What did you think of your SO when you first met him/her?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I barely noticed him.

We met at freshman orientation in college, and I was kind of interested in another guy I had met at the time. That he was very kind was immediately obvious, but he seemed very meek and more than a little nerdy. On top of this, he had curly hair–a dark, fluffy 'fro actually – and I’ve never found curly hair attractive.

We were in the same intensive language program, so we remained acquaintances for a while, which culminated in a pretty intense, personal 3am dorm-room conversation. So naturally I avoided him like the plague, and when he called me on it, it led to a very close friendship. While we were best friends, I remember once noticing that he had very kind eyes.

And then one day, following months of intense e-mail conversation and phone calls and platonic dates, I realized that I could not do with being anything other than number one in this man’s life. His love – and his bizarre reverence for me – just absolutely floored me.

So no, not love at first sight. If someone had walked up to me and said, ‘‘This is your soulmate,’’ I would have laughed hysterically. But this experience has led me to mistrust first impressions–you just never know who a person truly is. Sometimes that takes time to reveal itself.

22

She was a new-hire teacher and I was her department head. I had heard whe would be checking in and I went by the school to introduce myself. The problem was I had been working on my lawn and I looked pretty scruffy. When I got to the school before I got a chance to introduce myself to this attractive young woman, she took it into her head I was a relatively minor custodian, and she started having me move furniture (about seven times), unload boxes, put up new bulletin boards and move boxes from storage to her room. I never got a chance to tell her who I was (She did offer me a nice tip though - but I told her that I knew how low starting teacher salaries were so I turned it down).

Anyway, after about three hours of moving stuff and the like, she asked me if I could think of anything else that she should do now that we got her room set up. I told her she probably should check in with her department head. I told her I was pretty sure he was in the gym earlier and maybe he was still there. We went down there and as we approached I saw some of the coaches and I said, “This is the new English teacher, and I think she should meet Mr. TV, have you seen him?”
They picked up on the gag quickly and they said they had but he had left there and maybe he had gone over to the Ag Department. The Ag Department sent us to the theater and the Theater instructor sent us to the Music instructor and so forth and so forth.

After about 45 minutes of wandering the halls of the school, we were getting of tired of looking for TV time. I finally suggested we go by the office and let them page him. I stood outside the office as she went in and asked for the secretaries to page me. They looked at her as if she were addled and pointed through the glass of the office at me. She looked at me, they nodded, asked them a question looked at me again and then asked them a question again, burst out crying and came out and hit me.

Clearly, when I first met her, I thought that this was a lady who could survive me. She has for 25 years now.

23

Great story!

24

I thought she was a stuck-up bitch. She thought I was a partying jerk. Then we woke up one Sunday morning, entwined together in the same bed at a friends apartment (it was one hell of a party). We’ve been together for 29 years now (married for 27).

25

deleted extra post

26

We’d been talking online for a couple of months before we decided to meet up in person… he’d been very open about the fact that he was only 5’4", but knowing something and actually seeing it are two very different things.

Thought #1: Wow, he’s really SHORT.
Thought #2: Why did I decide to wear my humongo platform boots tonight? I’m towering over the poor guy.

Three years later, he’s still short, I still wear my humongo platform boots from time to time, and we’re both okay with it because height doesn’t mean a thing when you’re horizontal anyways.

27

I viewed him with deep suspicion. We met because a random google search led him to my blog. He read through the whole thing, then contacted me at the anonymous email address I have on my profile page. Except he wrote to me anonymously. Then KEPT writing anonymously. At the same time, some dork had been leaving me troll-ey messages where I kept banning the guy’s IP addy but he kept making up a new one to leave me a crappy message…

Well…you can imagine what happened. I semi-accused him of being the troll (but apologised in advance in case of mistake). He wrote back promptly with his real name. I googled him and his info jived with what he had told me. So I told him my real name and he promptly asked for my number. I stalled for a little while but he had LinkedIn me (he’s obsessive about that) and I figured out that 3 of my high school classmates worked for him, and had also gone to the same college (though he’s 3 years older than us). I wrote to one and she reassured me he was a nice guy and completely normal.

We started talking and I really really liked him (though I was intimidated by his success). But he refused to give me a picture so the first time I saw him in person was when he quickly flew down to meet me after I told him my parents were pressuring me to go out with another family friend.

I already knew him, personality wise, from talking hours on the phone everyday. When we met I was like…“whoah…hot!”

(he already knew what I looked like because he found my facebook/friendster profile)

28

I saw her at a meeting of the environmental group I was part of and thought she was really cute. She had the most beautiful long dark hair and a sweet figure. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her until a few weeks later though when we drove up together to work on the Clearwater. I found out she was really bright, shy and quiet and my biggest shock, a few years older than me. She looked younger and I was only 23. I also found out she lived in Hoboken and was working in the City so I did not think dating would work.

