Back in November 2010, I made an impulse decision that ultimately changed my life: I signed up on Plenty of Fish, otherwise known as the cesspool of online dating sites.
My first date after joining the site was a failure. He totally wasn’t into me, which sucked because he was a Matt Damon lookalike. After the date, I stopped by a vegan bar to meet up with friends and ran into an acquaintance celebrating her birthday…she immediately ordered me a double shot of Maker’s Mark. It was befitting after that date.
There were some hits and there were some misses. There was the Navy pilot who was cowed into admitting to me he was in the middle of a divorce due to a bartender friend of mine who knew he was married. There were a couple of times I was dumb enough to end up at a guy’s residence and ultimately ended up in bed with them. There was the guy I knew from high school who went full stage 5 clinger on me, before we even met in person (Spoiler alert: we didn’t.). Then I got stood up on Valentine’s Day…my baby sister felt sorry for me and bought me The League Season 1 DVD and candy as a consolation. Finally, there was this guy whose profile was advertised in almost all of my searches…
Of course, I looked at the profile. It was the most detailed and longest profile I’d ever seen, listing out explicitly who he was, his interests, what he wanted in a partner. In contrast, my own profile was sparse on information…I was told later that I was able to get away with that due being an attractive female. This person had an upgraded profile, indicating they were looking for a serious relationship and paid extra to appear more frequently in searches. However, the profile was set to “email and text only” because he was deployed in Afghanistan. I was already meeting people in person…not a snowball’s chance in hell, right?
He messaged me and we started a sporadic exchange. I asked him what drove him in life…and he emailed a response similar to his profile: long and extremely detailed. I didn’t have a ready response, so I sat on the message for a few days before responding. I had no idea what drove me in life…what was I to say to someone who already had it all figured out?
Not long after the Valentine’s Day snafu, I grew weary of the random creepers and my recent string of misses. By that time, he was the only guy I was regularly messaging, so I gave him my email address to keep in touch since I decided to delete my profile.
We kept emailing each other over the next 3 months, discussing current events, my love of nail polish, and everyday minutiae. It turned out we had similar political beliefs; two blue spots in a blood-red area. We talked about his dogs, random internet sites we liked, sports, alcohol, and his plans after the military. I liked his personality, but I worried that there wouldn’t be a physical attraction, so I kind of put him at arms’ length.
3 months passed, then we met in person at the beach. In retrospect, I didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to attraction. Two days after initially meeting, we were Facebook official. We would get engaged approximately a year later then married after a 6-month engagement. It’s been exactly 7 years since we’ve been Facebook-official.
At the time, I was obsessed with Chanel’s Illusions D’Ombres Fall 2011 collection. The collection featured Peridot, Graphite and Quartz…I was particularly taken with Peridot and Graphite, being unique for that time period.
Graphite
Peridot
Quartz
Deborah Lippmann Supermodel
This was the polish I wore the day we met in person and the day we got engaged.
Happy 7th Facebook-official anniversary, honey bunny!