In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Love Stories

Chally

I’m in a slightly soppy mood, and that is a mood in which I want to hear your love stories. I was thinking stories of romantic loves you’ve had, readers, but also love for family and friends and pets/companion animals: who and whatever you love! Leave them in comments.

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75 thoughts on Love Stories

  1. *squeals*

    I love my mom and my brothers and my friends and the universe and sometimes I love people and reading and writing and strange boxes and simple truths and if I ever met a horse I would love horses and if I had a cat I’d love cats but dogs are nice too!

    I have no romantic stories but I look forward to reading other people’s so thanks for this Chally!

  3. I met my partner online just under a year ago. He was in Halifax, NS and I was in rural Illinois. We toyed around for a while, convinced we couldn’t manage a relationship that far apart, but decided we’d meet once to see if we wanted to pursue it. We arranged for me to go there at the end of April, and I did what was objectively the stupidest thing in my life and got on a plane without telling anyone but my best friend–who was in New York at the time–that I was going anywhere. Of course, by that point we’d decided we were going to give it a go, and the first visit just cemented it. After a brokenhearted end to that weekend, we almost immediately booked me another flight for the summer (I’m a student; he was working full time) and counted down the days. On the first flight, I had carried a copy of Neruda’s sonnets and annotated it as a gift. This will be important later.

    Between the visit in April and the one in July, he was rejected from the program he’d been looking at going into at Oxford and was kind of adrift. We had casually talked about him moving here while I finished grad school, but thought it unlikely that he would find work that was TN-eligible in time. He e-mailed two people his CV and both offered him a part-time research position at my university within a matter of weeks.

    By mid-June, he’d confirmed a job and begun the process of gathering documents for TN approval, which is done at the border.

    Just before my second visit in July, we fell into a routine of reading one poem a day from Neruda over Skype as we counted down the 100 days until his flight to come to his job here. It was anxiety-riddled and we ended up breaking up the time with a surprise weekend visit in late August, at which point we decided he’d just move in with me instead of trying to manage two places–I had a dog and had just gotten a drastic cut in my funding, so it was fortuitous.

    On September 7, he flew into a nearby airport, and we’ve been living together happily with our dog ever since. Objectively there were a lot of stupid decisions, but we knew they were right for us, and we’re getting married in March and then moving to Toronto so he can work on his doctorate.

    I’ve never been happier.
    (sappy enough?)

  4. Yay! I’m freshly pregnant and surging with hormones, and lately I love EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING. I’m here watching TV completely in love with the cutest, charming woman on some condescending reality show, and ALSO in love with my cat who is snuggling up with unfolded sheets in a laundry basket, and COMPLETELY in love with all the people that participated in your race and ethnicity constructions threads, Chally, which I just read in total, because, goddamn people, you are so amazing and smart and have so much valuable information to share! Today I was TOTALLY in love with my boss, who squeed when I broke the news that I am pregnant and gave me a giant hug. I’m in love with my niece, who is scanning in old family pictures of herself and her cousins when they were babies, and posting them on Facebook with silly captions. I am also in love with my niece for telling off my mom on Facebook for posting jingoistic crap — and getting away with it.

    The problem with asking a moony-eyed pregnant lady about love stories is that this moony-eyed pregnant lady is in love with everyone and everything and can’t edit one from the next. Biology is messed up. AND I LOVE YOU.

  5. Beautifully sappy, Anna. Hearty congratulations!

    Ahahaha, Florence, you’re the best. Congratulations and I’m sure you’ll be a fabulous parent!

  6. My husband and I have a really sappy love story. We met in high school on a youth group social action road trip. He was 16, I was 15. We became close friends during the trip and stayed in contact by IM and phone, since we lived in different cities. We both dated other people, and even visited each other in college. Even though I definitely crushed on him in high school, I pretty much figured that ship had sailed. Then, he took a job out in Seattle while I was looking for grad schools. He encouraged me to apply for school out here, since he thought I would love the city, and he was lonely and trying to import some friends. I got into my current grad school, visited, and fell in love with the department and Seattle. We started dating when I moved out west, and were married a year and a half later. At some point, we realized that we had both suspected during high school/college that some day we would end up together.

    Then, for our first anniversary, neither of us could figure out what to get each other. After much deliberation, I picked out the perfect gift (The Complete Sandman, by Neil Gaiman), and told my husband that I had gotten him a book, but the rest would be a surprise. While I was out of town, he called me up to ensure that the book he was THINKING of getting me was not the same as the book I had already gotten him. It was.

    Sometimes I think we belong in a bad Rom Com.

  7. I love these kinds of posts, Chally 🙂

    I will tell you how my husband and I met. We worked in the same office, where we secretly had forbidden crushes on each other (forbidden because we were both in LTRs with other people at the time). He quit, and I was very sad, but we stayed in occasional touch via MySpace (this was about 4 or 5 years ago), where we would occasionally escape our SO’s to drunk-message each other.

    Cut to almost exactly 3 years ago, when we finally exchanged phone numbers and decided to go on a no-really-we’re-just-friends coffee date, where we proceeded to make googly eyes at each other and end the evening with a very long hug.

    Cut to the next day, when he broke up with his girlfriend, and then later that month when I broke up with my SO, and then a year later, when we eloped in a dive bar down the street, then a year after that when we finally told everyone and had a party about it. Our two-year wedding anniversary is in a month and a half, and my younger self would be amazed that not only did I manage to actually want to get married, but that I am indeed still quite happy.

  8. I love these kinds of posts, Chally 🙂

    I will tell you how my husband and I met. We worked in the same office, where we secretly had forbidden crushes on each other (forbidden because we were both in LTRs with other people at the time). He quit, and I was very sad, but we stayed in occasional touch via MySpace (this was about 4 or 5 years ago), where we would occasionally escape our SO’s to drunk-message each other.

    Cut to almost exactly 3 years ago, when we finally exchanged phone numbers and decided to go on a no-really-we’re-just-friends coffee date, where we proceeded to make googly eyes at each other and end the evening with a very long hug.

    Cut to the next day, when he broke up with his girlfriend, and then later that month when I broke up with my SO, and then a year later, when we eloped in a dive bar down the street, then a year after that when we finally told everyone and had a party about it. Our two-year wedding anniversary is in a month and a half, and my younger self would be amazed that not only did I manage to actually want to get married, but that I am indeed still quite happy.

  9. The best sample I think I can give you is an account of the best relationship I’ve ever had.

    But now, things are different. I got my heart broken by another person six months ago, and I am sort of okay but goddamn it was hard. However, it led me to start travelling indefinitely. And sometimes that’s hard, too, but mostly it’s really good. Mostly I see that I am surrounded by kindness and that people, whether they’re friends or strangers, are basically good, and sometimes that really hits me and I am like, wow, I am in love with everything. I don’t get to wake up next to somebody any more and I wonder how long it will be before I feel close to someone in that way again, but there are a hell of a lot of wonderful people in my life, romance or not. So I am happy and grateful.

  12. I have a fabulous partner, but the story of how we got together is long and complicated. So instead I’ll tell you about my kitty and me. I volunteered to foster a mother cat and litter of kittens rescued from a local shelter; the mother cat that we got was sick, and died when her kittens were only two weeks old. (We’d had them for a week at that point.) We nursed the kittens, hand-feeding them formula from teeny-tiny bottles every few hours, taking care of them when some of them got sick with what their mother had had, and raising them to be grown-up kitties. We kept two of the kittens of the litter, and two got adopted. (They were adopted by physicists, and their names are now Quark and Gluon. Science squee!)

