The Republic of T. Archives

Tom asked, “How and where you met your partner and how long it was before it dawned on you that he was the one?” Seems like as good a question as any to kick off “All Request Friday.”

Sitting here thinking about it now, it’s hard to believe it’s been nearly five years since we met. I had just entered my 30s, and decided that I wanted a relationship. I’d dated a bit, and gone out with some really great guys, but none of those relationships worked out, and usually it had to do with me. There were a couple of terrific guys that I broke up with or dropped for reasons ranging from my own insecurities to thinking that there was someone “better” just around the corner. I ended up regretting those break-ups, but was never able to convince the guys I’d either abandoned or dumped to take me back. Can’t say that I blame them.

I should actually backtrack a bit here. At the time I met my husband, I was in the midst of a husband-hunting campaign that I began back in my last 20s. I call it a campaign because that’s what it was. It was something I treated like a job search. Since, believe it or not, I’m incredibly shy, I wasn’t really able to meet people the “usual” way; by gonig out, seeing someone I liked and actually going up and talk him. So, being a net-head even then, I got online, found several online personals forums and began placing and answering ads.

What followed were two years during which I became, in the words of one friend of mine, “a professional dater.” I placed and answered countless ads, and went on more dates than I could count. It got to the point where I could tell in 30 minutes whether things would go any further. The first date was usually coffee, because if the date wasn’t going well, coffee didn’t have to last any longer than an hour. Plus, it’s a very public date. Lunch was also a good first date, because the time limit served as a guaranteed escape hatch.

When I met my husband, I was at the end of a cycle of dating. I was dating a nice Irish guy for several months, but kept holding back. Eventually I dumped him for a lawyer, Fabio. (That was, I kid you not, his name.) I got as good as probably deserved when Fabio stopped returning my calls. (My rule was that I only called twice, and if I didn’t get a call back, I let it go.) Having “done it again,” I went into therapy for the specific purpose of finding out what caused me to sabatoge past relationships.

I was still answering and placing ads. One of the places I placed and searched ads was Love@AOL. I came across an ad that looked interesting to me, though the picture was grainy. I answered it as well as several others. A day or so later, I got an email from the guy with the grainy picture. We exchanged emails for a few more days, and then progressed to talking on the phone. He sounded nice, very nice actually, and we ended up agreeing to meet for lunch over the weekend.

It was summer. June, to be exact, and a someone cloudy Saturday afternoon when we met. Our agreed-upon meeting place was a bookstore in Dupont Circle. We’d seen pictures of each other so, we didn’t have to worry about recognizing each other. As I was perusing the shelves with one eye, and watching the door with the other, he walked in. I was immediately, pleasantly surprised to find that he was much better looking than the picture in his ad, which didn’t really do him justice.

We greeted each other (I think we shook hands) then departed for lunch at a recently-opened French bistro in the same neighborhood. The food itself was forgettable, and I don’t much remember what we talked about, but I guess it was just the usual first-date chit-chat. What I do remember was that I definitely liked him, and that he had incredibly blue eyes. It started to rain as we left the bistro, and neither of us had an umbrella. So we ran back to his place, to his car so he could give me a ride home. We both agreed we’d had a good time, and that we wanted to get together again.

Did I know then that he was “the one”? I’m not sure what I knew. At that point, i was somewhat hesitant to fall headlong into another affair, but I was sure I liked him well enough to want to see him again. I don’t remember which of us called the other first, but within a day or two, we’d set up a date for the next weekend.

For the second date, we went to a movie. I don’t remember how we picked it, but we ended up going to see the re-release of Fantasia. Sometime during the movie, he slipped his hand into mine. I gave his hand a squeeze, laid my head on his shoulder, and we stayed that way for most of the rest of the movie. In fact, we held hands all the way out to the parking lot.

I think that’s when I “knew.” At least I knew that there was definite potential there. My therapist, whom I’d been seeing through all of this, came to the conclusion that we’d worked out all of the issues I came to him with, and suggested we terminate therapy. Maybe he “knew” too.

And almost five years later, here we are. Happily married, with a son of our own.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2005 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Life, Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.