Chitchat How did you meet your Significant Other (SO)?

[Syrenrei]

Hey there! For the RPN Newsletters I am trying to get some stories, opinions, etc. from the user base to include in the newsletter. As you may have noticed in the January 2015 Newsletter, some of your New Year's Resolutions were included and you were tagged. I'm hoping to continue this! In the interest of full disclosure, I can't promise every story or snippet will make it into the newsletter, but what doesn't will still be linked back here for everyone to read and see.


Without further ado, how did you meet your significant other? Just so we don't run into any drama when this is published, I'd prefer stories of how you met your SO of at least one year. I'd hate to post anything next month only to find you and your SO of two months have had a bitter break up... and trust me, I've been there. Oh heavens have I been there!


Feel free to include as much or as little info as you want. Yey for story time!

 

[Erica]

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times...


Actually, no, it was the time before everyone had a smart phone. A dear friend had a blog site (before blogs were a thing, really) where a circle of friends and I kept each other up-to-date on our lives and posted stray thoughts. My hubby-to-be was best friends with the site owner; I was best friends with his wife. We had never met, despite several near misses. Then September 11th happened. I posted some thoughts about it on the site. Later, I got an email.


The summation: "Why haven't we met yet?"


He lived in Colorado (he had chased a girl out here over a year before); I lived in Massachusetts. I was traveling for work almost every week and spending a lot of time in hotel rooms. We started talking on the phone about everything and anything. We quickly determined we were the same flavor of geek. The occasional conversation became three nights a week. This lasted about six months. I was falling in love, but I didn't know it yet.


We talked/joked about really needing to find a way to hang out, given that we talked so often. Schedules conspired against us. I suggested Superbowl weekend, which meant nothing to me then. He laughed, then kindly explained why that wouldn't work. Later in February, he found a last-minute flight to Massachusetts at a steal. Our friends gave us knowing looks when we told them about the visit. We each swore up and down that nothing would happen. We were wrong.


John Woo pyrotechnics ensued. I vividly remember the way he looked at me at dinner. I didn't stand a chance.


We started dating long distance. (Which sucks!) My second trip to Colorado, I asked which one of us was moving. Rather than being scared off by my direct nature, he responded with a smile and "thank God you said it first." I moved to Colorado 5 months later. We were married two years after that. I still love him with all my heart. We say it often, but only because it's true: We're not perfect by any means, but we're perfect for each other.

 

[Syrenrei]

When I entered college, I didn't have any friends attending the same school- let's just say I wasn't Miss Popularity in high school... not to mention I had moved an hour and a half. I saw some flyers up around campus advertising for a D&D group that as just forming, but was too shy and insecure to call. I then reconnected with an acquaintance that I had known briefly in a local D&D group a couple years prior and with her encouragement and insistence, I called the number. A guy answered named Josh and we met a few times; he invited me to join his D&D group and play (essentially) a NPC since the game had already started.


The group was ALL guys and I was completely out of my element. They were all great guys, but I remember being so afraid of what they must think of me I barely said a word. I met a few guys that left an impression, but two are relevant to this story: a very sociable and somewhat charming guy and another who was stoic, never seemed to smile or laugh, and was the hardest to get to know.


I started dating "Mr. Charming" my freshman year, we broke up, and got back together. When we got back together he was roommates with "Mr. Stoic" who I got to know a bit better on account of being in their room a lot. Mr. Stoic turned out to have a great sense of humor, he was just more quiet and didn't really speak up in crowds or with strangers. He exuded a calm confidence that made him easy to talk to and, very important to me, he was an emotional rock that was judgment-free. Mr. Charming and I broke up again and Mr. Stoic and I remained friends.


When my birthday rolled around my sophomore year, Mr. Stoic wrote me a poem. I asked him if the poem meant he wanted to be more than friends (or something like that, I wasn't very smooth) and he told me he wanted to think about it. We ended up dating a few weeks later and have been together ever since. Mr. Charming was a groomsman at our wedding.


tl;dr - When I first met my husband at a D&D group he didn't smile or laugh, I thought he was very unapproachable. I later discovered what feels like a "secret awesome side" of a very confident, stable, compassionate, and thoughtful man.

