How did you meet your significant other?

Provide inspiration for those of us who are wondering if it'll ever really happen. I'm single, and I wonder, how do people actually find someone? You never know, these stories could help with the writing process, too!

I met my husband through a forum for a video game company.

Online, Yahoo Personals. He wanted to meet me because I mentioned never having my GameBoy out of my sight, and I wanted to meet him because of the long-assed email he sent three times to make sure I got it. He got a paid account JUST to send that message, so I kinda had to see what this guy was about :)

That was just over six years ago.

On an online forum for a metal band. We first got talking when he made a post about something I was really interested in (Faroese language!) and we got talking via PM then MySpace. A group of us went to a festival in Germany, and I met him for the first time in person there. I had butterflies in my stomach in the ten minutes or so before I was going to meet him and I remember seeing him for the first time, and it was actually a little bit like love at first sight. We became a couple exactly a year later, and we're now married. :)

It can happen at any time - I was with someone else when I met him, which was bad timing - but that relationship ended of its own accord - so don't panic or sit there believing that you'll never find someone!

I'll add to the online vote...

I met my DH ten! years ago online through Lavalife of all places. We both cheated and put our email addresses in our posts. :) We met in person only a week later for our first date and the rest is history. Now we're married with a sweet 2yr old DD.

I used to be so shy about saying we met online- and now it seems more the norm than anything!

Introduced by his cousin (a former classmate of mine) at the county fair.

Not even lying:

Went to Church with a friend because he asked me to (I'm not Christian, but he asked politely, so whatever), and there were 4 hobos outside the church flying a sign that said, "Traveling broke and hungry, God Bless." When I went to give them a few dollars I ended up hanging out with them, driving them to a city 2 hours away, and spending the weekend with them. One of them became my significant other.

His parents taught my parents in college (but no, we're actually the same age; his parents waited forever to have kids). We knew each other when we were kids and hit it off in our mid/late teens. We've been together six years and just got married.
Freaky side-note; my little sister just married his little brother. And no, there was NOT a double wedding, lol.

While we're in the vein of odd match-ups, I'll add the story of my Indian friend Vivek, who met a pretty girl in Thailand and asked her to marry him within a day. Only problem was, they didn't speak each other's languages, so they spent half an hour running around trying to find someone to translate, and once she realized what he was asking she said yes :) Now they're happily married and raising their two kids in a Buddhist village near Tibet.

You never know when true love will hit!

I went to a housewarming party: my friend Carrie was moving in with a girl named Cheyanne, so two different groups of friends were going.

I was on a blind date that afternoon near Carrie's house and it ended a little early, so I just headed over to the party. There was only one other person there and it was a guy I didn't know because he was from Cheyanne's group of friends, and since Carrie and Cheyanne were busy in the kitchen, I had no choice but to talk to him. I don't think I spoke to anyone else that night, I was so enamored with him :)

We've been dating for over a year and we live together. Awwww....

He was my sister's dance partner in a summer musical. She found out we read the same books (notably Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and insisted we talk to each other. We're getting married next October. As P.G. Wodehouse said, "There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature."

He was a first year at uni, I was a second year and I was his flat's "corridor rep" (basically a second or third year volunteer to be assigned to keep an eye on a first year flat to make sure they're doing okay.) I met him on his first day at uni and it took 16 days for him to kiss me.

I remember it well.... I was good friends with his flat and myself and my co-corridor rep had joined them for dinner one evening. My boyfriend was at a band audition and showed up at the end. I had to leave to go and do work in the library on the computer 'cause my laptop wasn't working and he said he'd walk me there. He didn't even remember where the library was xD We got outside and he touched my arm, said "come here," and kissed me. Then he went back to his flat. Needless to say, my work didn't get done. I just went in, went on a computer, logged into MSN and squealed to any friends I could find online.

That was in 2006 when we were both 19 and we're still going strong :)

My current boyfriend is my best friend's older brother. We started talking over a car (he was going to sell me a car when I passed my driving test). We went out for drinks a couple of times and got to know each other, then I guess that lead to seeing each other. For a while I thought I'd always be single but it just suddenly happened - I'm sure it'll just suddenly happen for you, too :)

My parents had known his parents for years, since I was pretty small, but we'd never actually met. My dad worked with his mum, my sister sometimes played with his sister, but we'd never actually met each other. And then one day when I was fifteen his family came over to my parents place, and he came along too.
We got talking, and pretty much didn't stop talking all evening. We were friends pretty much instantly.
It took almost a year before we became more than friends, but we've been together almost five years now.

Online. Through Yahoo! Personals. He saw my add and thought I was cute. And we've been together ever since...that's nine years.

I met my fiancee through our high school theatre my sophomore and his junior year. I was cast as the stage manager for a production and he was cast as the assistant stage manager. I didn't recognize his name on the list (though I knew everyone else) so I asked around about him since we'd be working together for the next few months. Turns out we had mutual best friends that introduced us one afternoon before the production's rehearsals officially started. We hit it off instantly becoming best friends since we were both nerdy and shared a lot of the same interests. We didn't start dating til my senior year though. We've known each other for 10 years, but have only been an "official" couple for 7 years. =)

Based on some of the previous posts, my relationship is pretty new (not quite seven months), but the story goes:

I work in construction and at the beginning of this year my company sent me to work on a project at a uranium mine in the north of the province. We call this a "camp job" because there's no town or city nearby and everyone lives together in what basically amounts to a dormitory (but with worse bedrooms and arguably better food). This isn't 100% relevant to the story, I'm just trying to stress that this was a pretty remote location. About a month and a half after I arrived, a blond, ginger-bearded young man arrived on site to help out with quality control. I noticed that he had some geeky tendencies, and thought that we could probably get along. A month later, he asked if I'd be interested in going for a beer since he "owed me" for printing him drawings and ordering office supplies and various other things that are just in my job description (he wasn't very subtle about the whole thing). I figured I'd give him a shot, drinks went really well, and a couple weeks after that we were officially a couple. He really got a lot luckier than I did, because the ratio of men to women up there was ridiculous and I probably couldn't've failed to get together with someone.

I feel a little awkward about the fact that I'm technically dating one of my coworkers, but we've been on separate jobs since the beginning of June for the most part, so it's not too bad.

But don't despair, if you're not or haven't been in a relationship. We were both officially single for four years before we got together (we're both 25). These things, in my experience, tend to happen suddenly when you don't expect them. Even if you're dating online. It seems like nothing's clicking, and then BAM! you suddenly have great chemistry with somebody. Basically just continue being awesome, be open to new experiences, and hopefully something will come up. :)

Oh, and I heard probably the best How We Met story of all time tonight:

There's a men's rugby team here that puts on a strip show as a fundraiser every year, and the players do the stripping. They don't all strip completely naked, most of them keep a sock over their, err, man parts. In recent years, the show has sold out, and the only way to get a ticket is to know someone on the team. My friend went to the most recent one because she got tickets through the girlfriend (let's call her Amanda) of one of the players (let's call him Brad).

Amanda and Brad met at last year's strip show.

Amanda and Brad met at last year's strip show because at last year's strip show, Brad managed to lose his sock.

Bonus for everyone who's as immature as I am: Brad's actual name is Peter.

Online, on a forum for our college. (We were both going to be freshmen.) He wrote a post about wanted to start a D&D group. I said I'd be interested. A few months pass and I forget I made that post... that is, until I received a phone call from a strange person, asking whether I still wanted to play D&D. I said yes.

That was nearly seven years ago; we are now married :)

What i thought was a one-night stand has led to uh... I think we've been together 6 1/2 years now.

Met him the first day of college. I didn't know anyone so the spiritual adviser in the girls dorm dragged me around and the guys' spiritual adviser was doing the same with him. We ate lunch together and I was like, "what sort of 18 year old has a full beard?" I even remember telling my boyfriend at the time about the "weirdo with a beard." We ran in similar circles for the next few years but we didn't really hang out until he lived with a friend of mine and made me dinner a few times when I visited. I always had wanted a boy who cooked for me so we started going out. A few years after graduation we got married. I am now a fan of beards on guys.