most of my friends were out of town or didn’t have the space, I accepted. I pretty much never left after that. We got married a year and a half later and are now expecting our first child any day now.

22

My first husband lived on our block.

My second husband was screwing my first husband and needed a green card.

23

I was dating this horrible guy, Kenny, who my family, friends and coworkers all hated. He was much older, had a drinking problem, lived with his mom, didn’t drive, and, as some people knew, had the E.D.

So, my boss gets married, Kenny picks a fight so he won’t have to go to the wedding. I bring my sister, who is very outspoken and she gets to gossiping with a coworker about how useless Kenny is. My coworker, with her shrill, loud voice, proclaims, “That man has no redeeming qualities!” and turns to the fiance of another coworker and demands to know, “ROBERT! Don’t you have any nice young men for Caricci?” He immediately says that he does, his fiancee confirms that the guy is the one and it is agreed that they would set us up.

Now, how many times do people make these promises and then never follow through?A lot, right? I didn’t get my hopes up, although I knew Kenny needed replacing. And, meanwhile, Robert, who had been charged with finding me a nice young man, got home from the wedding only to find his brother dead on the lawn and yet, didn’t forget. He told my future husband about me at the wake and within a month we were double dating with the fix-up couple.

That night I thought he was really cute, but felt a little shy. I recall getting feedback from my friend that my eye contact could have been better. BUT, phone numbers were exchanged and we went out the next weekend. To see Natural Born Killers, not a good date movie. My husband to be complained about his sinuses and parking and we went to the movie and he took me right home and walked me to my door and left. I thought I’d never see him again, but I discovered he thought it went well so, being 31 and all, I tried again, became more assertive about things and we’ve been together ever since.

I ended up writing a letter to Kenny, btw.

24

On the street, in front of the old 9:30 Club in DC. I got her number, we started dating, and have been together ever since.

25

… you win.

My future spouse was my DM’s girlfriend. They broke up, he moved out, I moved in within a week or so. Other guys who had been waiting forlornly off in the wings for them to break up were kind of pissed that they missed the memo.

26

Well, he isn’t my spouse yet but we are moving in together and he says things like, “Tell your dad that his future son-in-law says hello!” so I figure that is close enough for this thread. :smiley:

We met on Craigslist. I had only been in NYC for about a year and was looking for a way to meet new people so I put up an ad on Craigslist (in the dating section, not in the casual encounters section…most people assume it was casual encounters for some reason) and he had 2 tickets for the upcoming Bon Jovi concert since his friend that was supposed to go with him lost most of her belongings and injured the crap out of herself in an apartment fire. She is fine now but at that point was in no condition to be sitting in Central Park for 8 hours. He responded to my ad and we went to the concert together and we have been inseparable ever since. We joke about how, when we eventually get around to the whole proposal and wedding planning thing, we should invite Jon Bon Jovi since he was the one who brought us together. :stuck_out_tongue:

27

I met my husband through his roommate when I was a college freshman. The roommate was in my chemistry class, and we had a test coming up. I walked over to his house after class one day, and my husband was standing there on the deck shirtless, grilling chicken and drinking a beer. We became friends, but it was not love at first sight. If you had come up to me that day and told me that in 6 years, I would be married to the shirtless guy with the funny New York accent, I would have laughed in your face.

This was at the very beginning of the fall semester, and I was even dating someone else at the time. We were friends, and I was pretty much over at his house all the time (Much cooler place to hang out than my freshman dorm). It took me until Thanksgiving break to realize that I liked this guy. He finally asked me out in January (online, through instant-messaging, which now sounds really lame). On our first “date,” we sat on the couch in his living room, holding hands and watching Cheers reruns.

We got married this past August :slight_smile:

28

We met on a Buffy board. A mutual board-pal decided that we needed to meet each other, and things just took off from there. A few months of on-lining, then phone calls, then she came out to meet me in person. We got married 2 years later.

29

In college, at church. He’d just gotten back from a long stint in South America, and all he owned was four t-shirts and a goofy-looking tan. He walked me home a lot (since we were both penniless and I lived a long way from campus–so did he, in almost the opposite direction), and our first date was at Top Dog (a teeny hotdog joint).

One of his first moves happened when 4 people had met at a location for a carpool to an event, but no cars showed up. He and I and his brother started walking to go home, and when we got down the hill he offered to walk me home. His brother asked why he would do that, and I laughed it off and went off alone. It took his brother another 10 minutes to go :smack: and realize just why a guy might want to walk a girl home.

It took him about 3 weeks to make up his mind that he wanted to marry me. Luckily he was too smart to say anything about it!

30

Mine was a case where I was quite happily enjoying bachelorhood and wasn’t even considering looking for an SO.

