OT - How Did You Meet Your Spouse/Current SO?
Bit of a slow day, but just kind of wondering if anyone has any fun stories about how they met their spouse or significant other.
I ask this as a relatively jaded 30-year-old who's only really dated off of dating apps and who finds them...disheartening and looking for a little encouragement that the world is bigger than Tinder lol
MySpace.
My wife is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen too. Crazy luck.
Elon Musk says the best way is to get a job and then bang your subordinates
Hey - Don’t knock it. Worked for me!
My CEO did this. Then he gave himself a raise of an extra several million in salary to make up for the cash he had to give his wife after she found out.
Me, I was late for my first class on a Monday morning and the only open seat was next to her.
Just started talking to her at a concert.
....and you guys made beautiful music together???
She was my student. She was dating a Russian trainer at the time and wanted to learn the language to communicate better with his family. It was an adult extension course at Schoolcraft. When the term ended, she asked if I was available for private tutoring. 19 years and two kids later, we're still going strong.
Heh, I did two years at Schoolcraft before going to Michigan. Small world.
You taught / teach Russian?
Aha, another clue to "Hotel Putingrad."
I've led a few lives.
Are you a cat?
New icon is pretty fantastic.
So you had her boyfriend assassinated?
She likes the Russians!
Strip club. She was working the 2:00 to 6:00 shift when the buffets and the c-section scars flow like water…
A lap dance is so much better when the stripper is crying
Or the lap dance recipient is crying. Either way
+1 for Bloodhoung Gang. This song is amazing.
So...true story in light of FauxMo:
I happened to accidentally walk into a strip club in SE Michigan twenty-five years or so ago (okay, the "accidental" part isn't true), and this not-very-attractive girl approaches me to talk, as they do in said establishments. We talked for a while and she said she was a UM Women's Studies major and she was working at the club for a few nights to do research on the strip club phenomenon. Given her vocabulary, familiarity with A^2 and the women's studies program, and her appearance and manner, everything checked out. And, yeah, I sort of was familiar with the staff at that particular establishment. While we were talking, an attractive employee interrupted our conversation and asked if I wanted to spend time with her instead. The Michigan student commented on the rudeness of the employee. But I bid the student a fond adieu and followed after the specific set of considerably greater talents of the undereducated employee.
I haven't been in a strip club for a couple decades now, but they are indeed fascinating on several levels. I'm sure I had a purpose for sharing, this, but it's a Saturday and I'm drinking, so feel free to draw your own profound conclusions since I have already forgotten my motive for posting...
At least you could have told us you married the woman in the woman's study program.
Yeah, marrying either the stripper or the UM student would have made for better prose. I made a better decision and married another, but that story is too boring to share, even on a thread as slow as this one...
Off the main topic, a SE Michigan strip club story from any years ago: Bachelor party with DTW as the target area. One guy in the party is an OB/GYN doc nearby with lots of patients "in the industry." He says to the group: "I'll be somewhat uncomfortable if we see any of my patients. Could we please start at this one place (which, to his knowledge, is low-probability for that event)?" They go there, walk in the door, and within a few seconds hear "Dr. E!" He pretty much gave up and tried to enjoy himself.
OP: Best wishes. Dating apps require some psychological energy but I believe they're a net positive based on direct experience and the collective experience of family and friends.
That reminds me of an old story of a Michigan student who worked strip clubs as part of her studies as an artist, which also included dressing in strikingly unusual ways, as if she was herself the canvas for what she created.
I wonder if there's any connection with your stripper.
I'm just thankful no one had phones capable of recording each and every thing done when I was in school at UM.
Very few girls grow up with the dream of being a stripper, and very few middle-aged women who were strippers have fond memories of those times. But, hey, there are exceptions, I suppose. Stripping is much more victimization of women than it is empowerment of women. Again, there are exceptions.
You're right. But the one I heard about was apparently a big deal in the performance art world.
Ahhhh! That UM student. No, the girl I knew was probably someone who "wanted to be" like the person you reference. Like I said, there are exceptions to the general rule that women in the sex industry are victims. But most definitely are, and I feel sorry for them for having had to endure the things that brought them where they are. So many men treat young females so very poorly...
Deja Vu in Ypsi was the last one for me, 20 years ago, with the girlfriend prior to my current spouse. It was a fun evening.
Met at work we both no longer work at the place though.
Keg party in Charleston, SC.
After graduating from UofM I moved to the PNW to work for a large tech company. After living here for about 1.5 years we met on eHarmony and have been together ever since. We were both eachother's first online dates, but I like to hassle her because she had a date with another option the same day a few hours later. Very business like lol.
It does sound like Tinder is way more upsetting than the online dating landscape was 10+ years ago, definitely glad to be out of that game.