    One of the ones we kept has appointed herself my “familiar” or companion spirit. When I meditate, she comes and sits near me. In fact, she’s seldom in a different room than I am. When I light candles, she loves to watch the flames. She sleeps at my feet, taking up the best part of the warm fluffy blanket. (Well, she is a cat.) She makes sure I never feel lonely, and she completely and totally loves me as her mother. It’s amazing.

  13. De-lurking cause I love trotting out the old love story…
    My husband and I met in collegetown on Halloween 1996. He was visiting a highschool friend who was roommates with my highschool friend. I was a dormrat and went to hang out at their house every chance I got. The morning after partynite, I was back to hang out and we sat next to each other on the couch. I asked him to sit on my cold feet, perpetually in Birks. We showed off our tattoos, discovered we were from the same part of CA, and generally ignored our friends for each other for the rest of the weekend.
    We spent the night together in my dorm before he left for home. It was the first spectacular sexual encouter I’d ever had. You know I got the digits.
    I called about a week later, and we would talk on the phone for hours every night for the next few weeks. We made plans to hook up on Thanksgiving break. By the end of the week we were exclusive, and long-distance.
    He moved up to collegetown that January, and moved into my dormroom that March.
    We have lived together since then, except for the year after we came home from collegetown, when we had to live with our respective parents.
    It’s been 14 wonderful years. We married in 2004 and reproduced in 2005. Through all the ups and downs, I’ve always known that I only want to be with him. In the beginning I was afraid he would leave. Afraid he would discover some aspect of my personality that would drive him away. But as I came more and more into myself and gained confidence in my own awesomeness, he loved me more.
    I am so truly blessed to have found him so early in my life. I wish for all humans to be so loved.

  14. I’m short on the people romance category, but my dog is something special. My favorite part of every day is when we go to bed. He waits for permission to hop onto bed, like a good boy, with the sweetest look on his face. He climbs up, and gets as close as possible, turns around three times, and plops down with a big sigh. He is a giant snuggle bug. Then I can cuddle with him, and he just cuddles closer and wags and wags his tail. I can’t sleep without my big doggie cuddles. I’m pretty much in love with my dog.

  15. I was feeling down today… and then I came across all these beautiful stories. Now I have a smile on my face and in my heart. Thank you wonderful People for sharing your great stories! I love people like you. I love life. I am ready to just Be… YAY!

    Hugs to the world!

  16. I am, what my fiance affectionately calls, “Afflicted with Cat.”

    My beautiful cat, Arya (named for a Song of Fire and Ice character) is snuggling on my lap. In fact, any time I’m sitting down, she’s cuddling with me. She was a foster cat two years ago when I found her. The day I picked her up, I looked at a total of four cats. She was the third. As I holding the second cat, Arya gave me a short, polite, but firm “meow” that said “I’m here.”

    We’ve been together ever since. She might sit on other laps, but I’m the one she snuggles with late at night.

  17. I would have rolled my eyes at this kind of post until a year ago, when I married my husband.

    I was never going to date, never going to get married – I just wasn’t interested in all that business and I had more important things to do, like publish papers and go to law school. Marriage would only tie me down and constrain my choices, right?!

    Well, somewhere in there, almost by accident, I started to date a man who would send me emails with subject lines like,
    To a severe and radiant beauty
    To a bright and cunning wit, dancing in the dark

    And tell me things like
    I’m mostly in awe of you. Sometimes frustrated, often amused, and always in love in with you.

    And when I would tell him, that I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t promise to spend my life with him, because “who knows what will happen in the future?” he would tell me, calmly,
    The decision you get to make is not whether there will be problems in the future. There will always be problems. The decision you can make is who you want to weather those problems with. I want to face down problems with you.
    (And then he waited – for months! – for me to decide that I wanted to face life with him too.)

    So of course I married him. Being with him has widened the possibilities for my life, not narrowed them. “The moment we choose to love we move towards freedom…” (bell hooks)

  20. I met my husband at a brunch organized by a friend named Chris. Chris styled himself somewhat of a matchmaker and he had decided that I just had to meet a guy named Allen. Chris thought we had lots in common and would hit it off. So he organized a brunch and invited a whole bunch of people including me, Allen…and another guy named John.

    Of course, I spent time chatting with Allen and we actually did go out once. As the Jews used to say about the czar, “May God bless and protect him and keep him far from me!” was how I felt after that date.

    A few weeks later, Chris had another Sunday brunch. Very few people came that time, but I was there and so was John, with whom I’d talked a bit at the previous brunch.

    This time we left together, walked to the subway and got on together, going in the same direction.

    The rest is history.

    We’ve been married 19 years with two teenagers and we’re still going strong. He’s stuck with me through some nasty health problems and I’ve stuck with him as he went back to school and changed careers.

    John’s my guy.

  22. I am also a little short on romantic-love stories, but I’m still young, give me time. I do want to tell you a best-friend-love story. He and I met in sixth grade, but while we ran in the same friend group we didn’t really become close until about three years later. In tenth grade we dated for five months. Now, I lived in a fairly small Midwestern town, and we were very innocent tenth-graders. A little unbelievably innocent. We held hands and hugged a lot and kissed once, very briefly. Mainly, we were just good friends who were “going out.” We came to a mutual decision that this wasn’t really working out, didn’t see each other much that summer, and came back in the fall to a renewed friendship that has only grown since then.

    The past year and a half we’ve been going to college a thousand miles apart, but we’ve almost become closer than we were. We may not call each other often, but when we do, we have long conversations about anything and everything pertaining to our lives. I wouldn’t normally think about posting this as a love story, even though I wouldn’t hesitate to say I do love him (in a best friends way), but about an hour ago he called me to tell me he lost his virginity to his new boyfriend. I am so full of pride and joy and hope and love for this boy I have watched grow into a man that I couldn’t resist posting.

  23. I’m low on romantic stories, but I have a pair of absolutely adorable pet guinea pigs, both girls. I’m currently living across the country/ocean/globe from all my close friends, so having pets helps keep me sane. One of them is a speckled brown, and the other is white and very fluffy (though she sheds something awful). They’re both cuddly and curious and friendly, and happy to fall asleep on my lap or romp around my feet on the floor. I love those little darlings to bits. They lick my hands, too- piggy kisses!

  24. I’ll tell the story of how I met my un-husband (as I have taken to calling him). Un-husband is A, for the purpose of the story.

    It was Canada Day in Winnipeg, 2008, and I was contentedly riding my bike home from work at the Candy store at The Forks, our local tourist attraction area. It had been a hell of a day but it had also been pretty awesome. The job was fairly new, I loved my coworkers, and I was looking forward to the street festival in Osborne Village, the part of town I lived in at the time.

    At about ten thirty that night, I made my way into the packed streets of the Village, and ran into K, a buddy I’ve known for a year or so at this point. K grabs me off and says “You! Help me with my fire-eating busking and we shall drink the profit in beer form!” I couldn’t resist, of course. I was being the “lighter lady”, helping K prepare for each round of tricks and passing around the hat at the end of the show, when A came riding up on his bike.

    Turns out that A and K have known each other for quite some time, but K and A haven’t seen each other in oh, say three years? Hugs and back-thumping ensue, all the while with me standing there holding the lighter and my backpack, grinning foolishly at this rather attractive dude who just rolled up on a bike like it was a part of his body (mmmmm, fluid grace and sexy calves, oh my!)
    At this point, I went to retrieve my bicycle, and came back, twiddling nervously with the gear shifter whilst I stood still, holding up my bicycle.

    “Good Lord! DON’T do that to your bike! What, you wanna break it?” A immediately said as I twiddled madly.

    “Oh yeah? Why not? Explain it to me,” I shot back, grinning.