Then I came across a thread here on SD where the user was asking for opinions and feedback on her profile on okcupid. She was far enough away that there was little chance of starting anything so I created the minimum profile so I could see hers.

After I finished my basic data, the site pops up with their here’s someone near you notice and showed me someone’s profile. I scanned it and it was interesting, including a comment about needing her daily Starbucks. I whipped off a quick note along the lines of Hi, let’s talk. Can’t stand Starbucks, sorry if that’s a deal breaker.

Keep in mind the fact that my profile basically says that I’m male and have a birthday. A few days later I get a response, Hi, tell me more about you. Not interested in a bed partner, sorry if that’s a dealbreaker.

Which of course, everyone knows is code for I want to screw your brains out.

A few more emails back and forth before I suggest meeting at the bookstore for a coffe. We meet and talk a while discovering that I know most of the people in her gaming group. About a week after that screwed my brains out. A month later she moved in.

31

I think I have told this story, but we met on a blind date. We disliked one another immediately. I thought he was arrogant and self involved (but cute) and he thought I was mouthy and opinionated (but cute). We actually had a good time, though, as we are both too polite to act badly just because we don’t like somebody. But we each went to the folks who set up the blind date and said, “What were you thinking?” or words to that effect.

Apparently cute wins. Or maybe it was the polite thing. Married well over a decade, two kids. Considering becoming foster parents.

32

I clubbed her and dragged her back to my cave.

33

Cruising in a small town one night with a couple of friends when I was 23 or so. A carfull of girls was cruising around and we stopped to talk to them, this hot blonde girl was driving. Then later the blonde got into a fight with another girl, the police came and everything. Somehow (I think beer was involved) we wound up going back to my place. 4 or 5 months later we were married.

She’s now my ex of course, lasted about 2 years. Never misunderestimate the stupidity of a 23 year old.

34

On a street corner.

A chilly November night in Atlanta, 1984. Bruce Springsteen was coming to town, and I needed tickets. Back in those dark days before the interwebs, you had two choices in ticket acquistion: Go to the venue or more conveniently, go to Turtles Records, a chain record store with multiple locations. Seems they actually had computers linked to the venue and you could actually pick your tickets out!

There was a Turtles nearby (Ponce & North Highland for you locals) and tickets went on sale 9am Saturday morning. Savvy concert-goers know you have to get there waay before that, so I showed up at 4pm Friday. I was number 2 in line.

As more people showed up milling around, we decided to create some order so we wouldn’t have chaos in the morning, so we started handing out numbers and keeping track of everyone in line. Instead of standing there for 18 hours, we decided to call roll every 2 hours, letting everyone go and eat or whatever in between. The system worked well. Arriving people would naturally go to the end of the line, be told of the system, and to see the guy in the hat (Me) for a number.

Sometime after midnight a beautiful young lass in a navy peacoat with looong blonde hair showed up with her BFF and asked for a number. I’m kind of shy and not very suave, but I was struck by lightning and somehow got her roped in to a conversation with me. Hey-we’ve got Bruce in common, right? I had my car parked right there at the door, Springsteen blaring for the crowd, and we just hung out chatting for hours. It was nice until my girlfriend (oh yeah- I lived with a girl) showed up. She came over & literally put her back to Cute Blonde Girl and chatted a while. She eventually left, and CBG asked who **that **was. “Oh, that’s my cousin.” I said.

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t leave, and we kept on chatting through the night.

We started going out the next day, and have been together ever since.
Dated for years, and have been married almost 20 years now, with two great kids.

My girlfriend? We parted amicably, remained friends, and I got my own place.
She went on to college, met & married a guy and moved out to the country, on the same street as my aunt & uncle, oddly enough.

Years later, we bought my aunt & uncle’s house. Yep. down the street from old GF & hubby. We’ve been neighbors for 15years, now our sons are BFF (they’re one month apart), and the husband? Turns out he went to high school with my Mrs. and they were friends from back then.

It’s a small world.

35

Not my spouse yet, but we are headed in that direction.

My SO randomly googled “Dating in San Francisco Sucks” and came across an old blogpost of mine about how I’d been in a 4 car collision in SF while I was there with my (then) boyfriend. He found the post funny and decided to read the rest of the blog to see if the boyfriend was still around. He wasn’t. So he wrote to my anonymous blog email, anonymously himself. There were lots of personal details (his age, hobbies, what he did for a living etc.) but not his real name-he wrote under Andy Dufresne because Shawshank Redemption is his favourite movie. I wrote back politelly saying thanks for the blog props and asked him what his real name was since most people who write to me about the blog usually give me their real names. He wrote back something like, “well…you don’t put your real name on the blog.” Now I realise he was just being flirtatious but unfortunately his attempts to be cutesy coincided with my having to continually block some obnoxious blog troll’s comments about how I was a stuck-up bitch and I became suspicious that the troll might have taken it a step further by writing to me on email to win my confidence.

