My first wife and I met at the college theater where we both had non-acting roles as stage hands in a play there. We hit it off immediately and were married after she completed her college years (I had already dropped out by then).
Zoe and I met by way of local BBS websites in the mid-1980s. We talked on the phone a lot before ever meeting face-to-face. But our main early connection was by way of email and online chats. Most of the people attending our outdoor wedding on New Year’s Day were people we had “met” over our computers. In fact, my Best Man had been the “Sysop” of one of the boards where we had spent the most time before we ever “met.”
I went to a shadchanit (matchmaker) that my roommate had recommended. I went over to her house, and we spoke for about 2 hours. She told me that she knew a young lady that I might be interested in meeting, even though she (the matchmaker) had never actually met her. (The matchmaker knew about her because the young lady’s friend’s sister had lived in the home of the matchmaker while she was in school.)
We (the young lady and I) spoke on the phone, and first went out at the end of August. We got engaged on Thanksgiving Day, and were married the following June. That’s now 28+ years ago, and we’re still happily together.
BTW, the matchmaker finally met her in person on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, after we were engaged.
I was a new student at the San Francisco Zen Center, and had moved into one of the communal houses filled with ZC students adjacent to the center. One of the people in my house was really strange and was hitting on me in an aggressive way alternating with pretending I didn’t exist, including when I was in fact talking to him face to face. I was desperate to find a new place to live.
A room became available in the largest and most venerable of the ZC houses and I moved in. Was immediately attracted to one of the other inhabitants but he didn’t seem to notice me. Courting was complicated in that milieu as firstly, there was no free time between zazen and working for the ZC businesses to see people other than other zen students which led to the second problem, which was that, for most long term students, every possible relationship had already been tried. New students thus were urgently cultivated by older singles of the appropriate gender. But this guy, who’d been there for nine years, didn’t seem very interested in me.
Luckily, mental instability was never in short supply there, and another woman in the house had a habit of hysterical paralysis (not kidding!). One afternoon she called to me to help her because her legs wouldn’t move. She asked me if I’d get her some ice packs, which often aided her recovery. But, no ice in the house, I had no car, and there was no place to buy ice within walking distance since we were in a ghetto neighborhood with pretty much no stores. My Guy of Interest happened to be home and said he would run to the supermarket for ice. He turned to me and said, “want to come?”
Yes, I noticed the thread first and told her I was going to post in it, and she decided to post “her side of the story” later on, since we had a rather different perspective on the ‘significant events’.
We first met at Orycon 5, then we kept on bumping into each other at Westercon 37, Portland Science Fiction Society meetings, and Friends of the Doctor. We finally had a personal meet-up when I said yes to helping with tear down of Hospitality for Orycon 5, been together ever since. Married in '87.
Here’s another “getting dumped was the best thing that ever happened to me” story:
Six and a half years ago, I was just divorced, and living a cliche–43 years old, balding, out of shape, living literally in my parents’ basement, working as a keyholder at Gamestop.
One day when I was off, a young woman (20 years old, nerdy, skinny, bespectacled and beautiful) came in looking to get Skyrim, and my boss offered her a job on the spot. “Skyrim, huh? Swampwolf will absolutely LOVE you!”
If he only knew…
After a couple of months, I convinced her to join us on a company-wide pizza/bowling party, two weeks later she asked me out because she wanted to have conversations with someone who wasn’t her (admittedly lousy, long-distance) boyfriend. We went for coffee, and after nearly six years of living together, this past March, we went down to the courthouse to get married.
Luckily, her mom loves me. Her dad…? Well, not so much. Funny thing is, if I get together with her, both of her parents, and her step-parents, I’d still be the oldest in the group. what I tell people is that I love her despite our age difference, not because of it.
We both taught at a center for developmentally disabled children. She was married, I had a partner. I was offered a full scholarship to get my master’s degree a thousand miles away, and was just getting that planned when she took me aside and confessed her feelings. Her husband was a serial cheater, and my partner was a chronic alcoholic. Been married for 35 years.
Yep, I read his post, and rewrote it from my perspective. The last line of both posts is the same on purpose. Except for the typo, I couldn’t not correct that.
We’ve told the story so many times that, really, it always sounds pretty much like this no matter who tells it. It’s the story of a guy misinterpreting everything a girl says to him, and the girl being clueless as to the effects her casual words have on him.
I met my wife at my younger sister’s 16th birthday party (I was 18). We talked a bit during the festivities and when she left I asked my sister “Where have you been hiding HER?”. We started dating shortly thereafter and have been together ever since - dated for 7 years while she finished high school and college, married for 30 years.
How’s this for an opening sentence: I met my wife at a rape crisis center.
I was a volunteer, she was an employee. She’s the one who asked me out first; I was feeling “interested” vibes from her, but it felt weird to make the first move, because she was essentially my boss, you know? First date was a disaster. But, that was more than 17 years ago. We’ve been married since 2004, and we’re still going strong.
I had just returned from a couple of weeks in Hawaii and needed to do some laundry. I headed down the elevator in my apartment building and as I exited the elevator, this sweet young thing goes rushing by me with a basket of laundry.
So off I went to the laundry room and the first thing I see as I walk in is her bending over at the machine. My first thoughts: Hmm, nice ass. A wee bit big but still very nice.
That was a few decades ago and now we share the laundry.
During the party where Ms. P and I met some of us climbed the ladder up to the roof. I had the same thought while she was climbing up ahead of me. I still say “NB” (for nice butt) when she’s walking up the stairs in front of me.
I met my husband to be while we were both in the Army, at the Defense Language Institue in Monterey, California. We were married less than a year after meeting. ]]
Should have waited until my overseas tour. We were really two very different sorts of people, and the marriage lasted less than five years. I’ve never married again.
Good old Defense Lust Institute. I guess I didn’t know you were MI. When were you there? (June 92-Oct 93)
We were newly single coworkers. She, a stunning gal 13 years younger than me, and…well, dumpy old me. I found out later her sister, her mom, and some of her aunts all married dudes about 13 years older than they. I suspect mystical skullduggery and witchcraft to this day, but I digress. I evidently was giving signals without knowing it, and she was not giving signals so much as spelling things out and I still didn’t get it. Like, she suggested we go back to my place for lunch, so I was all, “Sounds great!” and so we noshed some Subway (not a euphemism) on my apartment balcony and returned to work. Ours is an adorable story of a gal who thought the role of a woman was to be used by a man, and of a guy who thought the role of a man is to serve. We didn’t know quite what to do with each other…until we figured out that can be a pretty intoxicating personality combination under the right circumstances. It’s a fantastic arrangement.
