Comments on: Where did you meet the one you love?

Question: Where did you meet the one you love?

the fire you left me — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:07:02 -0800

Where did you meet the one you love?

By: GeekAnimator

GeekAnimator — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:08:37 -0800

By: davebug

davebug — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:11:43 -0800

She showed up at a party at my house. Really, though, I'd officially met her a month earlier when she went on a date or two with one of my pals.

Friends of friends is how I met 75% of the girls I ever kissed.

By: the fire you left me

the fire you left me — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:12:34 -0800

I ask in that in every club TRed wage slaves vibrate around short haired balding men in marketing, all the same. In every bar drinks the same 28 year old rocker, sick of filing. Where do people really meet?

By: Jikido

Jikido — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:19:57 -0800

gay.com .....

By: nelleish

nelleish — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:20:56 -0800

Sitting in the dark on neighboring driers in the school laundry room (a boarding, magnet high school), while watching The Phantom Menace on a "borrowed" TV propped up on a washing machine.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:21:42 -0800

High school.

By: ferociouskitty

ferociouskitty — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:22:43 -0800

I had sort of "dated" (okay, done) my husband's best friend a few times, and we still talked. He introduced us and we hit it off right away. Met the best friend online, back in BBS days.

By: spilon

spilon — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:24:52 -0800

On the phone. We didn't have this newfangled interweb thing back in my day....

By: konolia

konolia — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:34:02 -0800

Bible college.

And today is our 21st wedding anniversary!

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:39:06 -0800

I met my wife through a mutual acquaintance's birthday party, in residence at uni. We were at a Japanese restaurant. I offered to buy calimari for anyone who'd dare eat it.

She did. I was intrigued, so I made sure to ride in the same cab on the way back to rez. From then on, she had my attention.

I think we're heading into year 18 this fall.

By: dame

dame — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:39:37 -0800

A friend and I were out for a walk to get pizza when we were waylaid by some boy with a flier for a house party that night. We took it, but had other plans. Those plans fell through when another friend became too drunk to drive. It began to pour, and we noticed the house party was only a block away, so we went to that instead. It was his party.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:42:01 -0800

Match.com. We'll be married a year from September.

By: MrMoonPie

MrMoonPie — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:43:25 -0800

Washington CityPaper personal ad--dated for two years, married since April.

By: milovoo

milovoo — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:45:25 -0800

waiting in line at a jane siberry concert
(assuming ex's count)

By: Flat Feet Pete

Flat Feet Pete — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:48:08 -0800

Drunk in a bar. She thought my friend Jeremy was hot, but my sparkling wit won her over. At least that's what's she tells me. Been together 3+ years now. Y'all are making me feel old fashioned.

By: dicaxpuella

dicaxpuella — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:50:20 -0800

The starbucks right off campus. I'm convinced it was fate, because we both dislike starbuck's coffee.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:50:44 -0800

next-door neighbour.

I had sort of "dated" (okay, done) my husband's best friend a few times...
that didn't end as i expected.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:52:50 -0800

The first day for both of us at a shitty job. Quickly realized we had the same cynical sense of humour. We both had to work weekends together and it was deadly boring. A great way to forcible get to know somebody.

Went on our first date about 2 weeks later to see My Bloody Valentine and have been married 8 years next month.

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:56:05 -0800

Jonmc set us up.

Really.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:57:29 -0800

Happy Anniversary, konolia!

I was casually dating a bartender, and had gone to the club where he worked to meet him for a date. There was a guy playing pool - as soon as I looked at him I knew he was the one. He noticed me too, and before he introduced himself, told his friend that he was going to marry me. And he did.

By: weston

weston — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:59:54 -0800

Do you want us to answer if we lost them?

By: RavinDave

RavinDave — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:04:46 -0800

4th Grade.

Hmmm ... let me rephrase that. We were BOTH kidlings the same age in the 4th grade at the same time.

/has learned to watch himself with the MeFi crowd.

By: stoneegg21

stoneegg21 — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:11:23 -0800

At the university judo club. He was an assistant, I was taking it because my uncle had said he was going to be the assistant, but wasn't able to after all and I decided I'd try it anyway. I thought he was cute, and one of my online friends was his roommate. We got together at my friend's house to study, and so I got to talk to him outside of the judo club. We starting talking online and became friends, and I started going over to hang out with him.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:11:24 -0800

Working backstage at a local production of Peter Pan, we were part of the backstage crew. One of our tasks was to 'shake the ship' (a set on two wheeled platforms) by pulling on ropes during a pivotal scene. I had no car, she offered to carpool. Next thing you know, we've been married for 9 years now with two lovely kids. I love these stories.

