We met as graduate students at the University of Hawaii. I had already lived in northern Thailand, and we both lived on campus at the East West Center, a federal research institute, and were studying the same subject, although with different specializations. She was an East West Center student, her schooling paid for by the Thai government; I was live-in staff for the center’s Housing Department, which gave me a free place to stay, no mean trick in Hawaii. So we lived in the same building, too, although not at first, as there are two residence halls.
Hawaii is an extremely romantic setting for a courtship. At some point, we knew we would get married. Neither one asked. It was just assumed. We’ve tried to figure out exactly when, but we simply cannot put a finger on it. I was always going to return to Thailand anyway, so we came back together after graduation.
We were married in Bangkok by her mother in a Chinese ceremony. (The wife is considered Thai but of Chinese ethnicity; both of her parents were Chinese nationals with residency in Thailand.) We also registered the marriage at a district office in Bangkok, to make it legal. It’s recognized by the US, too.
BTW: The East West Center at the University of Hawaii is also where Barack Obama’s parents met. They were both East West Center students.
It was the end of summer, and most of my friends had gone on leave, or had girl plans for the long weekend. Being bored, broken-up and a bit homesick, I logged into a MUD I’d played on the year before, and talked someone who remembered me into restoring my character. As I’m reestablishing myself, someone comes across the guild line bashing the town I was homesick for, and logs out a half second before my response goes through. I’m advised by an old acquaintance to let it go, as she (she?) tends to be a bit high-strung. Of course I can’t, so I start talking to her about the city and why I miss it.
It happens that I had scheduled some leave about 6 weeks out to help out a community theatre I’d been involved with before I’d joined up. I went to meet her in the middle of my first week back. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, just wanted to show someone the beauty I’d found in that city. I found beauty of a kind I wasn’t expecting, a sharp mind, and a gentle soul as well.
I’ve never figured out what I did that earned me a chance with her, or the almost 13 years since we made it official, but I’m not going argue with it.
In college. She was in line in front of me as we were waiting in line to register for classes. I struck up a conversation with her, and we started hanging out in the same group of friends.
She lived in the Dominican Republic, I lived in Virginia, and we met at a convention in Minneapolis. The keynote speaker was deadly dull, and I snuck outside to have a cigar. Along comes this cute Caribbean chick, and I start chatting with her. I made the mistake of praising Cuban cigars and she fired back that it was Dominican cigars that were the best. It was a bit chilly outside in the evening air, and this was a formal dinner, so I got to do the cool move of offering her my tux jacket to wear. We talked for a long time, and then when I was checking out at the end of the event, the clerk said there was a package for me – a small box with three different Dominican cigars in it, and her business card.
I was working in an art supply store on King Street. On my lunch break, I went across the street for a beer and some chips at a quasi-Mexican joint named “Juanita Greenberg’s”. As I was downing a Dos Equis, a gorgeous blonde came in waving a dollar.
“Anyone have change for the meter?” she asked.
"Sure, but you have to let me buy you a beer, " I says. She had to return a pair of shoes to a shop down the street, but promised to take me up on the offer in about 15 minutes. It sounded like a brushoff, so I sat down, munched on a few chips and finished my beer. I had just settled up and was heading for the door when she came back in. I bought her a beer (which she never drank) and we sat and talked for over two hours.
When I finally got back to work, my two co-workers were a little pissed that I’d been gone so long.
“But I met the most amazing woman…” I told 'em.
Later that week we went out to dinner. Three months later we got married in a historic gazebo at the base of a lighthouse on St. Simons Island, GA.
In high school, freshman year. We were both in the IB program and we had driver’s ed together. I had a huge crush on him, but we never dated. I moved away after freshman year and we kept in touch on and off. He dated one of my friends through high school and I saw him again a couple times in college but after that we went our separate ways.
A few years ago I get a message from him saying he’s moving back to Florida. We catch up and it turns out we had both gotten married, then within a few years gotten divorced. We start chatting, and of course hit it off. He moved back to a different part of the state so for six months we were driving 8 hours round trip to go see each other every weekend. And I mean every weekend.
I started looking for a job where he lived and he started looking for a job where I lived. Eventually he found a job first and came and moved in with me. That was almost five years ago. We were married last October.
Ironically, I took it on the insistence of my first wife. While I was taking the class, she left me. Once the class (and the marriage) ended, I asked her out; she was the one person in the class who also wrote science fiction.
She was a coffeeshop barista and I am a coffee addict. I tried asking out another girl in front of her, got humorously rebuffed, and she offered to school me in better ways to approach women. (Much later I learned that this was a semi-setup between the two of them.) I vacillated about asking her out and posted a thread about it here; the comments ranged from “You’re a dirty old fart” to “Get over yourself, you dumb bastard.” I chose to listen to the latter set.
Here’s the scenario: Middling-to-large New York law firm. I’m the word processing manager. Middle-aged guy, a bit eccentric, or so I’m told She’s a hot-shit, partner-track associate. Drop-dead gorgeous. Quite a few years younger than me. She’d come in to the word processing center from time to time with work. We’d chat. We realize we enjoy chatting.
She invites me to a party she’s hosting. For her boyfriend. I go. I have a great time. Me and the future wife talk for ages.
Unbeknowst to me at the time, she breaks up with the boyfriend mentioned above, right after the party.