 

[Elle Joyner]

2010, I went on a camping trip with my church social group to Cherry Creek State Park -- a few miles from the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. Upon arrival, my best friend and I set up our ridiculously large tent (a twelve person Taj'Ma Tent... if you would) and afterwards, decided to walk around and explore. We knew only a few people and had both decided this trip we would meet some new people.


As we walked we ran into a few folks, introduced ourselves and went on our merry way. We were almost half way back to our tent when I spotted a friend of ours who had just arrived... and beside him, I noticed someone I had never seen before - a tall, blonde and handsome stranger, with the most gorgeous blue eyes I had ever seen in a face. Approaching them, we greeted our mutual friend and he introduced us to the man beside him. He seemed shy, but was extremely polite. The four of us decided to team up in our mission to meet more new friends... and as we walked, we talked. Somehow, our conversation turned to eye color. Of -course- we raved about my dear friend's stunning blue peepers - roughly the size of an anime characters - but then the newest member of our quartet turned to me and with not even the remotest hint of facetiousness in his tone informed me that while he agreed her eyes were pretty... he preferred beautiful brown eyes -- My eyes, incidentally, were the only brown in the bunch.


Swooning, but playing it cool, we spent the remainder of the afternoon chatting. A few hours into the camping trip we piled into vans to go help plant trees at the star gazing sight (to help minimize light pollution). We were working hard, but it was also an entertaining time, filled with conversation. Somehow, my new friend and I got onto a conversation about ice cream. Casually, he asked me what my favorite ice cream place was - I informed him I was crazy for Rita's Water Ice...


His response, smooth as a stone was, "Oh, good. Now I know where to take you on our first date."


...Trying extremely hard not to pass out, I watched him wander off, after a quick wink... and immediately ran to scream the story to my best friend, who may have been slightly more excited than I was (but probably not).


That night, we showed up for star gazing, and my dear new pal took the seat beside me... Together we chatted about our families... shared some personal revelations, ambitions and dreams... It was hard to say goodnight, but eventually we did.


The following day we took a trip to the Canyon and he and I walked together, talking, laughing, having more fun than anyone should really be able to, hiking up and back down a mountain. On the car ride home, he opted out of the front seat so he could sit in the back with me and that evening we stayed up well into the early morning hours, chatting by a fire... where, bold as anything, he held my hand for the first time.


We parted ways again and the following morning it was time to leave... But not after we enjoyed a bible study and some sharing. Here, in front of a crowd of roughly over forty-five of his peers, Joe shared how he and his best friend had gone out partying a few years back... Tears began to fall as he explained that he and that friend had had a little too much to drink, but had gone driving anyway. How he had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed... and how he, and not his best friend, had been the sole survivor. How he had spent eight months in prison and how that incident had shaped his life and caused him to realize he needed to change...


After sharing his testimony, he approached me and asked to take a walk. During our walk, finally... he asked me to dinner the following weekend. I, without hesitation, agreed...


And the rest, my friends... is history. Roughly a year and a month later we were married and have been for three and a half years - and two years ago, in April we welcomed into our brood a beautiful baby boy


Sometimes, right in the middle of an ordinary life... love gives us a fairytale.

 

[JayTee]

Are hilarious tales of attempting to find a SO but getting shot down acceptable? Because I have a few that happened to me that are pretty funny in retrospect.

 

[Todd McKenzie]

I actually met my SO years before I met her.


