10.24.2011

Marriage Mondays: How Did You Meet?


When A.P. and I first started dating, we were too embarrassed to tell people how we met, especially our families. In fact, when I first met A.P.'s family, I discovered none of them knew how we met. And I had the tough job of answering that question. Luckily, I'm a smart gal and I kept thinking of clever ways to hand it off to A.P. Poor A.P. He didn't know what to say either. I remember that A.P.'s late mother thought that we met on the El train, and I was too scared to correct her. So for two days, I kept answering questions about how we met on the El ("How did it happen?" and "Did you just see A.P. and want to talk to him?") until finally A.P. told his mother we didn't meet on the train. Looking back, we laugh about the fact that I kept lying.

Here's the great, big dirty secret: A.P. and I met online. GASP!! It's true. I used to be obsessed with Craigslist and when I worked in advertising, I would fool around on the site during lunch and down time. I was obsessed with the Missed Connections, and the Best Of section. I loved (and still do) looking for antiques or stuff for sale. Anyway, back then, I would post stuff for no other reason than to be funny or crack up my friends.

Anyway, one day, I posted on Craigslist, talking about this one band I love, Animal Collective. A ton of people responded, but A.P. was the only one who knew the band. We ended up emailing back and forth and then eventually talked on the phone. Then one day, we decided to meet. We talked about what to do on our first date a lot. We both agreed we wanted to do something out of the ordinary. Finally, as a joke, A.P. suggested baking a cake. I loved the idea. So, A.P. came over to my place and we made a vanilla cake with a chocolate frosting. We also lit sparklers on my back porch. And we talked...a lot. It was so much fun. And it was on the couch, when I was listening to him talk, and looking at his profile that I fell for him. I loved his mild, Southern twang and the slow way in which he spoke. I loved that he asked me tons of questions, too.

But the thing that made me fall for him hard was at the end of the night. He had a business trip the next week and I figured I wouldn't talk to him until he got back. As I was walking him out, I said as much and he immediately replied, "I'm going to call you before then." And he did. He called me the next day. It was great to date someone who didn't play games and did what he said he was going to do. A couple of months into our relationship, I wrote in my journal that I thought I was going to marry him. I had thought it but not written it before because I hadn't wanted to jinx it. Five years later, I couldn't have been more right.

Now, we openly tell people how we met. In fact, we've got our whole story down. We take turns telling it and A.P. even added a new dimension the other day when he asked someone we were telling to guess the site we met on. People seem to get a kick out of us meeting online, that it was random and fateful. But a few months into our relationship, we discovered the real fate in our relationship: A.P.'s ex-girlfriend knew my sister because they had worked together at a store where I had also worked.

One day, through a random conversation, we discovered that A.P's ex-girlfriend had worked at the same small, Uptown neighborhood home accessories/antique business where I had worked over my summer break during college. I quit to go back to school and my sister, who was also back in school, took my position. She ended up working there with A.P.'s ex-girlfriend. A.P. used to come visit her in Chicago while they were still dating long distance. I would also go back there during my breaks (until the guy tried to screw me over with my pay). I could have easily met A.P. or his ex, but never did. So weird, right?

I've always believed in fate and destiny. I don't as much any more. But I do believe that A.P. and I were meant to be together. I didn't used to think of him as a soulmate, because I think that word diminishes the work we put into our relationship. But that story always reminds me that there is a reason that A.P. and I met and that despite our story's randomness, it wasn't necessarily random.

How did you meet your significant other? Do you feel like you were meant to be together? Or do you feel it just worked out that way?

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(The Triumph of Death or The Three Fates via here)

6 comments:

  1. I am ashamed to admit this, but I met my love in a bar. He fell for me right away, and I thought he would make a fun friend. I was dating a friend of his casually, and that friend introduced us. A week later they came to a house party, and I realized that all his funny stories were growing on me. We have been together ten years now, but it still feels horrible to admit that 1) I was dating his acquaintance when I met him, and 2) that we met at a meat market.

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  2. I knew your story already but I always like reading it again :)
    For a long time, and even until quite recently I had that stupid idea that encounters and first dates and, well, people needed to be perfect so they could really meet. Then, asking around how couples had met, I realized there's no such thing as a perfect meeting.
    One of my friend even told me she met her husband in a bar and threw up on his feet that night, but despite that he called her and they started dating :) So yeah, people meet everywhere, in the weirdest ways, that's how it is. And that makes for pretty stories :)

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  3. I met the hubster online too! And I feel so torn about the "meant to be" question. On the one hand - I'm sort of theoretically opposed to the idea of soulmates. It just doesn't make sense in any rational way. And, as you point out, relationships are work. On the other hand - our relationship has been different (and WAY better) since the very beginning and both of us new almost immediately that this was it.

    Soooooooo . . . I don't know.

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  4. What a sweet story! We met while we were both working at Sears!

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  5. @Anonymous: I don't think either of those things is anything to be ashamed about! I feel like I hear a lot of stories about people who were sort of dating the friend of their now partner. I also think meeting in a bar is no big deal. My brother met his wife in a bar, too. : )

    @Musing: I completely agree! Sure I wish I had something a bit less embarrassing than Craigslist, but honestly, it *does* make for a good story. And it's one everyone seems to get a kick out of. : )

    @Novice Wife: I used to believe in soulmates and destiny. As I got older, I felt like I outgrew it. And for a long time, I didn't think A.P. was my soulmate or that we were destined to be together. But now I sort of do. Either way, I'm sort of torn in the same way. It feels like too easy a thing to say when you know that there's work involved and that some of it was a conscious decision to make a life together. But the compatibility and the fact that we have this weird story makes me think maybe there was a little something to us being meant to be. It's a nice thought anyway...that in the whole world, I was meant to be with this one. : )

    @Marisa: Fun! Were you working in the actual store or the corporate offices? I think it would be so fun if it was the store! Like, what department did you guys work in? Something for YOUR blog. : )

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  6. I think that's so sweet! I love your "meet story!"

    My boyfriend and I met when I was in high school and he was in middle school (I'm about three years older than him). He first caught my eye when a friend of mine and I went to an orchestra concert on the other side of town (it was a concert that combined their middle and high school orchestras). The teacher came on stage and said that he had a student who was very good and was going to play a solo while the groups transitioned behind the curtain. The soloist was an eighth grader, which in our school district meant he'd only been playing for a year. If you've never heard a beginning violin student, trust me when I say that hearing one play a solo in front of hundreds of people does NOT sound like a good (or pleasant) idea. But this kid was AMAZING. He was better than I was, and I'd been playing for years and was one of the better students in my class. it turned out that he and I lived within walking distance of each other (he went to our local schools but I went to school on the other side of town from where we lived). When our schools would combine for concerts I'd give him rides home and stuff and never really thought that much of it since I was intimidated by how great of a musician he was (is). I had no idea that the whole time he was (as he, my brother, and his ex-girlfriend put it) "madly in love" with me. We stayed friends once I graduated and he came to visit me in my dorm a few times, helped me pick out a new CD player, etc. We sort of lost touch around the time he came to school at the same college, he'd been dating someone else for awhile and I still had no idea he liked me. I went off and dated other people, he and the girl he started dating around the time I started college had a son together, life moved on, we saw each other once at a bar and said we should hang out more, but nothing came of it. We reconnected over ten years after I graduated from high school and have been together ever since!

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