I was in a donut shop working on a story I was writing when I noticed him looking for a seat. The place had become crowded since I arrived so I offered to let him sit at my table. We chatted for awhile, then he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I did and we’ve been together for the two and a half years since.
Indeed.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist, but speaking from experience- in our 49 years together Mrs. Cretin and I have spent a* lot* of time in nudist groups.
No interesting tale for us. Met at the Auto Parts Warehouse where we both worked. My coworker told me he thought she seemed interested in me, I asked her out, 15 minutes into our first date we were already a couple, although we didn’t realize it for a few weeks. Married 10 months later. If we can hold out for another 20 months we’ll be married 50 years.
We met in the Army band. She played clarinet and I played flute.
We have a beautiful daughter.
Unfortunately she passed away after eight years. A young 36.
Haven’t met anyone to replace her. And that was 30 years ago.
Met online on a Buffy message board, where we were introduced by a mutual online friend. Chat, then massive phone bills, then massive plane bills. Met on Sept. 12, I proposed exactly one year later, married exactly one year after that. 14 years married and still on the honeymoon.
We met in November, 1987, in the “back room” of a gay theater. It was a Friday before a long weekend, and we were together the entire weekend. We knew right away that we’d always be together. Next month, it’ll be 31 years.
It’s a complex story.
The simple version was that I met her during a creative writing class. I was the only one about her age and I also wrote SF/fantasy, which she liked to read.
The complex part was that I was out of work and married to someone else at the time.
That was fine with her. She was shy and didn’t want to deal with a real relationship. So she developed a bit of a crush on me because I was “safe” and it wouldn’t go beyond daydreams. I was unaware of it – I wasn’t looking for anyone else – except for one time when I went to compliment something she wrote and realized the starstruck way she was looking at me. I ended the conversation quickly after that. I was married.
Then one night about the time the class was ending, my wife went to a meeting at the local Boy’s Club (I was at one at the YWCA that night; I had found the juxtaposition amusing). She didn’t come back. I spent a sleepless night fearing something terrible had happened to her. But she showed up in the morning. “I’m not proud of what I did,” she said. “But I’m not ashamed, either.”
And just like that, it was over. I tried whatever I could to fix things up with her, but she shut me off. She had me leave the house and I ended up living with her grandmother and aunt, who thought she was crazy. It was the worst time of my life.
But we kept the class going as a place to share our writing. We’d meet, supposedly to continue, but one day it was just my future spouse and me, and we spend the evening talking (not about my troubles).
Finally, I asked her out to a movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark (the legal separation had come through). The next week, we went to Superman 2 and I kissed her for the first time. She knew my situation, – no surprise because I had blurted all out when I randomly ran into the teacher of the class, who knew her well.
Well, things grew from there. After the divorce was finalized, I asked her to marry me, and she gladly accepted.
It’s been 36 years. Being dumped was the best thing that happened to me.
The girlfriend of my best friend (at the time, long story there — I even did a pit thread) had a birthday party for him. She had 15 or so friends and he had me.
At the party, she was definitely the cutest, and when she suggested an excursion the following week to a gay bar than another of their friends worked at, I quickly signed up.
I had to leave early from the party and after I left, the friends joked with her to to be careful of me!
The excursion wound up being only her and me. We started dating, she got pregnant, we got married, and while unfortunately lost the baby we had two more children after that.
I like stories about how couples met. I’m a romantic at heart. My short answer is that we met at work. There was no work hanky-panky going on either.
After 11 years and 3 kids in a loving and stable marriage, wife #1 suddenly and surprisingly dumped me, and the kids too. She walked out on the entire family. I was blindsided, crushed. My family, whom we both were close with, asked me what the hell is going on? And even her family, whom we both were close with, also asked me what the hell is going on? I had no clue, it was such a Jekyll and Hyde moment. And, hard to believe as it may be, there wasn’t another guy. Or gal.
At one point she even said that she wants nothing to do with the kids, but within a week, maybe two, she changed her mind. To this day she vehemently denies that. Not that I bring it up; early on I did, and she denied it. Twice, and so vehemently that I never brought it up again but that was very strange, on top of an already bizarre situation. The whole thing was very bizarre indeed. I was floored, miserable, completely heartcrushed.
2 years later I met the lady who would be wife #2 when she interviewed at my company, a peer interview. I was still recovering from my breakup, still taking care of my kids then ages 13 and 11 (2 sons), and 9 (daughter). Their mother had custody and I had them every Sunday and every other Friday night and Saturday, and I was focused on them and me and healing. The company was a small startup and our cubicles were very close, but I wasn’t interested in #2. Not in a rush to complicate the relationship dynamics for my kids, and for me.
But as we got to know each other, she slowly developed a crush on me. 2 years after we first met, we had our first date, a movie and dinner. Saving Private Ryan, so romantic. But at dinner and afterwards, we talked and we talked. It was such a comfortable conversation, it was like coming home, only to no home I’d never known (quoting Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle). We had our first kiss that night. And then I drove her home.
We’ve been married 16 years now. It has worked out so incredibly well, we are very much in love and back when I was in the depths of despair I never knew it would end up this good. And I still have a loving relationship with the family of wife #1. Wife #2 does too. I never knew exactly what happened in that divorce. Maybe her family does, but I’m guessing they really don’t. Maybe she had some kind of mid-life crisis, but it doesn’t matter. I am so much better off.
