One of the first questions people ask me, when they find out I am married is, “How did you and your husband meet?”
Some of the various answers I have given are:
“In the single rider line at Disneyland.”
“At a John Tesh fanclub meeting.”
“He was my gynecologist.”
“At a family reunion.”
Surprisingly, some of those answers were better received than the real answer: I met him through a mutual friend called THE INTERNET. (Dun, dun, dun.) I know it’s rather surprising, coming from someone who has a “Comment Junkie” button on her blog, and spends about 26 hours a day online.While I wish we had been cool enough to meet on the World of Warcraft site or in the comment box of Cake Wrecks, we sadly met the old fashioned way, on LDSSingles.com. People are always very fascinated when I tell them we met on an Internet dating site, and often want to know if that was weird or has affected our relationship in anyway. Of course it hasn’t! We communicate only using text messages or chat rooms, like most normal couples.
But in all seriousness, it was just a different form of meeting someone. It really is no different than meeting at a Singles Ward activity, or at a mutual friend’s party, a wedding reception, or a Bumpit convention.
The one great thing about meeting someone online is that I already had some key pieces of information about him, which allowed me to fall in love immediately, such as his profile picture in which he holds a Samurai sword. Or his comment about how people tell him he looks like Steven Segal. Who wouldn’t want to get with that?
While I already knew several things about my husband before I met him, there is still that small element of surprise that comes with meeting someone online. Such as the, “Hey, my picture was of Brad Pitt when he was 21, and I look like Danny Devito in real life. Surprise!” kind of thing. At least I was able to practice patience, tolerance, and dry heaving into restaurant toilets.
So, here we are, almost seven years later, We are at least as happy as the latest couple on the cover of US Weekly pretends to be. I would caution people to take things slow like we did, and wait at least six weeks before getting engaged. (It may have been 5 ½ weeks, but who’s counting?)
I really did luck out and married a great guy, who makes me laugh, and only mocks me once or twice a day, rather than the ten times a day I actually deserve it. So the next time someone gives you a hard time for doing the Internet dating thing, just tell them, “Hey, you can meet a potential rapist anywhere, mom.”
*All pictures courtesy of Stock.xchng and Google Images
Kristina lives in Utah with her husband and her well traveled Snuggie. Kristina is a full-time social worker, bringing joy, rainbows, and metaphorical unicorns to all the people she works with, on a daily basis. In her spare time, she can be found reading blogs, knitting blankets for disadvantaged hairless animals, shunning Twilight, and wearing high heels while vacuuming. Kristina's dream job is to write for Conan O'Brien, or to move to Alaska and work on an oil rig. She'll take whichever one gives her squeezy cheese for lunch. She blogs at Pulsipher Predilections. 