    He looked surprised. Then amused. A grin spread on his face. He then gave me a brief 3 minute lecture on the workings of bicycle gears (I heard mostly none of it, as I was now fully enthralled by his gorgeous long hair and big dark eyes), whilst K watched us knowingly and suggested we all go for a drink at the pub down the way.

    By the end of the night, we had fallen asleep cuddling on the couch at K’s place, and I had woken up to a kiss and a number pressed into my hand, which I called later that evening. Three dates and a week later and he had a key to my place – I couldn’t bear to keep kicking him out when I had to go to work early and he didn’t!

    We now happily co-habitate across the bridge near the hospital I’m doing my placement at, with our pet bunnies and our bikes and more love than I ever thought was possible. I’ve managed to find myself in a relationship with a man who not only loves me for who I am and encourages me to do exactly what I want and need to do for my own fulfillment and happiness, but also loves me as a true equal and a partner in making a home and a life together. And I want nothing more than to do the same for him.

    Also, we both like singing silly songs and cooking delicious food. What’s not to love? 😀

  26. It’s so nice to see all of the happiness on here! 🙂
    My boyfriend and I will have been together four and a half years this May. We met in high school (his senior year and my freshmen year) and we have remained together since that day. When I met him, I had been dating women for three years of my life. I told him up front that I am a lesbian, but felt something for him.
    He said it was love at first sight.
    I don’t remember a day when I didn’t love him.
    He is supportive and compassionate and reads my Feminist blogs with me. My relationship with John has showed me that regardless of labels (such as being gay or straight), love and sexuality are fluid. I think that’s pretty romantic.
    …I also love my cat despite the fact that she tries to eat my arms.

  27. Roast Beef was the tiniest kitten of the litter. All his brothers and sisters picked on him, and when I met him he had a big Harry Potter scar down his nose.

    He was the scaredest, timidest kitten I’d met. When anyone went near him, he’d shiver and shake like someone had switched him to the tumble-dry setting. When I got him home, he ran straight under the bed and stayed there for the next 4 days.

    But I had a plan. I had some string.

    Every day for hours I’d sit on the bed and drag the string across the floor. Every so often, tiny white paws would pop out and try to drag the string away. Then a little nose. Finally, a whole fluffy kitten was racing and rolling across the floor in full pursuit, oblivious to the scary human. When he was completely invested in the capture of the string, I’d pull it up across the bed, or over my legs. It took weeks, but he learnt not to be scared of me.

    Now, Roast Beef is a handsome, confident cat. He still needs reassurance sometimes, but he can handle new situations and explore new things without fear. He’s also my best friend.

    Pity about all my shoelaces, though.

  28. I love reading everyone’s story! This has made my week 🙂

    My and my beautiful man’s story:

    We met 6 years ago working at the same place, and i thought he was gorgeous but too shy to say anything. Three months later we are in two different states and he starts talking to me via facebook (yes facebook brought us together, what can i say? haha)/ I was going through my own crap so I was really hot and cold with him, sometimes would talk, sometimes would ignore him for months at a time. Then he moves back to town and wants to hang out. For two more years I would sometimes see him, sometimes go months without talking to him. Then one fateful summer, I started spending more time with him, and I pulled out all the defenses (seriously, first real date we had, i spend the whole time talking about how men are sexist pigs and could care less about women and what we have to deal with because of their asses), I talk feminism, how independent i am, i dont need any man, blah blah blah. And he? Talks about how he respects my passion for life and the things i believe in, and wants to know more about why violence is so prevalent against women and what as a man he can do. I think he must be trying to get in my pants (for the record, i was not entirely opposed to this, did i mention gorgeous?). I hold off potential relationship talk for a few more months even after we started sleeping together AND i knew I was getting emotionally attached. Then i had a trigger one day, he comes over, and sobbing i tell him the whole story of what happened when i was younger and out of frustration I ask what he wants from us after he knows this about me. For a full minute he says nothing, then he looks at me and says “Listen, i want to be with you, i am not sure what you want, if you want us just to sleep together, i’ll do that, but right now what i want you to know more than anything, is that no matter what happens, i’ll always be your friend, i’ll always be right here when you need me”—sappy? yes. corny? totally. did I fall head over heels? abso-fuckin-lutely. Granted i waited another month to tell him i wanted to be with him, but really for me, i was with him after that conversation. Now almost 3 years later we have a beautiful little girl and we’re both working towards creating a better life for ourselves individually and as a family. I love that man, even when he makes me so angry i can’t see straight. 🙂

    thanks for doing this blog post, of all the horrible things that can sneak up on us and we have to relive for a moment, its a wonderful gift to be intentional about reliving some beautiful things in our life too.

  29. On Friday afternoons, we both come home from work early. One of us brings home fresh flowers for the other- we have to alternate weeks or we’d both end up doing it! He puts the flowers in a vase and starts preparing dinner, while I sweep and fold clothes and tidy. If what he’s making can be left untended, he comes to help; if I’m done first, I ask him what I can chop or fry.

    Soon the whole house smells wonderful. It’s getting dark outside, so we hop in the shower. I go first, since I’m quicker, and he sits on the windowseat and tells me about his day. When he gets in, I go set up the candlesticks my mother gave us for our wedding. That way when we’re both clean and dressed, we’re ready for the Sabbath to arrive.

    We light the candles. It’s traditionally a woman’s job, but he told me long ago that it’s his home too, and he’s going to light the candles that sanctify it along with me. We cover our eyes and recite the blessing, chanting in unison. We’re partners. We’re a team.

    After dinner, he installs me in my favorite reading spot with a book, my cat and a cup of tea. He does the dishes while I read him the good bits. Then he gets his own book and sits near me, just close enough to put his hand on my knee. We read, and chat about our week, and sometimes play games, and eventually we go to bed together.

    Someone once said to me that love is a doing thing. This is how we do love, how we build it, how we shape it from the stuff of ordinary life. We work together, and look out for each other, and seek out opportunities for pleasure and delight together. He’s my partner and lover and best friend, and after fourteen years, I’m still pretty sure I’m the luckiest woman alive.

  30. My guy and I were introduced by mutual friends–my brother and our friend Michelle. On our first date, I thought he was an asshole. We went out for dinner and then drinks, and I got to observe his table manners (moderate), his topics of conversation (ex-girlfriends, geek stuff, ridiculous and unbelievable stories of his life as a ballet dancer/martial artist/bouncer), and his drinking capacity (not inconsiderable). I gave him a chance for a second date only because that’s my policy.

    It turns out that his awful behavior on our first date wasn’t really that awful–it was just awful “first date” behavior. He didn’t believe in all of the “best behavior” bullshit that people pull to disguise the putzes that we all really are, and I was just getting a look at the real him, and it ended up not being so bad. (And the stories? All true. No kidding.) He was, in fact, possibly the most genuine person I’d ever met. And he dug the hell out of me. But I was recently through a tough breakup, i wasn’t a terribly trusting person, and I was staying guarded.

    For the next month, he kept pushing forward, and I kept pulling back, and when I complained to my brother that he kept pushing forward and I kept pulling back, Big Bro said, “Well, stop doing that.” The next time he and I were out (going for ice cream), I reached out and took his hand as we were crossing the parking lot, and he said, “You like me.” And I said, “Of course I like you.” And he said, “There’s no ‘of course.’ I was about to give up on you.”

    We’re about to hit our third anniversary, we’ve got a house and a dog and two cats, and he continues to be completely himself and I continue to be completely myself, and it’s completely awesome and brand-new every day. He tells me he loves me half a dozen times a day and shows me more often than that. And I sometimes find it hard to believe that I almost missed out on it all, but I didn’t, because I took his hand while we were going for ice cream.