I talked to her whenever we met up and came close to asking her out several times but I was never great at asking girls out*.

Many months later I was working the Clearwater Revival with her and got to really know her and offered to drive her home. I then finally asked her out the next day. It took at least a week after that date before I thought she was the one though. :wink:

We have been together now since 1991.

pullin, somehow I hear your post in my head to *Taxi *by Harry Chapin.

Geez TV time, you deserved to be hit for that. :smiley:

Qadgop the Mercotan, I think it is simply amazing you ended up marrying your high school sweetheart and it worked so well. I don’t here very many success stories like that.

Jim

  • I found out later that after the trip to work on the Clearwater, she had come home and told her Grandmother that she had met a cute boy that she liked but he didn’t ask her out. :smack:
29

When I first saw him: nice butt.

When I first met him: ouch. Moms Mabley’s voice went through my brain, “that ol man was so ugly he hurt mah feelings!”

Backstory: Eight year before I met my dearheart, I left an abusive marriage (his idea to leave, not mine…don’t think I had any ideas to offer.) I’d gone from an abusive marriage to an abusive relationship. I’d been out of the relationship 2.5 years, had moved to an apartment in my daughters’ school district & joined a church. One night, after staying up reading Chicken Soup for the Soul, I prayed, “God, if you’ve someone for me, please send him on. And keep me from getting stupid while I wait for him.”

Ken, the guitar player in the church band had another gospel band he played with. This gospel band showed up & played at our church picnic. This is where I saw the bass player. Everyone else at the picnic seemed to know him, but he didn’t say much. He just kept his head down & played. I circled around him & noticed the nice butt.

A few weeks later we were introduced. I had my Moms Mably moment. As I got to know him, I found out he was intelligent, had a wonderfully dry sense of humor (important to me), a sense of integrity, and a sense of loyalty. A few weeks after we met, I was sitting in a pew in church, & he slipped into the pew behind me. I turned around & made a joke. He replied in all seriousness, “I’ll always have your back.”

A few weeks later after that, he called me to ask for a recipe. We baked a cake together (German chocolate, from scratch), & we started dating.

We’ve been married 10 years (he’s 59, I’m 55). I’ll love & trust him until the day I die. He’s the first man I ever trusted to watch my back & I still believe his promise.

Love, Phil

30

You know the song with the refrain, “…across a crowded room…”?

Saw him in a bar on the other side of the room. Our eyes locked.
Can’t explain it, but just knew that he might be “the one”.
Put my beer down and walked over and said hello.

27 years later and have never regretted it for a moment.

31

We met on a blind date. I thought he was arrogant and self absorbed and dressed badly – but attractive. He thought I was mouthy and opinionated and dressed badly – but attractive. We each went back to the folks who had set up the date in the first place and asked “What were you* thinking*?”.

The possible future relationship potential was about zero, in both our minds. But I maintain my position that mostly people tell you what is wrong with them as soon as you meet them – more than a decade later I still think he is arrogant and self absorbed, and he still thinks I am mouthy and opinionated. It’s just that we later got the opportunity to see the rest of it, as it were.

32

Actual words through my head as I was introduced to him? “I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night.”

He was very small (5ft4) very muscular and with very very black hair, square jaw and a monobrow!

It also didn’t help that I was introduced to him my second week or so in Japan and by that point I had reached saturation point with strange names never heard before, so his name simply didn’t stick. It got to the embarassing situation when I had asked his name and forgotten it instantly so many times that I dare not ask again. It took me five months to link name and face. Ooops…

It gradually dawned on me that kids and dogs liked him, that he was always first at a meeting place and last out, usually cleaning up or unobtrusively doing all the work, sleeping in the worst places when we went camping, helping the weaker members when we went skiing and usually doing most of the driving. All silently but carefully listening to the conversations going on around him, noticing everything, and GIGGLING when something tickled him, which fascinated me hearing this funny laugh coming out of such a strong man.

He was immediately dismissed by the Japanese girls in our group as too short, not earning enough and not “masterful” enough. They all got stuck with the loud, good looking selfish types as I suddenly woke up to what a catch this one was. I snuck in and got him before anyone else noticed.

We have been together 17 years and married for 14 now and I still love him and he still loves me. And he’s still helpful and observant and pretty silent! I spend a lot of my time with him “poking” him with conversation starters and things that I hope will get him talking (odd things will spark him off and then he won’t stop but it’s always a bit of a mystery as to what will do it that day!) or make him laugh, as that giggle still gets to me, even 17 years later!

