How I met my husband

In less than a month my husband and I will have been together 10 years.  That's a very long time.  I haven't done anything other than breathe for 10 consecutive years.

I was actually already married when we met .  My first marriage was a bad idea from the start, and didn't get any better the longer it lasted.  I was young, stupid and reckless, and he was abusive.  Remind me to tell you that whole sordid story another day.  Today I want to talk about happier things.

We met online in July of '99 on a website that would rather remain anonymous.  I had an ad up, mostly looking for friends, and S (who prefers I not use his name here - remind me to come up with a pseudonym) sent me an email.  He lived 2 states away, I had been honest in my profile about my marital status (married women a very big nono in his book) and I was not the type he usually looked for, so we're still not sure what made him respond, but I'm sure glad he did!  We connected pretty fast, and it take long for me to open up about the hell I was living in.

Something you need to know about S - he has a huge savior complex.  He wants to save the world.  So finding out about my abusive relationship made him determined to save me.  The fact that we both thought we were falling for each other just added fuel to the fire.  Three months after that first email we were making plans how to get me from where I was - to where he was.  We were pretty realistic about things though.  Unlike so many internet relationships, we weren't planning on me coming here to live forever, it was to get me away, so I could get on my feet, and be safe.  Of course, it didn't work out quite like that.  I snuck out of the house after my ex fell asleep and got on a midnight Greyhound on October 18th, 1999.  We were married July 1st, 2000.

S is the first man I ever met who treated me like a real person - who valued my opinion, who loves me for me.  He knows everything about me, the good, the bad, the horribly ugly, and loves me anyway.  He wants to spend the rest of his life with me, even though I hate to do the laundry, am a really lousy housekeeper, get overwhelemed by life and freak out way too easily, need way more sleep than he does... and a million other annoying habits.  He is an amazing father, who loves his children more than I thought a father could.  I don't know how I got so lucky, but I thank God for him all the time.