Ask Lemmy

You'll never believe me, Runescape when I was 12

Found her profile on Instagram and sent her a DM

OKC, about 2015-ish. I was separated and quickly heading for divorce, and was--at the time--into consensual non-monogamy. I was completely, brutally honest about who I was, and what I was looking for. When I messaged my now spouse, it was only to give them a compliment on something that they were doing in one of their photos, because I knew exactly how challenging it was. I know how the math works out on OKC (and Tinder, and everything else owned by Match.com); I had no expectation that they would see my message in the first place, or that they would even respond. Well. They did see it, and looked at my profile. And apparently decided right on the spot that I was the person that they'd been looking for. We met a few days later, and had a good date; I said that I wasn't sure of the chemistry, but I'd like to see them again. They went home and told their ex-partner that they'd just fallen for a guy and didn't think I liked them.

I had been dating another person for a few years at this point; we'd started out with the understanding that neither of us were going to be monogamous with each other. I had gotten to the point of realizing that non-monogamy didn't give me the depth of relationship that I could get from monogamy, and told them that this was the direction I wanted to go. They wished me well, and said that wasn't where they were.

Shortly after my first date with my now-spouse, this other person texted me and said that they'd changed their mind, and that they wanted to pursue monogamy with me, but it was too late by that point.

My spouse and I got married three days after my divorce decree was finalized, and it's been a little over 8 years. It's not perfect, but it works.

World of Warcraft server. It was shortly after its initial launch. I don't know how many of the myriad relationships that spawned on that server lasted, but we've been together for almost 20 years now. We haven't played the game for a long time now, but we've survived all of life's expansions so far.

fen style fantasy/scifi convention.

Bumble

I've been happily married for six years, and we met on a dating app. (OKCupid.)

It was my first time using such a thing, I was in my late 30s and mildly curious about those apps the Kids These Days seem to like. I installed one and was basically daring the silly thing to work. I figured if I was going to try that sort of thing, I was going to do it in a very practical way. I made sure everything about me I thought might be a red flag for someone out there was featured prominently in my profile:

• Here's exactly where I am politically, religiously, etc., my real age, and my firm disinterest in parenthood.
• Here's my bisexuality but also my monogamousness, yes those two things can go together.
• Here's the neighborhood I live in (not the nearest fashionable one.)
• Here are a bunch of weird hobbies and pursuits of mine.
• Here are social and political things about which I'm a vocal activist.
• Here's some of the art, comedy, and other creative stuff I do, and a bit of the weirder end of my sense of humor.
• Here's the fact that my username there was also the one I've used everywhere online for decades (here included) and I've had a pretty active online presence since there's been such a thing, so I'm fairly searchable before you even say hello.
• Here are photos of me I quite like but also some I think I look particularly fat/old/unflattered in, and ones that clearly show off certain things I like to do with my personal style (for example, I'm a cis masculine-presenting guy who wears nail polish.)

In addition to filling the hell out of my profile with all this, I had a lot of fun with the app's survey questions and generally gave really involved answers.

My attitude on the app was one of blatant honesty. I'd heard so many horror stories about people meeting on dating apps and the person turning out to be nothing like their profile, look nothing like their photo, etc. to the point of false advertising, and I really failed to understand the logic behind that; why lie to someone from the start, as if they won't actually realize you lied to them when they meet you?

Another important factor for me was that when I got on the app I was just getting back into dating, having recently taken a long time to work on myself and recover from a toxic and abusive relationship. Among other crappy things, my former abuser had spent the duration of our time together disapproving of and trying to force me to change fundamental things about myself in ways that caused me a lot of long-term harm and I was not interested in going through that sort of thing again. I'd rather someone who doesn't like thing X about me would see that thing on my profile right up front and so choose not engage with me to begin with, rather than have them get interested but find out that deal-breaker thing about me later and be disappointed. I came at it from the angle of saying "hey, I'm here, this is what I'm like, and here's a bunch of stuff about me you might not like." I wasn't necessarily trying to warn people off, but I wanted to see if anyone out there would see all those things about me and still potentially like me.

Long story long, it worked. I got messaged by someone who saw my profile and liked it, I liked hers, and we really clicked from the start. (Our first date was meant to be a quick cup of tea at a cafe, and ended up being many hours of walking and talking around town.) We totally fell for one another, dated, moved in together, got married, and six years later are still ridiculously happy. She is literally my favorite person in the entire world. Her weird and my weird mesh together so perfectly, and our relationship has always been based on complete honesty and open communication and sharing. We've seen and supported each other through the highest highs, lowest lows, and everything in between. It's the healthiest, happiest, and closest romance, friendship, and personal relationship of any kind I've ever had, and every day we spend together is better than the last. Among a lot of people who know us we're that obnoxiously-cute couple. We even have podcasts and other creative projects together nowadays, it's so goddamn gross. 🥰

Do you remember 9gag? Some of you certainly do. Anyway, during those times they created another app called 9chat, later renamed it to Cookie, and later renamed it back to 9chat again.

Well, we met there, on 9chat/Cookie.

There weren't an insanely huge amount of people there, and there was a section for newcomers to upload their selfie and/or introduce themselves. And I found this gorgeous girl there, started to text her, and to my surprise, she actually replied and didn't even ghost me.

We had a nice conversation there, and we continued on WhatsApp, and three months later we met in real life too. This was 7 years ago, and sadly we're still in LDR, but the most important thing is, we have each other.

First day of my sophomore year of college, my roommate comes back to the room with two smoking hot girls and was like "they want to smoke pot with us."

I thought "damn good job!"

25 years later I'm married to one of those "girls" and we have two beautiful sons together.

Nightclub dance floor during freshers week... has been 13 years and we're married now lol

She posted song lyrics online from Rush asking if anyone knew who it was.

I replied that I didn't, and was too proud to Google and say that I did. But the meter was close to "Yellow Rose of Texas" so maybe Emily Dickinson?

One thing led to another and we just had our 13th wedding anniversary this year.

I caught her cheating off my test in a gen-ed health class in my freshman year of college. I am normally a pretty strict rule follower, but this class sucked so much that I didn't care. After that, we started talking a bit after each class.

The next semester, we worked together on the groundskeeping crew for the school, and she got to see me do a classic Looney Tunes self-injury when I threw something heavy down on one end of a shovel lying next to me. The wooden end flew up, knocking my glasses clear off and giving me a black eye, and she rushed over to make sure I was okay.

We've been married for 5 years now!

Drunk at a karaoke bar. Twice.

We were in the same friend group in high school. We each dated others in the group but never had any interest in each other. I was living with one of his friends in college - still no interest at all. At a party one night we were talking and kissed me. It's the kiss that changed my life. Married 30 years and I'm thankful every day.

When our best friends were getting married and we met at the rehearsal dinner. Her best friend had been trying to get us to meet for years (our work schedules and lives in general always kept us from meeting). Within two months we were dating and have been together ever since.

I met her at my university’s Brony club. I sat next to her because she had a sketchbook open. I brought out my own sketchbook and struck up a conversation.

We had a two-year courtship and have been married for 6 years now.

Man....

Ok, so I was 12 years old and had only just moved from England to Australia. First few days of high school I noticed this girl. Normal looking girl - beautiful eyes, but one of those beautiful people that tends to be quiet and go by unnoticed... But I noticed her.

I was always very outgoing and loud, and she was more quiet and reserved. I loved to do card tricks. I also became incredibly shy when I wanted to talk to her, so I devised a plan

I laid some playing cards on the corner of my desk and waited for her to walk past. When she did, I knocked them off and we started a conversation..

Eventually I did a card trick and knew she'd picked the 3 of Diamonds. That card has held significance for us this whole time..

Through high school we both had feelings for eachother - me, being confident, silly and outgoing declaring my love for her to everyone and asking her out on a few occasions, never looking at the other girls who wanted to spend more time with the English boy who now lives in Australia. I only had eyes for her. I just knew she was the one.

But for 4 and a half years of high school it never happened. She was too shy to say yes, and I was too shy to ask properly. Sure, I'd slipped her notes and I'd asked on a few occasions, but it never happened. She did say yes once and we "dated" for 2 weeks but nothing happened, not a kiss, nothing. We were both young and inexperienced in relationships and after 2 weeks she said "you're dumped"... It hurt.

But for that whole high school time everyone in school knew we wanted eachother.

Then came secondary school (High school in Aus is year 7-10 when you're like, 12-16ish in age, secondary is Year 11 and 12 when you're about 16-18ish)

In secondary school I met my then best friend.. He was a great bloke and we got along like a house on fire. A couple of months into Year 11 he asked if he could ask the girl I loved out.. I told him "Why not, she doesn't want me anyway" so he did.

They got together and we stayed friends. I was heartbroken but I wanted the best for her and he seemed like a good bloke, and I didn't want to ruin what they had by being upset or jealous, and I didn't want to lose my friendship with either of them, so I kept my feelings hidden and eventually went on to date other girls. By this time she and I were about 16...

The following few years we all hung out with our friends group and they stayed together... I was the best man at their wedding and one of the first to meet their newborn son when he arrived...

But then slowly we drifted.. Id message him and get no replies, or short and careless ones. I'd long since stopped messaging her as usually messaging him was realistically intended for the both of them anyway...

And so 4 years went by without any contact from either of them...

Then I had a son. I wasn't in a good place or a good relationship at the time. Don't get me wrong, my then partner was fine. She is a good person but we just didn't fit and I feel I was with her out of lonliness more than love.

Anyhow, I got a message from the girl I loved through high school congratulating me on my son. I replied and asked how she was, told her I missed them and proposed a catch up with us all. I got no reply.

Another year passed and I left my then partner. 4 months-ish later, my high school crush had her then husband removed from the house for domestic violence. I found out through a chance encounter with her sister.

We made arrangements for me to go visit, and so I did.

I stepped into her house where her family was helping tidy the place and saw her down the long hall at a distance and so many of those feelings came flooding back.

I walked up and gave her the biggest hug. It felt like I held her forever... Then I got to work on helping tidy the house.. Then I met her daughter for the first time. At this point she'd had 2 kids with her then husband. One was 3, the other, 5.

Through the next couple of weeks I spent a lot of time catching up with her and trying to offer my help where I could. I learned a lot more about my old "friend" and just how controlling, coercive, manipulative and abusive he was for the 17 years they were together. 17 long years that feel as if they were robbed from "us".. But we were so young...

At one point we kissed. And that was it. Finally, after knowing her for 21-22 years and loving her for so long, we finally kissed.

It just was right. There was so much going on, court dates to maintain an intervention order against her ex husband, him lying about anything and everything. His manipulation of the court system and even his own children continues to this day... But finally we had eachother and we weren't about to let go.

I'd had a vasectomy after my son was born... But after a year of being with her I got it reversed. We now have a beautiful daughter together. We got married, too. Life together is what we should have always had. We both feel it.

Its tremendously difficult being the stepdad of 2 kids that are being conditioned and coerced into hating you 5 nights a fortnight, but they're good kids. I'm trying my best for them

I feel I have a lot to unpack and work through but with 4 kids and working in disability support its next to impossible to afford any kind of therapy, let alone the free time to attend..

But I love her. So much. And she loves me. I have a tattoo on my side - a silhouette of the 2 of us on our wedding day, surrounded by the clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades suits to symbolise how we met. There are 3 diamonds.

Through the abuse she endured theres a lot for us both to work through but again, we're so lucky to finally have eachother. We're 35 now and spent half our lives apart, despite at one point wanting to be with eachother for 1/3 of our lives to that point.. We're not letting eachother go now. I couldn't imagine life without her. She is everything to me. I just feel so sorry for our past selves. They deserved so much better.

I have to keep reminding myself that had we gotten together back then it might not have worked out how it has. We may have grown apart, or not had anything to compare to in order to see how good we really have it...

I love her. Always.

I've never written that all down before. There's plenty more to it, but I felt compelled to really delve into it that time. Thank you so much for asking the question.

Best friend of a girl I met through online dating, who insisted that the two of us had to meet. Long story short she quickly moved in 14 years ago and we got 2 kids quite quickly as well.

Some of this shit is so cute, it makes me sick!!

Please keep posting stories! I love it!!

We were the only two people at a concert that weren't part of the local arts scene, and this the only two who didn't know anybody. I saw her alone and started talking to her. I was just trying to bum a cigarette, but she had other ideas.

In 2017 I was coming out as transgender and looking for a job. Got an interview as head evening manager at a grocery store. Go in for the interview and am not sure if I'm out yet, but the store manager figured it out and was really open and said they had 2 trans people working there already, so I'm like fuck it, get the job and am out.

One of the other trans people is my right hand person like 2-3 days/week, store manager tries to enthusiastically but awkwardly introduce us.

Over the next couple of weeks everything goes to shit in the store; manager is fired, lot's of employees leave, severely understaffed, etc. I'm working like 80 hour weeks and every evening is a battle, and through commiseration and tough days a bond forms between me and the other person. Start meeting every time I have a day off and start dating like 6 weeks after we first meet, and 6 weeks after that we move in together.

Been together almost 7 years, now. Worked together for the first 3ish.

She came to visit a mutual friend for the weekend. We met and by the end of the first evening I was kind of hooked. We've been married for 23 years now and have 4 beautiful children.