I had a very tight friend group, as I am very introverted, so I only had two or three people I would hang out with. One of my friends was definitely a character. He was very outgoing and would generally act... crazy. But he was my best friend. We were best friends for a good two years before he moved out of town (not too far away though). After that, I never talked to him. He wasn't at school, and I didn't use facebook much. I made new friends and wasn't really phased by not seeing him anymore, as I was very emotionless, and didn't really care about anything. I met my new best friend, and we became best friends within a week. 5 years later, he and I are still best friends, and I am now his roommate. He was the one that introduced me to roleplay, and anime. He and I do a lot of LARP. Through our connections, we met other people interested in LARP, and got a small group of around five people that would go around town with us and roleplay. (We live in a town where we can just walk through the streets with swords, and even spar in the middle of the street, and no one will care. One of the girls in our group asked if she could bring her friend along. Of course we wanted more people, so the next day, we walked over to her friends house (in a part of the town I had never been) and picked her up, and spent the day roleplaying. Now, this girls friend (I was assuming would also be a girl) was short, looked to be about 12 years old (my friend was 18), and had short blond hair. I could honestly not tell if this newcomer was a boy or a girl. Even worse, the name could have been either gender: Aaron/Erin. I talked to Aaron/Erin for a while during the time we were hanging out, and s/he seemed like a pretty cool person. We seemed to have a lot in common, and I felt that I may have made a new friend. After Aaron/Erin and my friend left, my best friend and I were talking, and the topic of Aaron/Erin came up. We were both very confused as to whether our new friend was a boy or a girl. Later that night, I messaged my friend on facebook, asking who her friend was. When she told me her name, the last name sounded really familiar. I sat back for a second. I remembered, when we went to pick up Aaron/Erin at his/her house, my friend said a name I recognized there, also, though it was a first name she said there. Putting all the pieces together, I learned that this new friend I had made was the older sister of the one I used to be best friends with years ago. He had moved back into town, but I never knew because he was homeschooled. I began talking to Erin on facebook, and within a week, we were dating. After talking to her a while though, I remembered, about five years before meeting her, I was at her younger brothers birthday party, and while I was waiting for him, I sat on the couch (unbeknownst to me, I was sitting by my future girlfriend), and I was just sitting there playing with his cats. Cats love me, so they were both sitting on me, but they were silent. I started meowing at them, and I remember Erin looking over and saying "They usually don't meow that much." and I remember the look in her eyes when she learned it was me meowing (she loves cats, I feel she is bound to be a crazy cat lady).


Erin has absolutely no memory of ever meeting me at the party, but it occasionally pops into my mind, and it always makes me really happy. Erin and I have been together for almost two years now, and we are inseparable. We have had our bad times, but we pulled through, and I see many great years to come.

 

[Ashurbanipal]

I met her over IRC. She got on a train to visit. It went well.


My stories aren't really exciting. I just meet girls I like and charm them.

 

[Ozmic]

I too met the woman that would become my wife several years before we got to know each other again. This story is long, so I urge you to get some popped corn, or at the least, a favorite caffeinated beverage. Hah!


It all started with some mutual friends of ours. I'd known these folks forever - they were chums from my home town that I graduated with AND had lived with right outta' high school. Jessica (my wife) ended up working with one of them at the local Walmart and a friendship was born. I didn't know her much then and, really, had only seen her about one time before I moved and we drifted apart a little.


Years went by. Relationships would come and go and, eventually, I got out've one that left some pretty nasty emotional scarring. Cutting ties with a lot of mutual friends, I found myself in a rut that (I thought) could only be solved by completely guarding myself from relationships of any kind.


I looked up some old friends and, by complete coincidence, the couple I'd mentioned earlier contacted me with not-so-subtle jabs at my lack of hanging out. Begrudgingly, I made my way to hang out with them and go see a horrid movie. (So horrid, in fact, that FREE was too expensive.)


When I got there, I was greeted with the usual folks - old friends from highschool and past who immediately put a beer in my hand and a smile on my face. We were just about to leave when one of them made mention of someone that was running late. "Jess," she said with a sigh. "She's stuck at Walmart again, those bastards." The name sounded familiar but I couldn't place why. I shrugged it off and we headed to meet this mysterious person at the theater.


When we got there and met up, I remained perplexed. I recognized Jess from somewhere, but I'll be damned if it wasn't eating at my head as to WHERE. When the movie had finished, we chatted a bit and found a mutual love for the strange. Myself a horror junkie, we exchanged numbers in an attempt to meet up again. Of all things, she was to let me borrow a boxed set of the series Supernatural - a series that I've STILL not seen to this day.


