My college girlfriend claimed to have played a part in getting an IRC server set up on campus network, back when campus networks were brand new. Through that IRC server, I met the person who would later become my wife.

I met my cat in a shelter. She was already an adult cat and very anxious/skiddish around people. When I said I wanted her I literally got looks from the staff that practically screamed “Her!? Really??”

Took well over a year, but eventually she became a silly mush that loves to be near me. Now its been over 10 years with her. She’s all I have as far as a companion goes and probably all I’ll ever have, but she’s the best!

I met my wife on IRC. She was attracted to the fact that I could spell. That was 25 years ago.

My cats walked up on my front porch and decided they were mine.

Pretty much the same for my SO lmao

Fucking Facebook. We went to different high schools on opposite sides of town so we were completely unaware of each others’ existence despite attended the same church and having overlapping friend groups. A few years after high school we were both fresh out of bad relationships and living back home with our respective parents, we happened to start talking in the comments on a mutual acquaintance’s post, compared notes and found that we were very similar people in very similar places in our lives and decided to meet up to get baked and commiserate. The first night we met in person I was planning to hang out for an hour or two then go to work, third shift loading trailers for Fedex. I ended up calling out of work, we sat up all night together just talking, parted at sunrise with the observation that both of us had a good feeling about this. Within 3 months we had moved in together and were also coworkers. That was 12 years ago, other than a 6 month break a few years in we’ve been up each others’ asses nonstop ever since.

I slacked off in high school and went to community college.

Where I continued slacking off. I sat in the back of one of my history classes because it was near an outlet, so I could plug my laptop in, pretend to be taking notes or whatever, but in actuality was just goofing off for most of the class

Next to me sat another slacker, he was goofing off in much the same sort of way, and we hit it off.

He became, and still is, one of my best friends. Most of my friends I can actually trace back to him in some way or another. He’s one of those people whose ability to meet and befriend people everywhere he goes borders on the magical.

One day we met up to go wander around a local flea market/farmers market. We ran into his best friend who also happened to choose that day to go wandering around the aisles of junk looking for hidden treasure.

And that friend brought his girlfriend with him. Years later she would become my wife.

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. We all wandered around together for a while chit-chatting, and eventually we ported ways. She didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time, nor I on her, I actually don’t think she even remembers this story.

Since we shared pretty much the same circle of friends, we would bump into each other occasionally at parties and such. For a few years I don’t think either of us really thought much about the other, we were just friends of a friend who seemed cool enough.

Eventually, of course, the two of them broke up, as tends to happen. We all stayed in pretty much the same social circles, but she and I didn’t have a whole lot of direct interaction.

One day, that friend from community college hits me up. He’s heading over to the house that she was renting with a couple roommates, no real plans, just chill, have a few beers, watch movies, maybe get some food. So I tag along.

It was basically the three of us hanging out in her living room, and her roommates occasionally wandered in to grab a beer from us before disappearing back into their rooms.

We refer to that night as “The Accidental Nazi Night” because just picking random movies from Netflix, we ended up choosing Iron Sky (about Nazis on the moon,) Equilibrium (dystopian movie with an authoritarian state surprising free expression and such,) and Fire with Fire (where the main villain is a Neo-Nazi)

So that was my first time really spending any sort of quality time with her, just chilling in her living room, killing a case of beer, and watching movies of varying quality.

We became pretty good friends after that. The house she rented basically became the usual hangout place for everyone, so I spent a lot of time there. Funnily enough, she tended to hang out in her room away from all of the action while we were all making a ruckus downstairs.

And so things went for a few years. I’ll be honest, I never really had her on my radar as someone I was interested in dating and was content to be friends.

Apparently she was very interested in me though, and was laying the flirting on pretty thick, and it all went over my head. Eventually she realized she would need to resort to more drastic measures, and one night as we happened to be leaving a friend’s party at the same time, as we got to our cars she grabbed me and kissed me.

And I’ll be honest, that broke my brain a little. From my perspective it kind of came out of nowhere. I kind of had to rethink everything about us and decided, “yeah, fuck it let’s see where this goes”

And so here I am a decade or so later, married for 7 years, and pretty happy with how things all turned out.

She moved in next door. We were both recently divorced. Been 6 years since and I do not know what I’d do without her.

At a sex positive meeting 11 years ago. She was there with her fiance and I was there with my fiance. We both thought each other were cute at the time, but we were busy with other partners. A few years later, she randomly messaged me on fetlife asking me out on a date. We’ve been together ever since. We just got married a few months ago.

After a big life upheaval, I decided I needed something fun to do, so I hopped on reddit and went to LFG to find an online game of D&D. Had great fun, but scheduling was difficult, so we kept losing players. The DM put out another LFG post and grabbed a few candidates that is remaining players went through.

And so we chose her. And it was great, we were a party again, full of shenanigans and having fun.

COVID hit and everyone and everything went back into upheaval. That DM ended up having to leave so I chose to pick up the reins for my own game. What a game it was. I’ve never had such high highs again as a DM.

Unfortunately through COVID and life itself, we had a lot of heavy things happening. But after a couple of years of knowing these people, we were kinda a found family, despite never having met. So sometimes we’d have calls at 3am when someone needed to talk. Sometimes we’d cancel DnD to do something less intense.

Throughout this, I had been going through my own really heavy things and She was there, treating me more kindly than I knew was possible. She would listen and validate me. She helped talk me down from a ledge or two. She was just endlessly patient and sweet.

So seven years on, we’ve both been through the ringer, been up and down and harder down. But we have grown so much and learned so much together and from one another. She was my best friend and as close as anyone in my life has ever gotten. She’s still my best friend but on Christmas she kissed me, so we’ve been exploring a new angle of our relationship and learning how deeply one can truly love. It’s kinda been a joke between us for a while, but I really think I’m going to marry her and spend the rest of my life trying to make her happy.

Tl;dr: online D&D created a family

Friend of a friend. I ordered her a scotch. She downed it like it was a shot, then was so adorably embarrassed when I told her it wasn’t a shot- hung out the rest of the night laughing about that among other things…

That was over 18 years ago. ❤️

47. Didn’t. Stopped looking. If they exist they’re going to have to walk in to me physically and be very obvious because I’m not even looking for signs any more.

My cat: Shelter. He came right up on my lap purring, never did it again. Con artist.

My wife: art gallery

By dating her best friend, having argument with said best friend, SO was the intermediary. Realized SO was the better of the of the 2 anyway so took her on a date along with 4 other of her friends. By end of evening, SO and I were in love.

Dog 1 - followed me home while walking late at night with who I thought would be my forever person

Dog 2 - gifted by who I thought would be my forever person after talking about starting a family

Dog 3 - daughter to Dog 2…little rascal started his own family

Cats: went to the cat shelter and chose them.

Though to be fair, only one of my cats chose me. The other I just fell in love with and had to take him even though he was hissing and scared and shit. He’s since turned into a cuddle bug