And we have two kids and live three hours drive apart from each other. He only gets home maybe four or five days a month which sucks. It’s a bit like being a single mother with a boyfriend who visits occasionally. Sigh…

33

We met online at a dating site, emailed back and forth for a while (his emails were great - literate and spelled correctly - woohoo!), talked on the phone for a bit (that didn’t go as well - we still don’t talk on the phone much), then met in person finally. My first impression of him was that he was late - we met at a lounge/restaurant, with me in the lounge, and him in the restaurant. :slight_smile: Once we sorted out that we were both there on time in two different places, we sat and talked for hours, without any first date weirdness. My second impression of him was smart, funny, weird in all the right ways, and cute as all hell. My thought on driving home after meeting him was, “Well, that went really well. I don’t suppose he’ll ever call again.” (I had been meeting guys from online for awhile at that point - meeting them seemed to make them go away very nicely.) But I was wrong! He called the very next day, and we made plans for the next week. That also went well, and the rest is history (six year anniversary this summer).

I know what you mean about sneaking off with a good one, Hokkaido Brit - Jim is a very quiet guy who wasn’t noticed by a lot of girls, and that’s my good fortune. They didn’t bother to see the quality guy in front of them, and that’s too bad for them.

34

Yes Featherlou, I was teased and even scorned by a couple of people for going out with him - “What are you doing with him??”

I take some perverse pleasure in knowing that all three of the other couples who got together at around the same time as us are divorced now. So for all their sneering we got it right and they didn’t…

But that is an ignoble thought and one I’ve never actually spoken aloud…

35

She was working at a Japanese school I was teaching at. First time I saw her I thought “This one’s mine!”. And after thirteen years and a whole bunch of tough times - during which she never gave up on me when no-one, least of all me, could have blamed her for saying “Sorry, but this wasn’t what I signed on for” and caught the next plane out - she’s still mine, and I’m hers.

She’s the only reason I’m still alive to write this, and when I ask her sometimes why she stuck it out even after I’d given up on myself - or thought I had - she just says “Because I love you”. She is the day and the night, the sun and the moon, the earth and the sea and the stars. She is everything.

36

I was quite floored really. He was the cousin of one of my best friends. I was the maid of honor at her wedding, and afterwards, I kept hearing about Cousin Billy. Cousin Billy thought SylverOne was cute in the wedding pictures… Kept asking questions about her… We think Cousin Billy has a little crush on SylverOne. Ad infinitum.

I got sick of hearing about it after a short while. Didn’t think much of it though, as the bride’s family lived 300 miles away, I figured my chances of meeting cousin Billy were blessedly slim to none. I had this picture of him in my head as being an obnoxious, skinny video-game playing teenager with bad skin, who would annoy me to no end.

Soooo… fast forward about 3 months. The groom shows up on my doorstep one day, when I’m in full housecleaning mode*. Right behind him is this rather good looking creature, early 30’s, with a military buzzcut and a leather coat over really broad shoulders.

Yep, sure enough, it was Cousin Billy. Fresh out of 6 years in the military.

Luckily, my housecleaning wardrobe and taste in music didn’t scare him away. We started dating a few weeks later, moved in together after a couple of months and celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary this year. :slight_smile:
*Scary sweatpants, old ripped t-shirt with music blaring in the background. Embarrassing music, usually a techno and 80’s hair metal mix.

37

I was in love with her the moment I met her. We were both 18, and met the first day of college. She was beautiful, had a great figure and seemed really sweet, but at that age I had been taught by experience that beautiful, hot, sweet girls weren’t interested in me. So it took a while to work up the courage to talk to her. And she really was sweet. And I really was in love.

Over the next 13 years of being acquaintences, and friends, and lovers, and broken up, and maturing, and being friends again, and lovers again, I finally worked up the nerve to propose to her. She wanted to know what had taken me so long.

And 23 years after meeting and being in love with her, and 10 years of marriage, she’s still beautiful, and still has a great figure, and is still so sweet (and smart, and funny, and a great mom, and too many wonderful things to list here).

38

My first thought was that the editors of “Welsh Brides Quarterly” had some serious explaining to do. :dubious:

39

When I “met” him through his online profile, my first thought was that he was cute (I could see dimples!) and obviously smart and funny because his profile was well written.

When I actually met him for the first time after talking to him online and on voice chat and the phone for three months, my reaction was a mix of relief that he actually looked like his picture and a little bit of “damn, he’s hotter in person”.

The fact that he showed up for our first date in a Disney t-shirt, and was wearing these godawful hiking boots instead of shoes showed me that he was definitely being himself and I’d always know what I was getting with him. And that night when we went to see this Marine Corps marching band thing, and he was sitting beside me and making oompah sounds along with the tuba… yeah, I knew he was a keeper.

I can’t say that I got the “he’s the one” feeling right when I first met him, but there was a definite feeling of “oh, I’ve stumbled onto something really good here”, and it’s only grown since then.

40

I thought she was cute, but ditzy. I was a very serious young man back in the day…