    And now I’m the sappiest so-and-so ever to so, so I’m going to hit “submit” before I further embarrass myself.

  31. I’ve done some thinking about the post I saw here last week on how friendships of all kinds are often considered not as valuable as capital R relationships. I’ve been successful at nearly anything I put my mind and hand to except big R’s. I’ve got some dandy friends, though, loyal and loving, especially one of them.
    I met Tom when his friends brought him along to the burger joint I worked in. I was 17 and he was 14 or 15. He’d run away from boarding school at 12 (!) and had managed to find work and support himself. We’ve had many adventures over the years and I probably love his wife (my next longest friendship) as much as I do him. His mother just died last week and I wrote on the condolence card I sent him that I owed his mother a debt of gratitude for bringing him into the world. I signed it “Much love (looks like forever)”. It’s been 42 years.

  32. And while I’m hogging all the comment space, I have to brag on the other two men in my life.

    J.G. was my best friend through advertising school. We hooked up over a shared love of German cars and cabaret jazz and an apparent psychic link for creative work. I fell for him hard, as he was smart and clever and well-dressed and could cook. When, about six months later, he felt comfortable enough to come out to me, I was shattered–for about fifteen minutes, and then things were even better because that was out of the way. I was in a rough relationship at the time (and yes, I was lusting after another man–don’t judge), and it was amazing how JG showed me how I should be treated. It was partly because of that that I felt strong enough to get out of that relationship. We’ve been there for each other through relationships and breakups and stress and job changes, he let me crash in his studio apartment with him when I first moved up for my first real job, and no matter what was going on there were Bloody Mary breakfasts on his faux-Samoyed rug in front of a roaring video fireplace. We’ve been apart for five years now after I moved two hours away for my new job, and we’re not nearly as good at keeping in touch as we should be, but every time we make contact it’s like nothing ever changed.

    J.Y. was the one who fixed me. I was at a nasty, nasty time in my life–this was shortly after the bulimia was treated and the drinking curtailed and the bipolar disorder properly medicated. He worked across the street from my apartment, and when he saw me heading to an event one night (the theme was classy/trashy, and so my outfit was a white tank top and a silver ball skirt), he thought, “I’m going to take that girl out to dinner.” He did, and we had a great time, but again, I was wary and guarded and not in a good place for a relationship and blah blah blah. So we decided to be fuck buddies instead. (Totally healthy choice for that point in my life, amiright?) But it ended up being fantastic. It turned out that he was a recovering addict, so he had a lot of enlightening perspectives on healing and recovery that I needed to hear. And he had a lot of self-worth issues, and having someone actually check up on him and worry about him (and, on one occasion, pound his door nearly off the hinges on a night when doing so was important) helped him start to value himself.

    We did have a breakup of sorts–my fault, I was stupid, and I still regret it–and then got back together, because we had to, because we were us and that’s how it worked. Some of my favorite memories with him involved Scrabble games or watching poker on TV at three in the morning or listening to the neighborhood punks getting into violent altercations below my window. It was just a very supportive and nonjudgmental environment in which to get our shit together in our respective ways. When he left to give college another try, it kind of broke my heart, but kind of not, just because we didn’t really have that kind of relationship and I was so happy he was doing that for himself. We still keep in touch, and I love him deeply in a particular way, and M understands and is okay with that.

    Wow. Thanks for the thread, Chally. I feel so incredibly full right now.

  33. I have an animal love story: about seven years ago, I adopted my first kitten, Max Power (a year later I adopted another kitty, Milo, but this story is mostly about Max). Max ruled the house…usually benevolently. A little over 3 years ago, I upset his world by adopting a rambunctious lab-german shepherd mix puppy, Freki. Max was greatly offended (as was Milo), but Freki, being a very affectionate critter, adopted the kitties as his charges. He would alert us when the kitties were in need of attention or getting into trouble, herd them to us, and would occasionally try to bathe them, but only received swatting to the nose.

    Milo never quite warmed to Freki (but now just walks away instead of swatting him), but Max was another story. Freki would try to sneak up and lay next to Max (as best a 75lb lab-german shepherd mix can sneak) as close as he could before Max got up and moved in disgust. Five feet at first, then three, then one, etc. Over the past few months, Max has warmed to the dog and now allows Freki to share his bed (originally the dog’s bed, which the cat promptly and decisively claimed as his own). On special occasions, if Freki is very, very deferential, Freki is allowed to lick Max once or maybe twice gently on the forehead then lay down and snuggle with his back touching Max’s back. He would never admit it, but Max will occasionally seek Freki out for naptime. This is, as anyone with a cat knows, the ultimate sign of feline infatuation. Now Freki has his Max, and Max has his Freki.

  34. I’ll share my love of my best friend, T.

    We’ve been friends since we were nine years old, and best friends since junior year of high school. I’ll never forget when I came out to him when we were walking home from school together. The next day, he came out to me. I was the first person he had ever come out to; he was inspired by my courage, he told me, and went on to come out to his conservative parents and to his other friends at school. I didn’t have any other queer friends at the time, and I felt this deep connection with him because we could share the experience of being openly queer at our high school and all the challenges it brought. We would make comic strips together making fun of our homophobic teachers and classmates and how ridiculous they seemed to us. We have jokes with each other that no one else would understand, but all we have to do is say a single word to remind each other of it, and we’re in stitches all over again. Our sense of humor is exactly the same – it’s uncanny.

    These days we don’t get to see each other often because we live far apart, but our friendship hasn’t lost its closeness for all of that. I mean it when I say I love him more than I’ve ever loved my romantic/sexual partners, because our bond runs deeper than any I’ve had with a significant other. I genuinely can’t imagine the rest of my life without him in it. We’ve told each other that when we’re old, we’ll live in the same nursing home and laugh over old times together and our spouses (if we have them) will think we’re cheating on them with each other.

  35. I love my dog.

    From the moment I wake up she is near my face wagging her tail and licking the air at me, with barely-contained excitement that sends her rear end in a different direction from her face. She follows me around all day and always has to know where I am (even if it means sniffing at the door when I’m in the shower). She lays on me when I cry, lays next to me when I work, and never gets tired of a lap-sit. When I’m in a good mood she plops her ball in my lap as many times as I will throw it for her and she’ll show me her best “sit” until I notice the ball. She knows what I need with just a gesture or a look; there are no words required.

  36. Two stories.

    I met my SO during the first week of college. I was in a friend’s dorm room when he came in to introduce himself, and I fell in love at first sight. I went right up to him and said, “hey, want to go out for a movie or coffee or something? Anything? Any time?” And he gave me this look of baffled disgust and said, “NO.” He already had a girl he liked, you see, and he dated her for the next 3 years. After they broke up, I approached him again, and told him that the offer was still open.

    We’ve been together for 2 and a half years, and he’s still wondering why he ever turned me down.

    The next one is love for a pet. My mother and I went to the pound when I was about 13 to look for a dog. And we were walking through the cat cage section when I peered in and said, “Mom, there’s a dog in this one.” And she argued with me before looking in and seeing the prettiest little dog in the entire pound. We took her out to yard to play and she huddled up close to me and put her face in my lap. She was too scared and shy to run around like the other dogs. We named her Mable, and she was our faithful Australian shepherd mix for the next seven years, before finally dying of cancer. I miss her much.

  39. Once upon a time, on an island far, far away a average, ordinary woman named K was having a really, really bad year. A year where among other really bad things she learned that she wouldn’t have a future. A year so terrible it felt that her heart and soul were broken into a million pieces. One afternoon when K was sitting in a coffee shop between work and class trying to read a painfully boring book a nice and charming man named M introduced himself. For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening they talked about everything and nothing. K laughed and smiled, joked and argued. For one day she was herself again.

    So it was that the two became friends, and for a while K had someone who she could talk to who asked nothing of her, other than that she be herself. M metaphorically held her hand while she put the pieces of her heart and soul back together again. When K could laugh and smile, joke and argue again all the time and not just with him, M finally told her that he loved and that he wanted to spend whatever time she had left together.

    K was not amused so she got on a plane and took a trip to a not so far away island to think. For three days she thought, and thought, pondered and considered. She never doubted that she loved M. He was after all the handsomest, most interesting and most kind person she had ever met. She simply doubted whether loving someone who was dying would make him happy. Then one night while sitting in her favorite restaurant she had an epiphany: It was rude and paternalistic to assume that you knew what was better for other people. She had to trust that M knew the risks and decided it was worth it, regardless of how improbable that sounds. And so, she got back on a plane and ran into M arms. (Did I mention he was a very patient and understanding man?)

    And they lived happily ever after….particularly when a year later the medical wizards realized they had gotten everything all wrong. The person who was ill immediately (if not totally) recovered and K got her future back. The End…or rather the beginning…

  40. My current partner and I had to carry on a long-distance relationship for five months. I would periodically come back to visit every six weeks or so while I was in the process of relocating. The instant she saw sight of me down the long corridor, the long walk that begins where one leaves the plane and goes to pick up luggage, she would get so excited that she was literally jumping up and down.

    It looked for all the world like she was dancing. So, even today, I playfully refer to them as her “dancing feet”. I remember standing by baggage claiming holding her, thinking to myself, I never knew it was possible to love another person this much.

  41. My love story is still going on. But what i want to tell you about is the day that i knew that my boyfriend loved me. I had been toying with the idea of love for a week or two at this point, but i had to go away to visit my friend in rochester, so i wasn’t going to see him for a few days. As is typical of me and my best friend after long separations, we went out and got a little drunk. We were wandering, and laughing, and running outside and i decided to call my boyfriend. My friend stole the phone from me and demanded “you better be nice to frida!” and he replied (i learned five minutes later) that i was (in this order) smart, and opinionated, and funny, and optimistic, and beautiful. My best friend proceeded to go on for twenty minutes after the call about how great my boyfriend was because the first thing that he thought of was my brain, not my body. The next week i fell asleep on him while watching a movie, and he whispered that he loved me. i wasn’t asleep enough not to notice. I now love the sixth sense a little bit more than i did before 🙂

  42. My love life has recently taken a turn for the nonexistent, so I’m still grumpy and sullen on a personal level.

    However– I’m a book reviewer, and I’ve been reading fun romantic things in prep for a piece about Valentine’s Day.

    And The Rest Is History- Marlene Wagman-Geller. How famous, legendary couples met. Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were a blind date!

    The Science of Kissing- Sheril Kirshenbaum. Excellent popular science writing, all about kissing!

  43. I was in love with my boyfriend before I even met him in the flesh. I fell in love with his photo. Sounds stupid, huh? Well, here’s how it happened…

    Around 2006, we were both posters on a large and busy forums site, with subforums for every topic you could think of – films, cooking, pets, cars, politics, TV, and, of course, music. I’d recently got into metal, and needed guidance; S, my love, was a poster in the metal thread, and helped me out with recommendations. We both had profiles at Last.fm too, and became friends there, so we could keep track of what the other was listening to.

    Just before we went over to Last.fm, I saw a photo of S in a generic “post your picture” thread, and thought to myself how kind and handsome he looked. (He also had a beautiful cat on his shoulders, which helped – I adore kitties!)

    We spent a couple of years talking to each other on the larger forum and on Last.fm, and everything S said reinforced my notion of him as a very sweet, generous and down-to-earth guy. I harboured a long-distance crush on him. Unbeknownst to me (well, OK, perhaps I had a small inkling), S cherished much the same feelings about me. Only problem: we lived in different cities. We didn’t talk about our feelings, just about music, and, beyond that, job situations, what we were up to in our spare time, gigs we’d been to, and so on.

    Something had to happen. I first met S in “real life”, as they say, as if time spent talking to people online isn’t also real life, at a music festival in 2008. The shock I felt upon seeing him in the flesh for the first time, just as handsome and even more so than I’d expected, was immediate, strong and unsettling. One small problem: I was at the festival with my then-boyfriend. Eek.

    Fast-forward one year, and I’m back at the same festival with a group of friends, and S and I are camping together again. This time, we’re both single. On our first night there, 13th August 2009, we both volunteer to get in a round of drinks from the bar. Our friends never get their beers, sadly, as, halfway to the drinks queue, I stop S, look into his eyes, say “I’m sorry, I can’t not do this any more,” and kiss him. That same night, I tell him that I love him, and he tells me he loves me too. We’re inseparable for the rest of the festival. We’ve been inseparable ever since, really.

    In the past year and a half, S has moved cities to be with me, we’ve got a flat together, and have said “I love you” to each other more times than I can count. In a world seemingly filled with manchildren, arseholes and commitment-phobes (or maybe I was just unlucky, prior to meeting S?), I’ve found one of the good ones – someone I trust with my life, someone who will never let me down, someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. I can’t believe my luck. He’s my rock, and I am incredibly privileged to have him in my life.

    Dang that pesky internet, eh, stopping people from going out and meeting new friends! (Sarcasm, obviously.)

    I really hope this didn’t come across as too smug; a little smugness is inevitable, I think, but I don’t want to be insufferable. Believe me, I spent a lot of time as a single woman – sometimes dissatisfied with my lot, more often than not happy and carefree. For those looking for love, the old saw about “love yourself, and someone will love you for it” has quite a lot of truth in it; for those not looking for partners, keep on rockin’; for the similarly loved-up, let’s all take a second to appreciate how lucky we are!

  44. I will tell you about my best friend. We’ve been watching Star Wars together for sixteen years, and that will never change. She’s amazing: smart, witty, sensitive, goofy and fun, compassionate, an amazing graphic designer and writer, a wonderful daughter and sister, the best friend a person could ever have.

  45. Ahem, Kristen’s version of the story was entirely incorrect due to my wife’s faulty memory.

    In reality, we did meet at a Starbucks and she was reading an extremely bad book, my least favorite philosophical text. She was also rolling her eyes at every page and muttering to herself. So I said hello and she invited me to sit down. We talked for hours. Through lunch. And coffee. And dinner. We could barely stop talking long enough to give the waiter our order. It was by far the strangest day of my life. But I knew something was wrong. She didn’t explain for a while and I never pressed, but I could tell she needed a friend. And so we were friends.

    But I did not help put her back together. She put me back together. When we met, I was bitter and cynical and more than a little angry at the entire human species for being full of suck and fail. But there she was. In spite of everything she was going though, she was continually kind and thoughtful. She actually believes in people, in their capacity for change. She gave me back hope.

    She made me happy again and I knew I didn’t want to spend any part of my life without her. In what I can only remember as a blind moment of abject stupidity I rushed to tell her that I loved her. Stupid, because that is definitely not something you do to a poor woman after she has spent 8 hours at work, 4 hours at school, and 2 more hours at the hospital. She was overwhelmed. She went to Maui and I sat around kicking myself for 3 very long days. The moment I saw her, I knew. Every morning since then its the same feeling, I look at the woman sleeping on the next pillow and I know.

  47. Count me as another who adores sappy romances. I’m writing one right now, with kitties;) our whole story is too long, so just a little excerpt:

    We’d been together for awhile and, I suppose, were moving toward marriage, though I wasn’t ready. I sat across that salvation-army table in that tiny dining room of a little post WWII shoebox. His hands shook as he asked me to marry him, so I knew he was nervous. That really touched me, because I didn’t think I warranted that much stress.

