How did you meet your DH?
Short story: We met on match.com.
Long story: Throughout college, my plan was to move to the west coast. I grew up in Indiana, went to college there, and was ready to move on and out of the midwest. My sister moved to Oregon when I was in high school, and I go there to visit her at least once a year and love it there. My dad also lived in Seattle for four years, and I visited there several times and liked it also. So my heart was set on going to the pacific northwest, or even California. But then during my senior year of college, the big job fair where most engineering students land their first job happened to fall on 9/11. It was such a bizarre experience - trying to talk to companies and be upbeat and tell them you want a job when something so awful had just happened hours earlier, and a lot of companies didn't even make it the 2nd day since flights were grounded. So between not making contact with many companies at the job fair, the economy tanking, and my GPA not being the greatest, I didn't get any job prospects by graduation except for the local company in town where I did my senior design project. I considered going straight to grad school and using that as my avenue to get to the west coast. But I really wanted some work experience first, and many companies pay for grad school, so I decided to stay and work at the local company for a couple years.
So I had been at that job for about a year and a half, and was ready to start looking for something new. I learned so much there and gained some really invaluable experience, but I was ready to move on after developing some interests that I wouldn't be able to explore much there. I applied a couple places out west, but never heard anything back. Also in the meantime, I finally-really-finally ended an on and off relationship that had been dragging on for 3 years. A month or so after that breakup, I was ready to meet someone. I didn't think I was looking to jump into a serious relationship, but wanted to get out there and meet some new people and date. I was working a lot though, and had mostly male friends from college and work, and spent a lot of my weekends with them at the local bars. I decided to try online dating. I met one guy pretty quickly and dated for a couple weeks. Didn't go anywhere.
Around that time, another job opportunity came up in Virginia. This was obviously not the direction of heading to the west coast, but the job sounded interesting, and it was at least a move to do something new. Also one of my best college friends/roommate for two years lived in the same area, so that was a huge plus. I went there on a Friday for an interview and totally nailed it, and then spent the weekend with my friend. But... I kept having this nagging and overwhelming feeling that something was just not right about the job or the move there. I can't explain it other than a gut instinct, and I had no logical explanation for it at the time. I actually was wishing that they didn't offer me the job, so I wouldn't have to make that decision. But of course I got a call the following Monday morning offering me the job. I hesitated to accept since I still didn't feel it was right, and I had to figure out how to get out of my apartment lease, plan a move, etc. I asked them to send me a written offer to confirm everything the recruiter had told me verbally, but they said they needed a verbal acceptance in order to send the written offer. Seemed a bit odd to me, but I took some time to figure out my stuff, and had nothing concrete to stop me from accepting the job, only the feeling that it wasn't right.
So I gave them my verbal accept and started making plans to move, but did not officially quit my job until I got that written offer letter. I changed my match.com profile to the town in Virginia where I would be living, in hopes of making some connections with people before I moved (even just for friendship). The next part of the story is a long story in itself about sketchy dealings with that company (which I will share if anyone wants to know the details), so I will skip it other than to say I waited TWO FULL WEEKS for that offer letter to show up in the mail, despite the recruiter telling me multiple times that it had been sent. The funny thing was that the letter was overnighted to me! On top of that, the written offer didn't match up with what they had told me verbally. Between all the sketchiness and my "this is not right" feeling, I had to consider scrapping all my plans to take the job and move. I talked to family, friends, my boss at work, and even one of the VPs who knew me well, and concluded that I should not take this job. I made that final decision on a Sunday, let the recruiter know that I changed my mind on Monday, and then changed my match profile back to Indiana.
On Tuesday evening after work, the day after changing my profile back, I got IMs on match from a couple guys... one of them being my husband.
His opening line was something about coffee, since my screen name was coffee related. We ended up chatting for a while, discovered we had some things in common, and he made me laugh. He was from the Detroit area and was in Indiana to start on his PhD program in mechanical engineering. Based on his picture, I didn't think he would be anything more than a friend. We continued chatting online every night via AIM, and I really liked talking to him, but still only considered him a friend. He eventually started talking about meeting in person for dinner. I was hesitant, but finally said ok. I wanted to just meet him someplace, but he insisted on picking me up. I finally agreed to let him. So one week after we first started chatting, we had our first dinner date. He showed up at my apartment with not only flowers, but a toy for my cat too! And seeing him in person instantly changed my thought about him just being a friend.
