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A friend emailed me after my bad gifts entry and said:

“you mention you met Husband while Walter was away, but you don’t say how”

Indeed I did not! So I will share.
The truth is that I “met” Husband in those two weeks only in the most literal sense- meaning I actually laid … eyes, yeah, eyes (that’s what we’re going with) …on his person for the first time.

The bottom line of our love story is this: you really can get anything you want on the Internet! Yes, I met Husband online. Through Yahoo personals, to be exact. His profile was light-hearted enough to indicate he wasn’t taking himself (or Internet dating) too terribly seriously, but disclosed enough to interest me.We traded messages for a few weeks, then emails. He was funny and smart- both prerequisites for me. He respected all my internet-dating precautionary measures, never pushing to meet or asking for naked pictures. (Seriously. That shit happens. A lot.) But there was something more. Despite just coming off an ugly divorce himself, he didn’t seem to have an ounce of bitterness in him. There were never any games or pretense or hedging, just answers to my questions and (as he demonstrated over and over again) careful listening to what I shared. I’d gotten pretty adept at sniffing out scary guy b.s. and I kept looking for it… and yet nothing. Nothing but this engaging funny man who was so easy to talk with, so compelling to me. Something seemed to be brewing.

Then I called him. It was like picking back up with an old friend… an old friend you flirted with a lot. He was every bit as warm and genuine and wonderful as I’d made him out to be in my mind. We kept talking and I became more and more anxious to meet him. Finally, I broke one of those aforementioned precautionary measures by asking him over to my apartment on very short notice. He brought M&Ms and he was the hottest boy I’d ever slept wi- er, I mean met. We never left the apartment that night. Sitting on my little loveseat, talking over some beers, he reached out and started playing with my hair. That simple little gesture wouldn’t ordinarily have caught my breath… but in that context, with that person, it did. The night that followed was amazing, but the details are for his memory and mine. I will just say it was everything good- sweet, intense, and completely devoid of any of the usual awkwardness that goes with a new partner.

That first night, I thought to myself “Self, you better enjoy this. Because you are not the type of woman a guy like this dates long term…” I thought Husband was too good for me. (A lot of days I still do, come to think of it. I joke that this is the longest one-night-stand I’ve ever had.) But within days it was clear we were both in for the long haul. Yes, only days. We met in June of 2004 and were married in October. Yes, of the same year.

Almost four years, two daughters, and a lot of bags of M&Ms later, he is still the hottest boy I’ve ever met OR slept with. And he still makes me laugh. And he is still the kindest and most thoughtful person I’ve ever met. It still takes my breath when he reaches out to play with my hair.