So I wrote him a rather harsh email saying that if in fact he was that guy, to quit it and get a life.

At which point my Mr. Blogfan wrote to me from his work email address with his real name and multiple apologies for scaring me. I googled him…and he was legit.

So we struck up an email friendship, which led to a phone friendship. Along the way we discovered that a goodly portion of my high school classmates had worked for him or had gone to college with him (he’s 3 years older than me). It’s amazing how many people we knew in common even though we had never heard of each other.

After about a month of talking on the phone, my mom and dad started bugging me about setting me up with some journalist dude because they are always trying to set me up with their friend’s sons. I mentioned this to him and he promptly told me he had a meeting in Los Angeles and that he wanted to take me out for dinner. I found out later that he actually scheduled the meeting AFTER he told me that. Anyway, he flew down and took me out to dinner and we’ve been together for over a year now.

Oddly, he knew what I looked like before we met because he google stalked my name and found my friendster profile but I had no idea what HE looked like. Every time I asked him how I should recognize him he got real dodgey about it. Finally, I managed to googlestalk his brother-he was cute so I figured my boyfriend wasn’t likely to be a troll. When he showed up he was athletic and extremely well dressed and well-behaved…I only found out later that he’s a little nervous about being dark complexioned since it’s seen as undesirable amongst Indians. I understand now but when we met I was baffled by why he was so avoidant about letting me see a picture before we met- since he’s pretty tall for an Indian boy, extremely well dressed (Hugo Boss head to toe) and very fit and athletic.

So the short answer would be…the internet ;). But not Match.com or anything.

36

It was raining, so the bear hunters weren’t in a big hurry to get out to it. We all were hanging in one of the trailers drinking coffee. I was about to go out by myself and deer hunt when two more hunters came in out of the rain. One I knew frm the year before and a friend of his who I’d never met.

We were introduced and then I left to go deer hunting, which is much nicer in the rain than bear hunting. The next time he saw me, I had a grin from ear to ear, blood up to my elbows, and a deer in the back of the truck. He reminded me to attach my tag. We danced around getting to know each other for the rest of the season, with all of our friends encouraging us. Before bear season was over several months later, we were an item.

Several weeks into the next deer season we took a day off hunting and got married in camp, surrounded by friends and family. One set of friends were late because they’d shot a buck on the way in. It was perfect.

37

I’m old, but I’m not ***that ***old!

38

Nude…bowling…night? BAD NAKED! :stuck_out_tongue: Brain bleach, please!
My mom introduced me to my guy. He’s an electrician and he was remodeling the bank-building she worked in. They worked very closely, as she was coordinating the remodeling around the actual bank-work, and deciding anything that needed deciding, like locations of outlets and such.

She thought he had a great personality, in addition to being good-looking. So she introduced us. :slight_smile: I had to agree with her. We’ll have been married 15 years in May.

39

It was 1995. My aunt was getting married and I was a bridesmaid. I met the groomsmen and was relieved to be matched up with the best looking one. We flirted a little in the limo, and after the obligatory bridal party dance he asked me for another dance. I had to decline because it would have been rude to ignore my date/boyfriend.
The next day I went away to college.

The following summer I was at a Labor Day picnic at my aunt’s house. The good looking groomsman was there. I wasn’t seeing anyone. I flired - hard. He flirted back. Then the picnic ended. He showed up at the convenience store where I was working a few days later with the intention of asking me out (as I learned later) but I was in the middle of a cash crisis and working with a manager to get the safe opened. He chickened out. I didn’t see him again until. . .

New Year’s Eve 1997. A party at the aunt’s house. I had just broken up with a guy. More flirting was going on, but I was starting to doubt if he was really interested. I figured he thought I was too young for him. (7.5 year age difference) There was enough flirting that my Mom started asking around about this guy who was hitting on her daughter. Just when I was starting to make some headway, my aunt’s very drunken friend starts literally hanging on him. I knew they had gone out before. I figured she could have him then if that’s how it was. (I was rather sulky that night, having just dumped a guy over the holidays, and was trying my darndest to get very very drunk, and failing.)

What I didn’t know: When they went out, the date was a disaster (in his opinion but not hers). He had no intention of repeating the experience. He wouldn’t ask me out because he thought I had a boyfriend. My mom mentioned to my aunt that I had dumped the boyfriend. She ran and told her husband. He ran and told his friend, who went looking for me to ask me out. By that time I had gone home. He called the next day to tell me I left my camera at the aunt’s house.

We went out two days later. On the seventh anniversary of that first date, our first daughter was born.

40

That’s sweet. :wink: