How fun is this...to learn how people met and fell in love and what it has been like since for them. I have a rather checkered past when it comes to love. My sweetie, Gil (short for Gilbert) and I have been together for 3 years in January. I love the story of our meeting so much that we reenacted it for our wedding ceremony last year. That, plus some other eclectic bits, had the wedding guests pretty bamfoozled during the ceremony itself.

I had been on match.com in Indianapolis, Indiana (where I'm originally from)on and off for a couple of years and the joke was I was a "serial dater". I had so many "one offs" that it was a running joke amongst my friends...and I was a serial dater because I had decided, after a 2 year self-imposed retreat from the world of men, exactly what I was looking for and wasn't in the mood to compromise. Not controlling, no, not me! Grin. I met, and dated, a guy for about 13 months, then broke up with him when I realized certain things weren't going to change any time soon.

I continued my match.com subscription after I moved to Chicago for a job opportunity. After 17 dates and a lot of angst, I decided I wasn't going to renew my subscription at the end of the month.

Right before my subscription was due to lapse, I had a friend staying with me to take her Reiki training from the same person I had taken my training from. She was studying and so I said "I guess I'll go up and see what crap the guys on match have to share with the world. Although I don't know why I bother, since it seems like all of them say the same thing. Look great in a tux or jeans, love the symphony and the outdoors. Blah, blah, blah."

When I signed on, I was bored and glanced at the area of the site where you can see what men having been looking at your profile. I saw Gil's profile and thought "OMG"...I called to my friend and said "you have to look at this guy's profile". She read it and said immediately "you're going to contact him, right?". I reviewed his profile, saw that he was under my height requirements (I'm 5'9" and decided I wanted someone at least 6'2" tall) and said "nope, I deserve exactly what I want, remember?". Besides that, he was over an hour away from where I lived and I didn't want to drive that far.

She bopped me upside the head and said "are you nuts?" so I gave in and sent him what is called a wink so I didn't have to write anything. He wrote back almost immediately and was so warm and welcoming. At the end of his email he said "and on behalf of all da guys in the area, thanks for classing up the joint!".

I still wasn't sure about him...he was, after all, too short ("only" 5'11", grin) and told him I would talk to him after my friend left on Sunday. On Sunday, I contacted him via email and we started chatting. I told him that I really didn't like chatting via email...too static and it got boring quickly...he immediately gave me his phone number and we spent the next 7 hours talking to each other! In fact, I don't remember how many times I needed to charge my phone in order to stay on the call. Thank goodness for cell phones and cell phone chargers...

During the call, he kept asking me for a date, getting ever more frustrated when I ignored the request...I didn't say "no", I just ignored what he was saying because I knew I came across well on the phone and wasn't confident in how I came across in person. Finally, he said "what does a guy gotta do to get a date with you!!!!!!!!!". I agreed to a date and and immediately thought "oh lordy, what have I done!" I was on the phone with my girlfriend, babbling away, talking nonsense and stuff for hours.

Although our date was originally set for Tuesday (I had a date on Monday...a no show, go figure), we ended up going out on Monday night for dinner. When I got to the restaurant, he was already there and I parked a couple of spots away. He got out of the car with a beautiful red rose in his hand, took a look at me and practically ran across the two parking spaces to meet me. At the moment he turned to me, this exquisitely beautiful blue light jumped the distance between our hearts and I was smitten. Caught hook, line, and sinker!

We both called in "sick" the next day (not acting out of the greatest integrity at that moment!) and spent the day together. That afternoon he asked me to marry him and I, being the hold out that I was, waited a whole 5 days before saying yes! I had such a thing about the word "married" that I insisted on calling it a joining!

We spent every moment possible together for the next few months, talked on the phone a gazillion times a day during the week and closeted ourselves at one of our homes during the weekends.

However, in July we split up for a month (long story, lots of learnings) and got back together again in August. We were married on May 5, 2007 and had a blast at our wedding. I wore two different costumes and our ceremony was, in the words of some guests, amazing and unique. Of course, there were some other words too...like strange, weird and, well, I'll not share some of the other words 'cuz I'm going to be a lady (giggle).

Our honeymoon, in Sedona, was a month later and we spent the time on transformational activities...a very different honeymoon which I loved. AND I would love to go on another, more traditional one, sometime.