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:15:07 -0800

In every bar drinks the same 28 year old rocker, sick of filing.
sick of filing – what is that?

By: sugarfish

sugarfish — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:16:27 -0800

Metafilter.

What? It's true. Our first anniversary is in October.

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:19:07 -0800

At a math conference. Seriously.

By: onlyconnect

onlyconnect — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:22:19 -0800

Metafilter meetup. I'm sensing a trend!

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:22:55 -0800

sick of filing – what is that?
got it, their job.

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:27:29 -0800

Love is for chumps.

By: rorycberger

rorycberger — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:34:35 -0800

In a class at college. She noticed me because it was allergy season and I was the only person in the class who had the courtesy to say "bless you" whenever she (or anyone else) sneezed.

By: luriete

luriete — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:39:39 -0800

In a bar - the Old Tavern in Sacramento. My wife was the designated driver for a group of friends. She doesn't drink. I was schnockered. She took me home and took advantage of me on the sofa, and five years later we were automagically married.

By: LairBob

LairBob — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:46:22 -0800

1) In the headmaster's office on the first day of orientation for new teachers--we both immediately felt an intense connection, but it took 4 years before we started dating, and another year or so before she proposed.

2) In the OR of NYU Medical, 30 minutes into the C-section.

3) In a birthing room in St. Vincent's, two days after 9/11, and about 20 minutes after we finally got to the hospital. (I almost ended up in one of those stories on the news, where the kid gets delivered in the back seat of a car.)

By: sageleaf

sageleaf — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:49:54 -0800

City animal shelter, cage 3C.

Oh, and college.

By: lisa g

lisa g — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:54:04 -0800

Ha, Razzle Bathbone -- my husband and I realized that our first "date" (i.e.: first time we were in the same building at the same time) was a My Bloody Valentine-Pavement-Superchunk show in New York in June 1992. I lived in the Midwest at the time.

We actually met in 1999, when we ended up as two out of four roommates in a "chalet" at the Bowlie music festival in SE England. We both lived in New York by that point and realized we had many mutual friends. Of course we had to both cross an ocean to discover this.

By: Fezboy!

Fezboy! — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:18:07 -0800

On a group date to save my best friend from her best friend. First time I ever deliberately used a pick-up line. Just wrapped up year 10 in June.

By: IshmaelGraves

IshmaelGraves — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:25:45 -0800

In the nuthouse.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:38:49 -0800

At a dive-bar no-name rock show. We had mutual friends with ties to the band (the only reason to be there). I asked if we'd met, she said she didn't think so, which I took to be the big freeze. I ran away, tail between my legs. Later that night we talked a bit but I was chastened.

Next day I called and called friends and acqaintances until I found her number. We married two years later, same day, and now it's ten years total.

She utterly disputes my interpretation of her initial reaction, I must note.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:44:23 -0800

I was in an all-female comedy group in college. Scott was there in the audience with his frat brother Danny to support and cheer on Danny's girlfriend Ali, who was in the group with me. I knew Danny and Ali, Scott knew Danny and Ali, we didn't know each other.

At the start of the second act, I got up (badly) dressed as a Rabbi, in a skit where I pretended to raffle off eligible Jewish bachelor undergrads. (Penn is full of 'em.) For some reason, it was at this point that Scott poked Danny in the ribs and said "who's that? she's cute". Danny quickly got the lightbulb over his head that heeeey, we'd be a good match. He then connived with Ali to convince me to go out with Scott. The conversation, held backstage, went something like this:

Ali: There's a friend of ours who was at the show...he wants to know if you'd go out with him.
Me: Huh?
Ali: He's Danny's frat brother.
Me: He saw me onstage and now he wants to go out? Um...is this supposed to be flattering or weird?
Ali: C'mon, you guys would like each other.
Me: Um...
Ali: He's nice.
Me: Well...
Ali: He's Jewish.
Me; Well...
Ali: He's tall.
Me: Okay!

We did a double date at the White Dog Cafe. I had a banana smoothie. That was April of my junior year, over four years ago. We've been married for 9 1/2 months so far and are very happy together.

By: yoga

yoga — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:45:32 -0800

Online. Celebrated anniv #4 this past July. Color me chumpy.

