Where I met my partner?
I met her through the GLBFT group at my college. We'd known each other as casual acquaintances, though, for something like a year before we started going out.
How we fell in love
I was going through a bad time in my life when we suddenly went from being acquaintances to something more. My best friend and biggest crush of my life had left at the end of the last semester, and even though I'd been keeping busy with summer classes, I was still completely devastated. I probably would never have spent any time with her that summer (or any of my other friends for that matter) if she hadn't happened to be old friends with my roommate. She came over to visit him one night, and she just made me smile and laugh so much, maybe more than I'd done all summer. We were all sitting on the couch together and she kept tickling me and I was like 'Is this flirting? Naaaah, CAN'T be.' I just couldn't believe it, although I'd even heard rumors the last semester that she had a crush on me. My self esteem was just completely shot to hell, I guess.
Then before she left, we went outside and smoked together. I was really surprised that she wanted to spend time with just me, since we didn't know each other very well. One of the few things I 'did' know about her was that she had a girlfriend--but while we were sitting outside, she told me about how this girlfriend was studying abroad in France for a semester and they'd decided to go the 'open relationship' route at least until she got back. Then she mentioned how she was really happy to have a smoking buddy and asked if I would like to meet on campus for a smoke break sometime. 'More hints? Naaaah...'
Well, our 'smoke break' wound up leading to us walking around campus all afternoon. We walked through the park and looked at the ducks, spied on the rugby house where there are supposedly nightly lesbian orgies, and wound up going up to the top of the stadium after the sun went down... and, well, you know, the obvious happened. I feel kind of bad, thinking back, because she was probably totally frustrated with me by then... but I still grin whenever I walk past the stadium ;)
For as totally unremarkable as this story is, though, we've turned out to be surprisingly compatible. What we both thought (her because she had a girlfriend, me because I was still in love with my friend) was going to be a fling turned into saying 'I love you' and buying each other flowers, and then that wound up lasting until the girlfriend was supposed to come back... and then she didn't--she's in France for another 6 months, dating some Romanian hottie apparently, and we're still together.
Advice
- Don't give up. I was twenty when I started dating my girlfriend, and although I'd slept around before, I'd never been in a relationship. I was beginning to think I would never be, which is probably why it took me so long to pick up on her signals. I hate to think what my life would be like right now if I'd been so busy being miserable that I entirely missed them :)
- Love doesn't have to happen at first sight. I liked my girlfriend when we first kissed, but I hadn't really thought about her much before then. Now, 7 months later, I don't even want to think about life without her.
