This was originally posted by Mel and Tonja on the community forum.
Tonja and I(Melanie) will be taking our first Olivia cruise in January 2007. Our story is probably not the most interesting but it worked. We work for the same company, she for 20 years and myself for 13. We are very fortunate as there is a large number of gays and lesbians employed there, and our company is very open and everyone is on equal ground. Though we worked in different departments, I was essentially her boss. We had known each other for about six years, and were always friendly, but never spent any significant amount of time together. I always loved working when she was working because she was very efficient, and I knew her department was one less thing I had to worry about when she was there. Her department was the place everyone hung out each morning, grabbing coffee and saying hello. She seemed to be very naive and joked around alot with all of the lesbians, though I would not have pegged her as curious, just nosy. She was always very accepting of us, but would poke fun at us and tell us she didn't understand just what it was we did. She always ask a lot of questions, then took the answers in stride and went on about her business. I can certainly respect someone that is brave enough to ask questions and then stick around to hear the answers. I attended a class two nights a week for about a year, and one of my classmates happened to be her husband. I quickly found out that he was a real jerk, and many times wondered how someone as nice and easy going as Tonja, wound up with such a man. About a year after I finished this class, my boss ask me to train into the department where Tonja worked with the goal being for me to be able to train new employees into multiple departments. I agreed, and he placed me with Tonja to train. We began spending twelve hours a day, three days a week together. I quickly found that besides being very nice, she was a lot of fun, and that we had a lot in common. We became good friends over the course of the next three of four months, and started having lunch outside of work once a month. At the time I was on the tailend of a five year relationship that was over long before it was over. She was great to listen to my problems, and slowly began sharing how unhappy she was in her marraige. She ended up divorcing in August of 98. I moved out of my home and to a city about an hour away in September. We continued having lunch once a month and remained good friends. Though I had developed very deep feelings for her, I felt it best to keep them to myself and accepted the fact that we would never be anything but friends. One afternoon when I was dropping her off after one of our lunches, she hugged me goodbye which was not unusual; however, when she let go she remained standing very close with her face about an inch from mine. I couldn't resist the urge to kiss her, for which I immediately apologized. She said for me not to apologize, that she loved me too, which shocked me because I did not recall telling her I loved her, but I guess the little smarty just figured it out. She said she wanted to be with me, but would not live a lie, and told me I would have to come out to my family which I did. She immediately went to her family, and told them she had fallen in love with a woman and that was just how it was. We have been together ever since and that was almost eight years ago. I have helped her raise two wonderful girls, one who is now 23 and the other 16. Fortunately things have always fallen into place for us. My family adores her and the girls, and I am very close with both of the girls and get along well with her other family. The only bad thing that has come out of this, is that Tonja will never be able to live this down at our company. The lesbians make sure they torment her daily. They remind her of how naive and nosy she was, and how she always told them she didn't understand what they did. They tease her mercilessly about not just falling over the fence, but busting through at full speed, and at least once a day she is asked if it is crow feathers that she is spitting. Fortunately she is a good sport and knows they only do it because they love and accept her. We are certainly blessed with great family and friends, and can't wait to make some new friends on the cruise.