Life, as it does, got busy. We texted here and there, but nothing serious. Friendly banter back and forth and, undoubtedly some light flirting. A year passed before I'd see her again, but we remained friendly over those texts. When we saw each other again at a party, we struck up a conversation immediately - her chiding me for never coming to pick up Supernatural.


As the party was winding down, however, I noticed another friend of mine actively chatting her up. I couldn't help but sneer and, dumbfounded, realize at that moment that, by god, I had some familiar stirring feelings for this gal. My heart felt like iron in my chest and I excused myself from the party, opting to instead drink alone at home and ask myself just what in the hell I was thinking?


Some more time passed. I was cautious at first, but the flirting soon became mutual. We would stay up until all hours, texting and talking, about nothing and everything. It was serene and beautiful and terrifying. I kept telling myself to keep it at flirting. Relationships, I was certain, just lead to more stress and heartbreak. However, all my bull-headedness would crumble when she asked me to come over and watch a movie. How could I resist? After-all, I thought, it was just a movie. We're just friends.


As things do, one movie night became a few. We realized that, in all this time, neither of us remember watching most of the films. We would just talk and laugh over them, ignoring anything outside of each other. My resistance cracked more and more each time we were together and, before I knew it one evening, I had blurted out, "Hey, whaddaya' say we make this official?" in a voice that wasn't my own. She laughed, and in as many words, told me that she agreed.


A week or two after we'd started dating, we were laying on the couch and talking over another movie. She stopped me and mentioned that there was something she needed to tell me. As a paranoid sort, my mind went to all sorts of things grim and sinister. My brain was churning up a 'told you so' when she finally admitted it aloud. "... I think I might be in love with you."


Curtains.


If my brain had been a cartoon character, the zipper on his lips would've closed so fast it would have sparked a fire.


I smiled and her worried look faded away, another smile staring back at me. "And I love ya' too, sweetheart," I said simply, too dumbfounded to twist my words into any sort of poetic phrasing. It was all she wrote, folks. At that moment, she had me for good.


Some years passed. I'd moved in, and we kept on loving one-another. Eventually, talk of marriage came up and, I'd be lying if I said it didn't scare the bejesus outta' me. Taking her to a local jeweler, she picked out a ring style she liked, and I snuck in a payment to the owner and told him I'd come pick up the ring later. Surprising her later that month, I proposed at home and we were married a year later.


It rained on our wedding day, but it couldn't have been any better. We danced in the rain and thanked the skies for their blessing.


And when I kissed the bride that day, she had my heart for the second time. It was nothing short of perfect.


The rest is history ladies, gents and inbetweeners.


Thanks for reading. =]

 

[Willow Louviere]

I met my last girlfriend through another Roleplaying site, actually. Can't remember it for the life of me but those were the some of the most special seven years of my life.


Bitch.

 

[Makise Kurisu]

My SO approached me one day as if he had seen a ghost, and started touching me all over as if he was confirming my existence. It was quite creepy. We ended up running into each other again and started working together, and have been together through three weeks of hell.


At least, that's what he told me. I have no memory of any of this, but I have a weird feeling that what he says is the truth. It is all very confusing to me. I just met him, but it feels as if I have known him forever.

 

[Ashurbanipal]

I was going to suggest you might have a drinking problem before googling the name

 

[Mordecai]

Well,


I was at a horse show riding and he was a groom for a friend of mine. During my course, my horse ended up tripping and we went down in magnificent style. I refused an ambulance in my delirious state, but he offered to drive me to a local clinic and I agreed to that. I had a concussion and some other minor injuries, but nothing serious, so, he drove me back to the show grounds so I could be with my horse (who was luckily uninjured). During the drive back, he asked me out to lunch. I'm pretty sure I said something like "I will never eat glazed doughnuts for breakfast again!" and he took that as a yes.