By: signal

signal — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:51:52 -0800

Not sure. Too many shared friends to pin down the exact event.

By: Katemonkey

Katemonkey — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 16:56:19 -0800

A Babylon 5 IRC chat room around six years ago -- fourth year wedding anniversary coming up in Sept.

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:51:05 -0800

A party in my dorm room, sophomore year.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:59:03 -0800

At a geology party in grad school. I was getting a beer from the keg, and she saw me and talked to me. She had to bail early and I came up with several ways of trying to meet up with her again (her dept was on the other side of campus). Unbeknownst to me, she was also plotting ways to run into me and we ran into each other almost daily the following week, and we started hanging out. about 4.5 years later we married, celebrating our 4th anniversary in a couple months.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:15:37 -0800

the stairs at work

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:19:12 -0800

Grand Central.

Happy anniversary, konolia!

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:26:38 -0800

"High school."

Same here. My sophomore year, her junior year. We both volunteered for the homecoming week "door decorating" contest in our first-period class, which was "Introduction to Computers", I believe.

I won her over with my uncanny accuracy and dead aim in launching wads of crepe paper into her cleavage.

By: Acetylene

Acetylene — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:30:31 -0800

We had a speech class together in college. She was seeing someone else, and we rarely spoke. Time passed, and I fell in love with someone else--who one day called to tell me she was getting engaged. I cried. My roommate took me out to dinner. Our waitress was ... you guessed it. It had been two years since the class we'd had together, and although she was still seeing the same guy, their relationship wasn't going so well.

Over the next couple months I went to that damn restaurant at least twice a week to see her--never did figure out her schedule, so until I learned which car was hers, it was a hit-or-miss sort of thing. (Fortunately, bottomless fries and iced tea made for a good excuse to sit on the patio for a couple hours at a stretch.) Anyway, eventually I worked up the courage to ask her out, and tomorrow's the fifth anniversary of our first date.

By: DelusionsofGrandeur

DelusionsofGrandeur — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:11:18 -0800

Brothel. Did I make a mistake?

By: reklaw

reklaw — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:24:46 -0800

My best friend used to live on the same street as her. She came to meet him after school one day, when she was 11 and I was 12. I found her fascinating, we talked, we became friends. Four years later, we had our first kiss together. You can guess the rest.

By: dagnyscott

dagnyscott — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:57:04 -0800

Heheh. Jeff, the guy who'd become my boyfriend (nearly three years now!) was visiting his friend Nink, who was from his hometown. Nink was the only cool friend of my ex-boyfriend and had a room next to mine in our dorm. Jeff was visiting for the weekend and I think I was invited over to watch Fear and Loathing. I think this was because Nink and his roommate wanted it to look like they were inviting a group of people and not like they were just desperately trying to get the girl from across the hall to hang out with them.

Thus begins the Nink curse of people all around him falling in love, but never with him.

By: quibx

quibx — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:45:31 -0800

at a good friends Jack and Jill. Just introduced, nothing more.

Then a week later, we run into each other a a bar....

The rest is history.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:45:41 -0800

Word up, iconomy.

I met my gf at Babbo, here in NYC. I was eating at the bar with my friend, and she came in with her friend. We bonded over a guy wearing an ascot with no sense of irony. She lived in Chicago, but true love held out for a year and a half. Two years in two weeks.

Yeah, it happens.

By: FunkyHelix

FunkyHelix — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:55:39 -0800

Drum Corps. He was a snare, I was in the colorguard.

By: zadcat

zadcat — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:01:31 -0800

Don't love anyone. Suggestions?

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:02:26 -0800

A Narcotics Anonymous convention.

We're married three years now.

By: deborah

deborah — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:02:31 -0800

Met my schmoopie June-ish 1999 (online in a MSN chat room - comic chat #newbies). Met face-to-face December 1999, dated for a year and married December 2000.

By: kenko

kenko — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:27:31 -0800

DelusionsofGrandeur: A friend of my dad's from the navy married a woman he met in a Thai brothel. It didn't last.

By: croutonsupafreak

croutonsupafreak — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:00:52 -0800

He responded to my matchmaker.com account and didn't seem like a creep. But I was sick of online dating, so I replied and told him I was cancelling my account and he should call me. A few weeks later he did. A week later we met. A few months later I realized I had fallen in love. Now we live together. (2.5 years later).