We were in the same circle of friends freshman year of high school and it didn't take long for us to start dating. He moved across the state sophomore year, so we were long distance for a couple years, but he came back for university. We moved in together after graduating, married around four years later, and he's still putting up with me after twenty 😊

She picked me up in a bar. Been married for 23 years now

Despite my best efforts, they found me...

I met my partner 25 years ago online on a sort of social network website called sixdegrees. They lived in Singapore and me in the Netherlands. I already had a trip planned to SG so ee decided to meet up.
It was a fun time, but we were both way too shy and insecure to make a move (it was our first relationship :)
It took another couple of weeks before we finally worked up the courage to admit our feelings. We had a long distance relationship for less than a year before it fizzled out.

About six years later we got in touch again and the spark reignited. They came to visit me and we fell truely in love. Plans were made and my partner moved to NL two years later. We’ve been together for 16 years now.

That's the neat part, I didn't.

A random account on FB, with only like one or two mutual friends and a name and profile picture both being reference to Tim Burton's movies has messaged me because of a photo of me on a local old school goth festival. We started talking and hit it off pretty well, and eventually decided to meet. No-one of my friends knew who she was, I never saw any of her real pictures or had any indication whether I'm being scammed, catfished, or who the hell it is, other than her mentioning that she was part of the local goth scene several years ago, before I started participating.

We decided to eventually meet before another party, and I went in half expecting I'll just get a funny catfish story out of it, but I like collecting funny stories so why not. And she promised to bring alcohol, so all I was risking was one awkward afternoon I'd spend getting drunk with someone.

We both arrived already tipsy, and I was met at the train station with a really nice looking girl carrying three bottles of mead, which we've managed to drink on the way to the party. It was amazing experience and we hit it off immediately and it was basically love at first sight. Both of us could hold our drinks well, and we got to the party pretty drunk but nowhere near too drunk - I can drink a lot and be OK (not that I do it too often), and it's rare when I meet someone who can keep up with me.

When we arrived, it turned out that half of the people already knows her, because she indeed was part of the scene around five years before my time, before she got into a really bad relationship she couldn't get out of due to mortage for several years, cutting contact, but she changed her nickname so no one realized it was her I was talking about. She just got out of the relationship by moving out within a day because she found out he was cheating on her, and few months after that randomly decided to message me, because she saw me on photos with her highschool classmate - who was also my best friend who got me in the scene several years before that (I'm around 6 years younger than both of them), and her friend convinced her to just give it a try and message me.

We've been together for almost 6 years, moved together four years ago, and we've eventually started DJing and hosting our own goth parties, among other things, while also helping local promoters with their events. All in all, it's good, but it was a pretty random luck that we've met.

We met on the internet back when that was still viewed as kinda sketchy.

We progressed very quickly from being friends to deciding we were meant for each other to having a kid on the way and being married at a very young age.

I think most people knew we were doomed from the start.

And I don't blame them for thinking so, but we're planning to renew our vows in a few years, when we celebrate our 25th anniversary. Just to twist the knife.

In all seriousness, I love my wife more than I ever thought I would be capable of loving someone else, and that is a statement that is increasingly true with time, and mutually shared, as it seems we aren't done falling in love yet.

But I hesitate to relate this story, romantic as it is (and it is), because it risks validating what was really a series of poorly informed decisions; partially the passion of youth and partially the ignorance of a sheltered upbringing. It so happens we did and do love each other, but there are many unknowable versions of our story where our love would just not have been able to overcome our circumstances. We are beating the odds so far, but the odds are, yknow, the odds.

But damn I love my wife.

I was just looking for a watch buddy online and then she began becaming intimate with me because she found me handsome 🤷‍♂️

A buddy wanted to play board games and there was a shop not far from where I lived with a lot of them, including some in English (I live in Japan, Tokyo at the time). We played games and I wanted to introduce him to my favorite bar. The place next to it was also somewhere I went often and had two open seats. We sat down and started talking with some others I didn't know and some regulars. Well, I hit it off with one of those people I didn't know and we've now been married almost 3 years. I wasn't actually looking for anything at the time, having more-or-less given up on the whole dating thing after a couple of relationships (mostly looking on LTR/marriage-focused apps here). So, basically, very lucky.

I had two coworkers who were sisters and I got along with decently. Befriended the younger one and one day she invited me to a house party at the place she shared with her brother. Night ended with her yelling through the door "STOP FUCKING MY FRIENDS!" which I still think is hilarious.

Anyway we partied a lot and then settled down later and we've been together for 8 years now so it didn't turn out too badly.