We were neighbors. Best decision I ever made was asking her out.
Went to a Pizzaria in Little Rock with a friend to meet up with a couple of her friends. I was wearing a Michigan pullover. One of her friends randomly said “I’ve been to Michigan”. I asked where and she said that she had gone as a teenager (I’m 45, she’s 42) to a couple of friends summer homes in Ludington. I’m from pentwater, which is 15 minutes away. Surprisingly, there are several people from Little Rock that have summer homes along the beachfront in Ludington.
Side note, she’s been divorced for over ten years, and her ex’s grandfather is the man who sold the Cowboys to Jerry Jones. She’s also a personal trainer. I had to inform her that I am not rich and she can obviously see that I’m am not in peak physical condition. Fortunately, she didn’t care about either of those things.
Match.com
I noticed that she was wearing a block M hat during a race in one of her pictures. I was in St Louis for grad school and she was for residency.
Match.com as well except my SO saw me wearing a Red Wings jersey. We were only living about 5 minutes away from each other in Raleigh when we connected.
Match.com for me three. I had gone on nightmare dates on the site about five months and three weeks (with some time off during that time frame). Got a “wink” from a girl, I messed, we chatted a bit. Decided to meet for coffee one evening, both of us not expecting much.
We were there for 3.5 hours. It was her first week on the site, last week of my subscription. Crazy how that worked out. Be ten years next month and I’ve been happy with her everyday we’ve been together. (Obviously we fight occasionally but it’s never that big a deal)
me four. 20 years later, i’m still hooked.
Match for my wife and I as well. She sent me a wink while I was at a concert in Detroit. Couldn't respond right away because of service in the building being spotty. When I got home we started messaging back and forth. Had a first date after about two weeks of messages. Dated for almost two years when I proposed, then we married in December of 2017. We've been going strong ever since. Sometimes we still kinda feel like we're in a honeymoon period.
Standing in front of the Parthenon. I was explaining some of the history to the group I was with and she asked to listen in.
3rd grade. Started dating in HS. She dumped me before our senior year but we stayed friends.
She needed a ride one day and said she'd buy lunch and we hadn't dated in I er a year. I picked her up and at Taco Bell I said "we should get married after I get done with boot camp." She said ok. We've been married 34 years now.
Call from nowhere ended up being the most beautiful and wonderful woman in the world. It turned out to be set up by a mutual friend where we were both not aware of her ploy to bring us together.
The gamified way to create it is to complain about dating apps with your friends and then have your circle of friends compete to find dates for each other.
Online dating was…rough. Pictures rarely matched and then I was quickly looking for an exit, which is why I switched to getting a coffee when possible as opposed to full on dinner which required a minimum of an hour to get through.
met my wife in an after school program I worked in part time, she was doing an observation for a education class for school. We were/are both in education.
On a train in Romania 20 years ago this October. We both fit the cliche of “when you least expect it”.
I met my wife on Match.com eleven years ago and we got married the following year. It is the second marriage for both of us. She is a very successful attorney and I’m an engineer (Michigan of course) that runs a small software business that makes ROI calculators. I give the background information because we are both analytical, but in very different ways. I think an engineer and attorney relationship is very underrated.
She is kind (to me), beautiful, intelligent, and I’m smart enough to know I hit the jackpot.
My wife went to Alabama, my daughter from my first marriage attends Georgia, and I went to Michigan. College football conversations are always interesting in this house!
Wife: "We own you kid"
Daughter: "Not anymore"
You: "We're back-"
Wife & Daughter: "Who are you again?"
Hilarious and 100% accurate! I have a phenomenal relationship with my daughter, a true “daddy’s girl.” She watched Michigan football with me and bled Maize and Blue. Yeah…got to Athens and indoctrinated into the UGA scene and now she is all Dawgs! I can live with that, but my wife liking Saban is much harder. 
You’re surrounded by beauty and brains! Good work!
That was a very nice thing to say. Thank you.
Met just pre-pandemic in 2020 on Tinder, though we were both so sick of dating apps that we were each about to ditch them. So glad I didn't delete it a week earlier. She moved in a year later. It's been great since.
We met as summer camp counselors at Springhill camp in Evart, MI. I had just graduated from UM, and she was still completing undergraduate work at MSU. We started dating afterwards and got married just over one year later. We shared similar core values and faith from the beginning. Now 18 years into marriage and 4 children later, I am thankful to God every day to be married to my best friend.
Met my wife at a West Michigan summer camp as well. I never went as a kid and was nervous to be giving up my real job to play for a summer. My wife was the first person I met. I thought anyone willing to give up their summer to serve others (who looks like that) has gotta be the woman I’ll marry. Been married for 22 years. Best years of my life.