We had a very nice dinner, talked a lot and got to know each other more. I became really nervous because I knew I liked him but worried he was out of my league and was probably dating a bunch of other women. We went back to my apartment and watched tv for a little bit after dinner. Before he left, we had a nice hug. To this day, he says that he knew I liked him because I squeezed him a bit harder and longer than a normal hug. We mentioned something about getting together again sometime, but I didn't know if he really meant it.
Either the next morning, or even that same night, he IMed me to say he had a good time on our date and was looking forward to seeing me again. So I invited him over the next night and we kissed for the first time. We saw each other a couple more times that week, and I knew I really really liked him. What I didn't know (until he told me later) was that he had a couple other dates that week. He liked me the best though, so we were shortly spending nearly every day together. He was in school, and I was working, but we would stay up late into the night talking and I would have to get up at 5 am for work, but I didn't care since I was totally falling for him. I felt that we had similar outlooks on life, similar goals, including that, ironically, neither of us wanted kids. At the time, I was 23 and he was just shy of 25. I knew that I was nowhere near ready for marriage, but did know this guy was special and wanted to keep dating him.
Two weeks after we started dating, it was his 25th birthday. I knew I wanted to get him a gift, but struggled what to get for someone that I really liked, but only knew for two weeks. He had mentioned during one of our long talks that he always wanted a watch but nobody had ever gotten one for him as a gift, despite having mentioned it. I found a watch for him, but it cost $100. I didn't care about the money, but it seemed like too much for someone that I had basically just met. I took a chance and gave it to him anyway, and he loved it. To this day, it is still one of his favorite gifts from me. He says it was really meaningful that I had heard him mention he wanted a watch and then actually got it for him, and that it was a turning point for him in our relationship. That watch has been scratched, cracked, gone through numerous battery changes, but it's still his watch from me and won't wear the replacement I got him several years ago.
So a week or so after his birthday, he told me that he had received a job offer back in Detroit. The PhD program was actually his backup plan, as he really wanted a particular job in a particular department, but there were no openings for him at the time. But now there was an opening, so he was moving back. I never in my life thought I would do this, but I told him "well, there are jobs and grad schools for me in Michigan, right?" I don't think he expected me to say that either. We had known each other 3 weeks! I wasn't ready to move or do anything right away, but I knew that I wanted to continue our relationship to see where it would go. But I also knew that we couldn't do a long distance relationship forever.
He was only in Indiana for one semester, less than 4 months, and he moved back exactly one month after we had our first date. We spent as much time together as possible, and I cried like a baby our final night together. He must have thought I was nuts. It was Christmas then, so we didn't see eachother for a couple weeks. His job didn't start until the 2nd week of January, so he came back to Indiana and spent the first week of January with me. At some point during that week, I determined that I could marry him. I had never thought or felt that about anyone else. We spent the next 4 months doing the long distance thing. About every 3 weeks, we took turns flying to see each other for the weekend. Then I started looking for jobs in Michigan, ended up finding one and moved. That was about 6 months into our relationship. However, my job was on the other side of town from where he lived, and I got an apartment near my job. So we still basically had a long distance relationship being 40 miles apart.
The next 6 years weren't easy. We had some really difficult times, a few breaks and some really awful arguments. But we always figured out a way to work it out and stayed together. I eventually started a grad school program while working full time, so we saw each other even less. I completed my goal to get a master's degree by the time I turned 30 (3 weeks to spare), and then he proposed on my 30th birthday. This was a complete surprise to me, since he had convinced me that he wasn't ready yet and it had been the topic of several recent discussions and arguments. It was so unexpected, that when he started his proposal speech about how he can't believe our lives intersected the way they did in the short time frame and he was so happy he went to Indiana and gets sad when he thinks about what his life would be like if he hadn't met me, I didn't realize what he was getting to and said, "but we did meet, so there's no need to be sad." I seriously nearly derailed his proposal attempts twice before I caught on to what was happening.
We got married less than 5 months later and just celebrated our 4th anniversary last week. And we still live in Michigan, and I will probably never move to the west coast.
Sorry for the novel!