This was originally posted by Tenesmos2 on the community forum.
Hello ladies. I loved reading the stories of new beginnings. Love springs eternal. Here's how my sweetie and I met, with a little bit of background info. I was a late bloomer, and recognized my attraction to women, in my twenties. It took me some years to act upon those feelings...until my late thirties. Looking back now, it was worth the wait as I was too much into my career, and way to selfish. When I finally got the courage to date, I decided to try to meet someone online because the local papers had the same old ads, and I was not into the local bar scene. I literally read hundreds of posts, but hers stood out for me.It read "Looking for someone in "OC"". Well, I thought Philadelphia was not too far from Ocean City,only about 90 minutes, plus I really liked her post. I was intrigued from the get go. I wrote back to ask her what party of Ocean City she was from, and I received quite a surprise answer. She told me "OC", meant Orange County California. Talk about a thunder storm on my parade. I thanked her for her response and said that was a bit too far for me. Back to square one, or so I thought. The next day there was another email from her. I must confess, it was so engaging, that I must have read it over and over several times. After a couple of weeks, with daily emails, I would rush home to see what she would write. I felt like a schoolgirl, all giddy and starry eyed. I felt that the distance would be an issue, but she was persistent. Finally, after 4 weeks of emails and IM's we talked on the phone. That first sound of her voice is crystal clear to me, as it was back then. After that initial conversation, I knew we had to meet. My job kept me very busy with travel, so we had to wait until October. Since we could not see each other till then we had to find other ways to communicate and spend time to get to know one another.We would have hours upon hours of IM's and emails. This was quite the challenge, writing your thoughts and feelings, rather than talking face to face. It's as if we fell in love with our minds and emotions first. Since we talked, emailed and IM'ed, we decided not to exchange pics, but rather we described ourselves to one another. On Saturdays, we would watch the same movie, while talking on the phone. This made us feel closer, and helped build the anticipation of meeting. In that space of time before we met we had created 4 reams of IM's and emails, that we have saved. Finally the day arrived.When I finally saw her, she looked so beautiful, I was mesmerized and fell in love all over again. It was the most incredible 10 days of my life. We traveled to Sedona, and then to Palm Springs.
It was sad to say goodbye. Fortunately, my job took me out West every couple of months, and that is how we dated...2 years back and forth. The airlines, AOL and the phone companies made a small fortune. All this travel and saying goodbye, was getting tougher and tougher, so she moved from big sunny California to Pennsylvania. That was over 8 years ago. We have survived career changes, cancer, the winters, and family issues. She is one hell of a gal...we are very blessed.
Deb