My dad was my mom's teacher in high school. He gave her an F and she hated him. The next year, when she was 16 and he was 23 they started dating. It's a huge taboo in our society, but now they've been married for 32 years, and produced five reasonably well adjusted kids.... well, four our of five, at least.

By: ulotrichous

ulotrichous — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:06:46 -0800

In the tuba section.

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:24:31 -0800

....but my sparkling wit won her over.

please refrain from telling jokes in askme.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:29:53 -0800

Craigsli - uh, I mean - eBay. Anyway, it was before the whole "Buy it Now" option came about.

Online. Celebrated anniv #4 this past July. Color me chumpy.

I'm not coloring you anything. 4+ years ago online? Obviously this transaction took place in black and white (black and green/orange?).

;)

By: mookieproof

mookieproof — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:49:30 -0800

mathowie: geology party

Is that a euphemism?

My answer is: in Alaska, ten years and ten days ago. Though we've only been together for two-plus years--there was some When-Harry-Met-Sally action going on for awhile.

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:24:22 -0800

MetaFilter meetup!

(Happy nearly birthday!)

By: geoff.

geoff. — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:27:47 -0800

AskMetafilter needs to stop having so many depressing threads to come home to Friday night.

By: tss

tss — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:43:47 -0800

119.35, Pittsburgh Approach.

It was my second cross-country solo. I requested flight following from KJST to KAGC. Johnstown Tower handed me off to the Cleveland ARTCC, then Cleveland passed me on to PIT TRACON not long after I flew by Latrobe.

She cleared me into the PIT class B and gave me the altimeter setting. I fell for her instantly. Even though she never strayed from the controller argot, I could tell from her voice---there was something indescribable...

Alas, only a few minutes later she terminated radar service and transferred me to Allegheny Tower... I wonder if I'll ever meet her someday...

Yeah, this is total hokum.

By: brism

brism — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:48:50 -0800

My wife and I met in a high school photo class, writing messages to each other on photo paper. We actually became best friends first and it seems everyone we knew saw it before us. Our matchmaker, the photo teacher, was a good mutual friend and was at our wedding about a year and a half ago.

By: Grod

Grod — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:22:09 -0800

Senior year in high school in an abstract painting class. (4 years ago)

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:43:25 -0800

We met in the student union building at college. He was married, so we were just acquaintances at first. Then she left him, so he called me over Christmas break and we got together for a memorable first date. That was 32 years ago. We celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary on Sept. 7. Happy anniversary, konolia!

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 02:18:45 -0800

Another match.com. Living together for a year; married 8 months.

By: garethspor

garethspor — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 02:56:59 -0800

ski team

By: Shoeburyness

Shoeburyness — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 04:46:46 -0800

We first "met" in an MSN chat room (back when it was free), but never really hit it off. Didn't fight, but just didn't connect. Then we happened to meet in person at a chatroom party... and we've been together ever since that night. Two years married, three years together, four month old baby.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:59:11 -0800

This thread made me join match.com damnit.

By: longbaugh

longbaugh — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:03:44 -0800

On t'interweb a couple of years back. She saw pictures of me and my housemate dressed up for a Harry Potter New Years party (we were going as the Weasley twins with died ginger hair). By god we looked stupid - she somehow saw through the gingerness and we ended up married one month ago today. Considering she is in California and I live in the UK this is really rather impressive.

Actually - scratch that - she first saw me drunk as a skunk at 4am on a webcam exposing myself to all and sundry.

Who says romance is dead.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:11:39 -0800

she was 11 and I was 12.... Four years later, we had our first kiss together. You can guess the rest.

My only regret wrt my wife is that I didn't meet her until I was 18. I wish like hell I'd grown up with her.

I'm very impressed by the number of long, stable relationships us MeFi-folk appear to have. 10, 20, 30+ years... good stuff! I thought my relationship was an aberration: I don't think I know anyone my age who has avoided divorce/endless dating.

By: jpburns

jpburns — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 07:44:51 -0800

At a bar, about 17 1/2 years ago. We're celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary this Tuesday.

The weird thing is, we've found all these other earlier circumstances where we were at the same place at the same time (concerts, clubs, art shows, plays...), but we just didn't meet.

It was kismet.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 09:57:41 -0800

I found him in my referrer logs, but I finally met him at my house, when I invited him over.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 09:59:09 -0800

There is a chance that my wife and I attended the same showing of Star Wars back in, what was it, 1977, in a theatre in Victoria, BC, while both on vacation.