    I’m perhaps a bit peculiar, in that my parents gave us tips on how to find a mate, or decide whether we were really ready to get married. “Figure out what you want before you fall in love,” my mother said, “because once the rose-colored spectacles are on, your judgement will be clouded.”

    So I told him, I’d have to think about it. I wasn’t ready. In some ways, I’m the tiniest bit sorry, because I had to pull myself out of that drifting tide of contentment, and evaluate, and it was hard. But a week later, as I stood in that yellow bathroom of my parents, I thought, “In ten years, when we’re doing x…” I’ve long since forgotten what x is, but I realized, oh. My subconscious had answered me.

    And so a week later I told him yes. (And my friends, hearing this story, would say, “You made the guy wait a week? You’re mean!” which baffled me, because didn’t a serious question deserve a considered reply?

    That was nearly a quarter of a century ago.

    And for the record, the parents who gave that advice also had a great marriage, that only ended with my dad’s death. My mom has become a world traveler, with lots of friends; and as she predicted when I was still a child, she’s had no interest in marrying again — not because my father was some mystical one, but because she likes her independence. (I told her she found some really cool guy they could just live together, you know, or be friends, without marriage. She looked rather startled, but who knows?)

    So I wish for everyone to have happiness, single, friends, lovers or spouses, as it suits them.

  48. I don’t have a partner or a pet right now, but I do have a sister, and I love her.

    Ours is a very touchy and painful love story, and full of too much complicated family baggage to get into detail about, but we spent nineteen years living together on and off, usually not getting along, frequently fighting (screaming and throwing things and full of rage, unlike with anyone else in our lives ever), and secretly loving and admiring and being envious of each other. As almost total opposites, we didn’t understand each other at all, each wondering what the hell was wrong with the other one, because she thinks and acts and experiences everything so differently, but we also recognized something amazing and incredible in each of us. Cue adulthood, and the realization that for all of our fighting we had something worth fighting for. The screaming and throwing of stuff didn’t really end – in fact, it probably escalated. It hurt so much more to love someone so much and know she loved you and still not understand her and not feel understood either. But we are sisters of extremes, and as much as we don’t get along, we get along great. As much as we have awful fights, we have wonderful, sweet, cuddly, funny moments. Everything about it is harder than it ought to be, but loving my sister is worth it.

  49. I love mr. biscuit and all, but one of the biskitties (an enormous beast of a cat who believes herself to still be a tiny kitten suitable for this sort of thing) fell into a petting coma on my chest last night. She purrs like a lawnmower, and for all that she’s gargantuan, she has a tiny little head, so when she smiles she closes her eyes she looks a little like happy Buddha. Adorable.

  50. And seconding Jadey — all the stories are wonderful, but I just adore this kind of symmetry that KJ and KJH brought, and I wouldn’t have experienced that, if I hadn’t got over myself, because while I was posting mine, he was posting his.

    And now, I really really must get to work.

  52. I love this thread!!!! Delurking…

    My girlfriend and I met last semester in a class we were both in (women’s studies, naturally). We have both written our own versions of the “love story” since, but haven’t shown each other yet.

    We basically spent most of the semester sitting on almost opposite sides of the classroom, me being painfully shy and quiet like I always am, and her saying one smart, funny thing after another. Towards the end, though, we started talking more, becoming super super close, and though I definitely wouldn’t acknowledge it (due the complicating factors that I had a long-term boyfriend and was STRAIGHT, I SWEAR), I was crushing on her. Any touch from her felt electric, the buzzing of my phone with a text from her was the most exciting thing in the world. I already knew she had a crush on me, calling me “perfect 10” and “dreamboat”. I knew I had never felt this way about any other woman before.

    She put together an art show last May, basically by herself, with a lineup of talent from artists, painters, jewelry makers, slam poets, singers, DJs (ALL women, may I add). How fucking awesome is that? Swooooon. That night, I saw another girl hitting on her and I couldn’t take it anymore..so commenced the love confessing, and her admitting that she was only flirting with other people to get her mind off of me.

    So, this hilarious, adorable, extremely intelligent woman descended upon my life, wreaked some havoc at the beginning, due to the boyfriend stuff, but is now the most supportive and loving partner I’ve ever had. Since that semester we’ve spent almost every day together, and I’ve never felt so comfortable and happy with someone.

  53. Oliver showed up in my parent’s backyard. He was really skinny, and scared of people. My parents fed him, and he slowly became more comfortable with them, eventually venturing inside for a few minutes at a time. They named him Squeaker because he would make these little squeaky noises when he wanted food. Unfortunately, my parent’s other cats were bullying Oliver, so they had to find him a home. They took him to the vet who diagnosed him with FIV. My mother knew that very few people would want to adopt a cat with pre-existing health problems, but didn’t want to take him to a shelter because he would probably be put to sleep. I agreed to take him for a trial run, hoping that this outdoor cat would adjust to my little fourth floor apartment. We were so worried that he wouldn’t use the litter box, that he would try to escape, that he would be bored and lonely inside all the time, and that it wouldn’t work out – especially since the alternative was pretty grim.

    Oliver now spends most of his time sleeping on his back on my bed, with all four legs in the air and a dopey smile on his face. He’s happy and healthy, and totally spoiled. He still squeaks for food, but also to wake up when he wants to snuggle under the blankets. He follows me around the apartment like a puppy. He loves taking naps with my boyfriend and playing with my yarn when I try to knit. He has also been known to try and stick his paws in my boyfriend’s mouth while he’s sleeping. I think he’s trying to figure out why my boyfriend is making such an awful noise (he snores).

  54. Also de-luking; my love story is about my horse, Tonka. I met him when he was barely six months old, straining to see over his stall door. I was new to the horse thing and unsure of myself. But, for a year, I was the one assigned, almost infallibly, to clean his stall and groom him. He was a real charmer, who loved to nibble on my neck and suck on my ponytail — he was just a baby and still mouthy.

    As he grew up, my riding instructor assigned me to work with him and train him. I taught him to stand for the farrier and vet, load into a trailer and show on the ground. I taught him to pull a cart and drove him, longed him and put his first saddle on. I still remember laughing until I cried when I put his first bit in, coated with molasses to disguise the metal and watched him contort his whole face sucking at the molasses.

    When it came time for Tonka to be ridden for the first time, my instructor came to boost me into the saddle, and I almost threw up from nerves; my first time on a greenie, you see. Then he turned his head around to look at me, beautiful soft dark eyes peering at me around a ridiculous half-star, and I swear to this day he winked at me.

    We’ve never been apart since. He’s 16 now, but hasn’t slowed down a day. He’s still my sweet, sweet baby, who understands me better than I understand myself, who loves to outthink me, follows me around the paddock without a halter on and has taken better care of me than any human ever could. He’s seen me through the hell of high school, the loss of dear friends, boyfriend problems, the enormous stress of college and starting my own career, and even opened his heart to a younger horse who shares his paddock and both of our lives.

    We’ve competed in shows, ridden on trails and moved boarding facilities, and through it all he’s been my steady, unwavering best friend, the sure presence in my life I know will never leave me, never hold a grudge and never forget that I keep carrots in my back pockets.

    And he still nibbles on my neck.

  55. Delurking!

    I moved to the Czech Republic about six months ago to become an English teacher. I started work at a small language school five months ago and became fast friends with a group of the guys who also work there. I grew particularly close with one of them, S., but as far as I knew, we were just friends and he wasn’t interested in pursuing anything further. It didn’t even occur to me to think otherwise – I was just happy to have someone to make Star Wars references with and who wouldn’t quite let me win at pool, but almost, and who I could walk part of the way home with after school on Thursdays.