Back at work, we talk more. Eventually we decide to carry on a conversation after work, and go out for drinks. We have a great time. We repeat. Sometimes with other co-workers, sometimes not. Which is strange. Don’t know if any of you are familiar with New York law firms, but the support staff does *not *socialize with the lawyers. There’s a huge class divide.
This goes on for about a month or two.
Eventually, one evening, we’re out for drinks. It’s late. We decide to have dinner. We do. The restaurant is not far from her apartment, so after dinner I walk her back. I can’t take it any more. I say to her, "I know I’m on thin ice here, but I don’t care. . . " and I kiss her. Somewhat to my surprise, she responds enthusiastically. No more than a kiss (OK, a long one) that night, but I was very happy. I took a cab home in a daze.
I met him about 24 years ago when I was a freshman in highschool. We never went out when we were kids, but were great friends. (I always had and incredible crush on him!) After school I moved about 5 hours away to go to college. He ended up working for my father for a few years and became best friends with my brother. Many years go by, a few marriages come and go. We all fall out of touch. Two years ago he moves back to our hometown and ends up working for the same company as my brother. They catch up and after about 9 months my brother calls me saying that his “employee” has been bugging him to call me. He then puts my old friend on the phone. We’ve been married since June
It was in college, during IAP, a few weeks between terms in January where you could live in the dorms, take seminars, but not really have classes. She was visiting someone she met in band camp during junior high. The friend was part of the group I hung out with, and who I pseudo-dated over the summer. The first thing we did together was bridge. The friend was playing violin in a production of Yeomen of the Guard, and I got suckered into going with yet another friend, having a car. The friend tried to get my future wife to go also, but I was pissed at being suckered and invited her to go ice skating again on her last night visiting. It took five and a half years to get engaged, 4 1/2 of which we hardly talked to one another, but that was it.
I was just finishing college and had broken up with an abusive long-term boyfriend. Definitely NOT looking for a mate! One of the women in our church kept pestering me about this guy in her office that I needed to meet. I kept putting her off, but finally agreed to having him come to a church service. I figured I could be polite through that and then get away. It wasn’t love at first sight for me, but it was for him, and he was persistant. He called me to go to a Shakespeare play at my college…were engaged six months later, and married a year later. Twenty years later, our oldest is in her freshman year of college.
I had been seeing - dating would be too strong a word for it - a lady for a few weeks when she had a party at her place with friends from a Yahoo chat room for local BBWs.
A few days later, a Thursday, I logged into said chatroom, looked about, then went to make dinner. After eating, I got back on the computer, and had a bevy of messages, most from bots, a few from actual people. Among those was a “hi” from the future Bride of Caveman, who at the time had a mortifyingly ghetto-sounding screen name which she usually forbids me to mention.
I responded to all the hellos, chatted with a few, but within an hour or so, I was talking to her alone. I had asked her what brought her there, to which she responded that she was looking for a hookup the following night. Her honesty endeared her to me, especially since that is the very thing I had been seeking myself.
I got her pic, which was highly cute, and she told me she didn’t know what a BBW was, so I informed her that she didn’t quite qualify as one, but I wouldn’t tell if she didn’t. Toward the end of the night, she asked what I’d do if all she’d told me was false, and I said I’d still get a drink with her in public just to meet the source of the wit I’d sampled thus far. We decided to get coffee after work the next day, and as it turned out, she was even better than advertised.
Note: We met in July 2004, married in April 2005, and to this day, she claims not to recall mentioning her desire for a quick hook-up within the first five minutes of our conversation. I wish I had logged that chat!
Despite my sig, Cynthia and I actually met in High School. She sat behind me in 11th grade US history class on the first day of the school year. I had just moved into the school system a few weeks earlier from out of state, so she was literally one of the first people I met.
Our first date was for Homecoming that year. “Pops” Mercotan drove us, as I was still 15. As was she.
We were both at WKU (western kentucky), and met because a friend of mine and a friend of hers were both on a list of people without roommates, so they were going to pair them up. After the pairing, a bunch of people gathered in a room, and I went with my friend just to hang out. I fell in love right away, her, not so much.
We got together, then she dumped me cause I had an eye infection and she couldn’t look at me. We got back together, and she dumped me again because I left school and wasn’t coming back. We stayed friends, saw each other throughout the intervening years, hung out, came close to getting back together, didn’t, all that. She got married, I actually DJ’d her first wedding.
Turns out her first husband was a drunk, and a verbally abusive drunk at that. We started talking again, and she finally told me about how she was being treated. Talked about old times and such. Finally, we both decided there was something going on, but she wasn’t positive on leaving her husband. Not that I was pushing, but she was back and forth. So he decided to read her therapy journal, which talked about her feelings for me. He decided he wanted her to leave, so she did. They got divorced soon after (no kids, no shared property).
We’ve been married for four years, and have a kid. Still madly in love.
We both worked for a indie movie theater here in NYC… I was an assistant to the boss-man, he was a lowly ticket tearer. I was organizing a live Q&A with a director and needed someone to film the event for me. I scanned the ranks of the lowly ticket tearers, convinced that whichever film school dropout I picked would screw up my tape, so I just picked the cutest guy.
After that, I would run into him at the theater and make excuses to have extra-long chats with him. Eventually, I asked him out.
IRC, #callahans. We started talking in March of 1997: I flew down to meet him late April 1997. Got married December 1997. Still married, more in love every day.