RealityChuck there are a lot of similarities in our stories, including these two:
At work, it was my first job after grad school. I was dating someone at the time, but after that relationship ended, my wife and I started dating.
Very much so.
I was working at a summer camp as a department head between my 3rd and 4th year of university, I was 22. The rest of the staff arrived the day after, and I was standing with a friend as the buses arrived. We remarked at how young the junior staff (16/17 years old) looked.
Things at camp move very quickly, and by the end of the first week we had a group of staff that hung out together, including some of the junior staff. About 4 weeks in, I ended up alone with one of the girls I had my eye on and we started making out. We’ve been together 26 years, married 19 years, 2 kids.
It’s kind of a multi-part story…
I first met Rhiannon8404 at a Dickens Christmas Fair (think Reneaissance Faire, but Victorian-era and Christmas themed). We were both there as part of a large group of friends. She was there with the guy she was dating at the time (who I was vaguely acquainted with); I was with a friend of mine, hoping to get to know a different girl who I knew would also be there. At the end of the day, the girl I was there for was heading off with some other guy, and the friend I had arrived with had other plans for the evening, so I wound up going ice skating with this girl and her boyfriend (it was better than just going home). We all had a great time, and she and I hit it off really well.
A couple weeks later I was walking across the quad at school when I heard someone call out my name. It was the same girl from the other evening! She remembered who I was!
Soon after that, it was finals week. I decided I needed to talk to her again before we all broke for Christmas break…but I didn’t know how go about contacting her. I recalled her mentioning that she had a particular Econ class in a certain building at a particular time, so I went by the Econ Department office to look at the finals schedule in hopes I could figure out where her final was. Fate smiled on me, and I found the right classroom; I peeked in the window and saw her sitting in the classroom taking her final, so I sat down in the hallway to wait for her. She was understandably surprised to find me sitting there, but we had a good talk and I got her phone number.
A couple weeks later, I called her. I was without plans for New Years Eve, and I was pretty sure she was as well. Her mother answered the phone and told me “Oh, she was hoping you’d call!”.
So our first date was New Year’s Eve, we were married not quire two and a half years later, and celebrated our 25th anniversary this past May.
I met Andy L in our college cafeteria. We were introduced by mutual friends. He asked me to a dance a couple of months after that. A friend of ours saw him knocking on my door and asked another friend, “What’s he doing down there?”
She said, “He’s asking Dendarii to the formal! Haven’t you been paying any attention at all?” (We all would eat together in the cafeteria.)
We’ve been married for over 28 years.
We met in high school my senior year. She was in 10th grade.
We struck up a relationship during Christmas break when we were at a couple of the same events.
I went off to college the next year out of state, but we kept the long distance relationship going through that year. I transferred to another college in-state, largely so that we could be closer.
We got married after I graduated. We’ve been happily married for nearly 12 years now, with child #6 on the way.
We met at a Science Fiction Convention.
Not just ANY science fiction convention, but the 50th anniversary WorldCon.
We met at the party at the opening ceremony. I left my backpack with her and volunteered to get pieces of the celebratory cake for her and her sister. After that we ran into each other constantly. There were other people we knew at the Con who we never saw, but we kept bumping into each other over and over.
When she said goodbye to me the last night of the Con she kissed me “so I would remember her.”
She was living in New Jersey (40 miles from where I grew up), so it didn’t seem a likely thing, but I drove down to see her and take her on what she calls “our only date.” Then I came back down to her family’s house at the shore for a party with her friends (many of whom had been at the WorldCon – she was sharing a room with them). Her friends evidently approved of me. Then she came up to Boston, where I was living, and we kept on making these long-distance trips. Until, out of the blue, she quit her job and came up to Boston. And that was pretty much it.
I was in college and I went to this Charles Dickens Christmas Faire with this guy I was seeing who was Ok, but definitely not, like the love of my life or anything. We went with this whole group of people and I got to know a lot of them, because they were nice people. After it was all over my boyfriend and I wanted to go ice skating and one of the guys (Suburban Plankton) decided to tag along. He was nice, and I kind of felt bad because I think he was trying to get this other girl’s attention, and she was interested in someone else.
Some time later, I’m standing in the quad with a friend of mine chatting and I see this guy that I had met that weekend, and I said, “Hey! How’s it going?” because I’m a nice person and I greet people I know. Little did he know, I knew half the people on campus and was equally friendly to all of them.
Then it was finals week, and I had this horribly difficult final for my International Economic Policy class. When I was done, I walked out into the hallway and there was Suburban Plankton sitting there studying. I was like, “Hey, what are you doing here?” To which he replied, “Waiting for you…” the significance of which went over my head, and I proceeded to babble on about my excruciating final. He said something about maybe getting everyone together over break and so I gave him my number.
A couple weeks later, I was bemoaning the fact that my NYE plans had fallen through when he called. I mentioned to my mom that maybe that guy would call. He did call, and my mother answered the phone and told him “Oh, she was hoping you’d call!” which was so embarrassing.
So our first date was New Year’s Eve, we were married not quite two and a half years later, and celebrated our 25th anniversary this past May.
He was my RA freshman year in 1980. We were together for 11 years before getting married in '91, and (amazingly? 
) are still married. No kids but a lot of animals.
She was a few doors down the hall of the freshman co-ed dorm. We were married when I was 20. Fifteen years later still going strong.
Suburban Plankton and Rhiannon8404, did you notice that you both posted? Kind of amusing, seeing the same story from both points of view.