    My birthday is in early December, and this year it was on a Friday. The night before, we were walking together from school as usual, talking about nothing in particular, when he said,
    – Can I ask you an inappropriate question?, because I’m tired of being appropriate all the time.
    – Uh, sure – I said, not knowing what to expect.
    – Are you hungry?
    – Not really – I said, not catching on. – I ate earlier.
    – No – he replied, and he caught my gaze. – I mean, I’d like to take you somewhere nice tonight, if that’s okay.
    – OH! – I replied. – Oh. I…oh! Sure.

    We went for dinner and a few beers and at the end of the meal he said, – You finish tomorrow after your Czech lesson, right?
    – Yeah, I’m done after that.
    – Good, cause I’d like to take you somewhere else afterwards, if you’re free. For your birthday.
    – Sure, – I said. – Are you going to tell me where we’re going?
    – Nope.

    The next day I met him at the station and he handed me a tram ticket and led me onto a tram, and we got off a little while later and he said, – do you know where you are yet?
    and I smiled to myself and suddenly and for the first time wanted to throw my arms around him but didn’t, and I said, – we’re at the zoo, – and it was perfect and deserted because it was so cold, and we said hi to all the snowy animals and watched the sun blaze out over the mountains and went for birthday beer and birthday pizza and then back to my place for what turned out to be the entire weekend, and the rest is history.

    Thanks for letting me brag a little! I love reading these stories 🙂

  56. I love a lot of folks, but I want to tell you about my coworkers. I’m butchish, gender-nonconforming and very queer although most non-queers read me as a lesbian. My coworkers are a mix of straight women (many with a commitment to Christianity), gay men, and one straight guy. It should be noted that I have a big thing for Johnny Weir, and have shared this with my coworkers.
    So- where is this all going? Sometimes, we prank one another’s cubicles in elaborate, loving ways, particularly for birthdays. I’m the baker, so my role is usually to supply the prank parties with the spoonful of sugar. This year, the straight women spearheaded the effort to turn my cubicle into a Johnny Weir-themed birthday party, complete with cupcakes that matched his pink & black Olympic skate outfit, elaborate decorations, photoshopped, framed images of me & Johnny together, and a warm-up outfit that they personalized to profess my love for him. Being able to be so open and free with my goofy-ass queerness, and having that so lovingly played with by them for my birthday- ahhh- big love, yes? With a less awesome crew, my out-there gender bending could be a liability, but love makes it otherwise.

  57. I would have written about a kitty love story, even five months ago, but sometime in August this year, something changed in my life, with another person, and I’m lost for words. I don’t know how to write a story when I’m still in the first chapters.

    ….

    We met online: we knew each other’s words before
    we saw the other’s face. Sent text, e-mail;
    by words we web and build this strange rapport,
    that runs between us, no heroic tale,

    We meet, we talk, we walk, ae kiss, and part,
    Romance does not include a dying cat,
    A broken loo, a nasty cold: the chart
    that maps our lives is more complex than that.

    One word romance lives for, we are out of:
    We speak of how we like, we smile, the glove
    that hides this word is warm and welcome, of
    heat inside, a trust that builds, no swift shove
    into a word we’ve said before, all of
    time to come in which to speak a rhyme of…

  58. These are great!

    Last week I saw an ultrasound image of my baby for the first time. The second that baby-blob came into view on the screen, all of the anxiety and fear that had been a big part of my first trimester melted into joy.
    “That’s it!” I said to the ultrasound tech.
    “Yes, that’s it,” she replied.
    “So there really is something in there,” my boyfriend said.
    “Yes,” she laughed, there is definitely something in there.
    “Does it look…okay?” I asked her.
    “It looks absolutely perfect,” she said.

    And I had to agree 🙂

  59. I met my best friend during an ice-breaker in my dorm my freshman year. We were paired up and had to ask each other what our interests were. He answered “girls.” I immediately classified him as a tool, and made a mental note to steer clear of him.

    Five and a half years later, I can’t tell you how different my life would have been without him. We have both grown so much over the years, and I know that I can always count on him. We both have a random sense of humor, a fascination for international politics, south park and nerdy facts, and there’s nothing a hug of his can’t fix.

    I can’t really define what our relationship is like; we have kissed in the past, fallen asleep together holding hands, but it has never felt sexual in any way. He is one of the few people in the world with whom I feel incredibly safe and comforted, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  60. Me and my partner (and our kitties) have a totally sappy story. We’ve been together for about three and a half years now and I’m hoping its forever. We met on the internet – an internet forum for lesbians and bi/pan/queer women. We emailed each other for a while, then exchanged phone numbers, then she flew me to NYC and took a week off work (at the time I’m not sure if she was working on the boats or in a grocery store…I think the store. If she was working on the boats, it wasn’t as a boat mechanic yet, but she had worked for them off and on as crew and such). It was the most romantic week ever. The first couple days we stayed in this great apartment she had permission to stay in…it was in a project but was really nice, and had a balcony with a view of central park (it was close to harlem meer)! It was beautiful and super romantic. We also did the paddle boats at prospect park (and read to each other while we did), went to the beach at coney island, she cooked for me…and we fell in love. It was really hard to be apart after that. We visited a few times, then in about february she came to stay with me in ohio where I was going to school. She was recovering from surgery, but I think she took care of me more than I did her. I would never have finished without her. At the end of the year we moved back to nyc, renting an apartment together in washington heights. I’m not fond of the city (bleak and dreary most of the time, etc.) But I loved the friends I made. She was the one who got me into organizing. She had been organizing with Queers for Economic Justice for a while, so I joined their shelter organizing for a little bit. And at the TDOA (trans day of action) she ran into (my now dear, dear friend) maryse and took a flier…which is how I got involved in sex workers rights organizing with swop-nyc and swank (she also joined swop-nyc, as an ally). I had a job but got fired after a month and a half, went into the hospital, and spent the next few years in and out of a lot of hospitals/psych wards. She was always in my corner, and tried to stand up for me against the doctors often (generally when I was in involuntarily and we both wanted me home)…but that was really ineffectual, since they don’t actually listen to anyone who is not another doctor or a therapist. Soon after we moved in, we adopted our babies (kitties), a brother and sister (with six toes, which, yes, is why I call myself sixtoedkitties on the internet). I wanted cats desperately (I grew up with a kitty I loved very much). My partner was not a cat person, but she is now (they quickly converted her). She is tiny and dainty and we call her princess (a nickname). When she snuggles, she full-body snuggles, like throwing herself against us and being all squirmy and cute. She likes belly rubs (when in the snuggly mood) and she used to suckle us all the time (especially armpits if we were not paying attention), which was not terribly pleasant but was very sweet. She has mostly gotten over that. Her brother is an enormous kitty. We call him puppy (among other things) cuz he acts like a puppy. He is also a schnookums who loves to snuggle. He is fascinated by water…though he doesn’t want to actually go in. He likes to listen to the shower and watch the water running down the curtain, and he likes to sit on the edge of the bathtub while you take a bath and bat the water with his paws. He is not terribly graceful and has fallen in (which freaked him out big time). He thinks he is smaller and lighter than he is…so he falls and breaks things more than your normal cat. When he was little he liked to climb the bicycle! We have a picture of him after he made it up to the handlebars. They love each other – often he licks her to give her a bath, and it makes her happy. They play-fight, but they definitely love each other. They like to sit on the windowsill and watch the birds (yummy), and in the summer to watch the rats in the alley (they are big rats, who I would not want anywhere near those babies, and they would probably be scared of them up close). One time a baby rat got in the apartment and baby girl was playing with it…she’s a little huntress, and was disappointed when my partner took it away and flushed it down the toilet. Baby boy will chase one of those jangle balls for *hours*. He loves those things. Anything we’re eating he thinks is his, and he acts annoyed when we keep his paws away from our food. He especially loves yogurt…if we leave an empty container out he will lick it clean. One time I got some of those little stuffed microbes (for myself), and he thought they were his too…the moment I opened them he meowed loudly and batted one out of my hand. Now they basically are his, but for a while I would only let him play with them a little at a time so they didn’t get destroyed. I miss those babies so much…you can probably tell. I hate the city, but I love my partner, our babies, and my amazing friends there.