I kind of like to think that that is when we were supposed to meet and start falling in love; and that because we didn't, fate arranged our meeting a decade later at university. :-) I'm a sucker for romance, I guess.

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 11:55:26 -0800

1) Club Getaway, fairly drunk, in a post-midnight campfire singalong after everyone else was paired off.

2) An Intel trade party at the Lincoln Center branch of the NYC Public Library one Wednesday night during the 1990 Unix Expo, when I sat at table with her and three of my sister's co-workers because my sister abandoned me to scmooze clients.

3) MSN San Francisco chat room, after she promised me a lapdance if we ever met F2F. Never did get the lapdance but we just passed the 15 month mark since our wedding.

FYI, we are one of about seven long term couples that came out of the group that frequented MSN SF chat back in the fall of 2001. And my sister married a guy six weeks ago that she met from Match.com, just to add some weight for those considering it.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:23:20 -0800

I saw her at my University's Japanese club. She stood out a little bit since she's Persian. I probably stood out a bit too since I'm Tamil. We didn't speak during the meeting.

Later that night the whole club ended up at the on campus night club. We started dancing and talking sometime during the evening. Being the smooth guy that I am, I told her she was the cutest brown girl I had ever seen. She promptly replied "I'm not brown, I'm Persian!" and stormed away. We didn't speak for the rest of the night.

Yada Yada Yada, we've been dating for a little over a year and a half now.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:39:04 -0800

The weird thing is, we've found all these other earlier circumstances where we were at the same place at the same time (concerts, clubs, art shows, plays...), but we just didn't meet.
It was kismet.
posted by jpburns at 7:44 AM PST on August 15

There is a chance that my wife and I attended the same showing of Star Wars back in, what was it, 1977, in a theatre in Victoria, BC, while both on vacation.
I kind of like to think that that is when we were supposed to meet and start falling in love; and that because we didn't, fate arranged our meeting a decade later at university. :-) I'm a sucker for romance, I guess.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:59 AM PST on August 15

You guys really should read Nabokov's The Gift; that's part of what it's about.

By: thatothrgirl

thatothrgirl — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:51:05 -0800

Blind date, set up by my uncle, who was his crew chief. He saw me out at the unit before I left for basic training and asked for the number when I got back.
The first coupla times he asked me out, I didn't accept since what he had suggested sounded dorky. (I am not a flirty flirt and didn't take the bait.) Finally he invited me to something I wanted to do (go see a movie) - third time's the charm. We got married one year and a day from our first date.

By: NGnerd

NGnerd — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:22:59 -0800

in college i met all my gals at the monty python society. Since then craiglist...but i really do miss the days of that random group of friends who become just a little too insestual. Congrats to all with the long terms...makes me think we need more meetups.

By: batgrlHG

batgrlHG — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:21:00 -0800

Actually, now that I think it through, I suppose MeFi's to blame for y6 and I hooking up. It was when the Kaycee fraud went down and I was visiting all the blogs I could find via the MeFi thread(s) (that I'm too lazy to look up at the moment), trying to figure out what was going on. y6 seemed like an amusing cranky bastard and I started commenting on his blog. In fact I really began to enjoy being as annoying as possible in his comments. We didn't actually meet until 2002 at a blogger meetup in Vegas. After which he had to spend a good deal of energy convincing me that "really, he was only a cranky bastard online, he wasn't like that in real life, no really, he's quite wonderful and I should really want to date him."
*giggle*
That was deeply fun.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:16:41 -0800

Like jpburns and five fresh fish, my wife and I had multiple near-misses. After college, I went to work in the town where her college campus was. I sometimes ate at its student center. I saw a friend of hers do stand-up at an open mike; she might have been in the same audience I was.

Years later, she lived in Berkeley and was a regular in the aerobics class following an aerobics class in which I was a regular... we must have been at the gym at the same time dozens of times.

Then she moved away from Berkeley and it took match.com for us to actually meet. (Good luck, Cunning Linguist.)

By: triv

triv — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 11:15:15 -0800

I'm another of the near misses, although on a slightly bigger scale. We went to the same beach in Biarritz, we lived within a few minutes of each other in London - the difference is, she lives in Spain and me in England.

We hooked up via nme-chat, then msn. Finally, we met in the pouring rain outside Charing Cross in London. As she turned the corner and our eyes met for the first time, I knew we'd be together forever. 3 years in october...

