curiousI ask as someone who has not dated much, due in part to being A) not social enough and B) a distracted dumbass who seems not to notice who's interesting and available. (Many times I've had thoughts like "Dude! Why didn't you ever at least ask out Beth at college? Or Sarah in the Tri-Cities?" Woulda coulda shoulda, argh...) Add what seems to be a bad habit of getting interested in/crushing on ladies who are unavailable for one reason or another (meaning I'm not sure if it's an actual habit, but it seems to have happened multiple times) and you have me: someone who hasn't really even had a date since 2000.
I want to remind myself that hookups indeed happen. They're possible! And since there are many Happily Involved People on my Friends' List, I wanted to hear what you were willing to share about how y'all met in the first place.
To get this started, here's how I met Alicia, my only really serious girlfriend: In January 1996, I visited a residents' hall on the north side of the University of Oregon complex where I lived. My friend Paul (think young Dr. Drew: smart and handsome Jewish guy) was the Resident Assistant, and through him I knew when that hall's Movie Night was. I went over. Alicia and I met and talked during that night, when the double feature was The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill and Came Down a Mountain (Tara Fitzgerald, mmmmm) and Mad Love (Drew Barrymore, a different kind of mmmmm). Being tired after the movies, I headed back to my dorm, though Alicia and most of the others stayed, and the talk in the lounge turned to sex and relationships. (Alicia told me a bit about it later. Fun stuff.) Alicia ran into me the next week in Carson Hall cafeteria (you see Carson Hall in the opening shot of Animal House) and joined me for the meal. More visiting, plus laughing, commenced. At her hall's next Movie Night, over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, we met again. We watched Clueless followed by Apollo 13. By the start of the second movie, we were sharing a sofa, leaning into each other. And I was wider-eyed than normal. We went back to my dorm room together afterward. Engage your own imaginations here. ;-)
So that's how that happened. We dated until mid-1997, broke up, had little contact for about a year-and-a-half (about the same length as the relationship), then got back in touch via letters and the phone. We're friends again (I first wrote "We're friends now," but we were friends from the start). She's in a good relatonship with a Eugene guy named Larry; I can see how comfortable she is around him.
I hope for a good relationship...and I need to help such a relationship happen in the first place.
I know some of you guys have your own stories of how it happened for you. Willing to share?