By: codger

codger — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:19:44 -0800

I'm a little late to the party, and I already wrote this up years ago, so here's the link: [and then I crawled out from under the table]

By: Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 17:36:23 -0800

Dorm neighbors. Luckily I was attractive enough not to have to use some awful crap like match .com.

By: cyrusdogstar

cyrusdogstar — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 18:38:56 -0800

I met the love of my life right here on the Intarweb. Well, not right here at MeFi, it was on a fansite community based around a video game we both loved to pieces (a certain Japanese console role playing series, specifically the seventh iteration...). We 'met' on the messageboard for the site--which I happened to be running at the time--and then started chatting a lot on AIM.

This led to daily emails, eventually a few phone calls, and after a fairly emotional IM conversation where she was very distraught and I consoled her, I realized what this feeling inside was, and told her the next day that I, well, kinda loved her. The tip-off was the realization that I cared more about this other person's happiness and well-being than just about anything else, including my own...

The kicker is that she's 5 years older than me, AND--do try not to laugh--I did not know she was even female when we first started chatting. Due to the experience of being treated differently because of her gender, she had taken to using a somewhat masculine username (that of a male character from the game) online, even though she was careful never to openly lie about said gender.

So when she did reveal that she was a girl, I didn't even believe it at first, mostly due to the fact that she doesn't act stereotypically feminine too often. Let me tell you, for a guy who likes videogaming and computers, there is no cooler thing than an attractive, intelligent, talented and gamer girlfriend :D

This has turned out to be a core fact of our relationship--she and I get along incredibly well, and did so before any possible romantic undertones could even show up (at least on my end...I'm not gay :P). Interestingly, though, she later revealed that her decision to tell me of her true identity was partly motivated by the fact that she, well, liked me.

Anyways, it's been three and a half years, I recently moved in with her after graduating from school, and we're still going strong and planning to do that knot-tying thing the kids all rave about, once we've saved up some money.

Neither of us is perfect by any stretch, and we both have our share of quirks which irritate the other...but we're friends first and foremost, and that makes our love stronger and more binding than I think most people are lucky to have.

One last unusual thing is that she's my first girlfriend. I've gotten no end of criticism on this, and I understand why, but the criticizers (is that a word?) speak their bits as if this is a choice I've made...which it certainly isn't. I don't choose to feel the way I do about her, nor would I want to--friends like her, romatic entanglements or no, are extremely hard to find. Furthermore, while most people would find it impossible to settle down with their first S.O., I've always been an extremely unusual person in various ways, and this is just one of them, I suppose.

*cough* Anyway, enough soul-baring for one evening. Hope y'all enjoyed the novella :P

By: angry modem

angry modem — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 18:44:19 -0800

in the delivery room, in a mirror

By: britain

britain — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 19:21:33 -0800

At work, where "work" = a telecommunications company now bankrupted and reborn. I was laid off when they realized they were in, well, who they were and had to start letting people go.

My wife still works for the latter-day incarnation of said company, and my layoff probably made things better -- her support helped keep me motivated to find the next thing, and the next thing, and finally the job that made me happy.

And not working right next to each other for very long, we never got sick of seeing each other. [We know several other couples who met there, some of who still work together every day, one on the same exact shift -- it's charming, but HOW? But that would be another topic.]

By: absquatulate

absquatulate — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 05:40:48 -0800

My hubby and I met at a web development company during the height of the bubble ('98). We sat close (well it was a very small office) with a guy inbetween us, facing me, that we both hated. One day this guy slams his hands to the desk, swears, and gets up and walks away. The ICQ conversation followed thusly:

Him: What did you do now?
Me: Staring contest. I won.

He said from that point onwards I'd won his heart. I thought him the cutest shaved head goatee sportin sk8tr designer I'd ever seen.

We moved to a new office, and ended up sitting *right across* from each other. We were paranoid of the whole "never day anybody you work with" stigma and kept it under wraps for a few months until we were outted with a "Happy Relationship" cake.

We worked at the same place for 2.5 years when I got laid off just before our wedding. Despite not working together, we still tied the knot six months later. Still together, and even though we don't work together anymore, ICQ sure makes it easy to keep the illusion alive. :^)

By: dogmatic

dogmatic — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 07:34:53 -0800

at my mom's house. she was a foreign exchange student, and i took advantage of it. she didn't know any better then, but does now, and is surprisingly still with me.

been together five years, married two.

By: AccordionGuy

AccordionGuy — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 19:38:15 -0800

At a BloggerCon party I gate-crashed. Dorky, but true.