  61. Aahhh, at first he made me sick. Every single day, for almost a year. He caused me pain. He prohibited me from doing things – I couldn’t drink alcohol. I couldn’t run. His very presence scared me.

    But when I gave that final triumphant heave, and that big-headed, perineum-tearing, slimed-up 8-lb, 10-oz-er was laid in my arms, I fell deeply, madly, and completely in love. We’ve been having an affair for 14 years now, and it just gets better and better.

    I’m also unfaithful to him – I’ve been having a 10-year-affair simultaneously, and it started exactly the same way.

    (Yeah, this is a hokey comment, but I can’t help it. I’m a sap underneath it all.)

  62. I don’t really have a story to add (maybe someday soon), but thank you for sharing your stories 🙂 It’s disturbing how happy they make me. I cry when people do nice things to each other on TV – and that’s fiction. You people are ridiculously adorable.

  63. I want to tell you about my best friend. I met her when I moved to Philly. She dated a couple of friends of mine, but we were never what I’d call close.

    Then, in 2004, we moved in together because we were both between houses and we couldn’t think of a reason why NOT, and it was love. Living with my husband is great and all, but no one understands me like C. She and I built a new kitchen table out of file boxes, sand, salt and recycling and had a photo shoot with a lot of laughing and pretending to eat lightbulbs. She laughs at my jokes and knows exactly what I mean to say before I say it. She was the only one who was really there for me when I was fleeing an abusive relationship, and let me stay with her for weeks when I had nowhere to go, no questions asked. She knows more about me than my mother, the man I married, than even myself, and no matter how much I screw up, she is right there in my corner telling me I can get through it and it’ll be ok.

    I miss her. 3000 miles is too far away.

  64. I want to write about my dog, but she died a couple of years ago and I can’t even type this without getting a throat lump. Some day.

  65. I’m married to the only man I’ve ever loved- my first boyfriend lasting more than a week, whom I met at summer camp when I was 13. We long-distance dated for three years, broke up when I graduated from high school, and got back together in 2008. Being married to him is better than anything I could have imagined- and he was the one who suggested we both hyphenate. I feel very lucky to be married to someone who shares my values and who makes it a point to show me AND tell me how much he respects me. We gross out our friends all the time with the nuzzling and cuddles, too- win!

  66. My love story began inauspiciously, during an encounter with a man that I would have written off as a blip, a nothing, and certainly extremely unsatisfying. Two weeks later I was peeing on a stick and was astounded to find that every wish I’d ever made was coming true. I felt like I’d eaten the sun and all of the warmth and light in the world was inside me.

    Forty weeks after that nothing encounter my daughter arrived. She continues to be the sun around which I revolve. She’s a smart and sassy 7-year-old with a strong sense of who she is. The Nothing Man has never been involved in her life, something she takes in stride, and we have recently opened our hearts to another man (who I’d call a Definitely Something Man) and his son. We have yet to see how that relationship will progress; maybe the next time Chally runs a thread like this I’ll have another love story to tell. Meanwhile, I can’t think of a better story than this one.

  67. Rita, you had in your post a quote from bell hooks, “The moment we choose to love we move towards freedom…”

    This made me think of my partner. Being with my partner and loving him has helped me find a freedom I didnt know could exist. I am free to be myself, play silly little games (which he plays with me), free to dream about our future together, free to talk and share, and free to doubt, free to be scared, free to cry, free to laugh, free to be wrong, free to explore, and free to love completely with all my heart.
    He tells me he loves me more and more every day, and I can feel it. As Katy Perry puts it, “Finally I found my missing puzzle piece.”

  68. Two stories and a squee:

    My zucchini and I met over fanfic and grammar.

    No, really. I’d written a fanfic in which I tried out a certain experimental style involving specific grammatical errors in hopes of creating a certain effect. I’d thought it worked, but all my reviewers said something like “great fic! but you should correct your grammar.” I was tearing my hair out wondering whether it was that all my reviewers weren’t getting it or that I had actually failed entirely in doing what I’d meant to when I got another review saying “great fic! also, I have no idea why all of these reviewers are talking about bad grammar, it’s obvious what they’re calling mistakes are intentional in order to create [X] effect.” I was so grateful for this I went to her profile, hunted down her LJ and dropped a comment on a recent post going “oh my god thank you so much for getting it.” We got to chatting, each discovering the other was a cool person, and… well, here I am five years later hoping to live with her someday. 🙂

    For a not person, I fell in love with my subject (maths) for the first time second-to-last year of high school. We’d started linear algebra and my teacher started off by putting the abstract definition of a vector space on the board. “See, anything that satisfies these properties is a vector space,” he said. “It could be numbers, it could be positions in space, it could be the T-shirt of [name] who’s whispering in the back row don’t think I can’t see you.” The idea of that level of abstraction, of having something that is defined *solely* through properties and where we make no restrictions on what something satisfying those properties should look like, struck (and still strikes) me as completely amazing… which is probably why I’m an algebraist now, i.e. working on those sorts of abstract structures. This is probably one not so many people can identify with, aha. >>

    Finally, I love the asexual community. I feel as if I recently found it again after taking my toys and leaving in early 2009, and I am astounded at all the amazing fabulous wonderful people and their incredible thoughts on asexuality and gender relationships queerplatonicism masculinity polyamory etc. etc. etc. who have apparently been hiding from me because I feel as if I’ve been missing them all my life and only just found out. <333

  69. bidadash: Rita, you had in your post a quote from bell hooks, “The moment we choose to love we move towards freedom…”This made me think of my partner. Being with my partner and loving him has helped me find a freedom I didnt know could exist. I am free to love completely with all my heart.  

    Yes… The rest of the sentence is (from memory) “…to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” From Outlaw Culture, if I remember correctly. I used it in my toast to G at our wedding reception. bell hooks is something else.

    AND ALSO: totally want to echo xenu01 that living with G is great, but living with my best friend was one of the transformative experiences of my life. Take it from a (happily!) married lady: there is no substitute for the love of a friend.

  71. Jadey: @ KJ and KJH,You two are adorable!  

    Yeah holy shit, that’s the most romantic story I’ve ever heard that wasn’t coming at me from a movie screen.

  73. Oooooh perfect! I just adopted a puppy!

    My boyfriend and I went to Puerto Vallarta a few weeks ago. Our first night there, a friend introduced us to Calabaza, a puppy she’d come to be caring for, and told us her story:

    Calabaza was first found abandoned on the Malecon. She was covered in mange, severely malnourished, and eating garbage and pigeons to stay alive. A pair of tourists were sitting on the beach one day, and Calabaza walked right up to them and sat down with them for hours, wagging her tail and refusing to be just another street dog!

    Those two took her in for a few days and started getting her fixed up. They gave her to a local who seemed interested….and who then abandoned her again.

    The pair found her, once again on the beach and looking worse for the wear, and took her back to the vet. They then gave her to our friend, who intoduced her to us.

    Having no intentions of getting a pet, we told her we couldn’t take her, and she was given to the SPCA. However, a week later, we saw her again at a farmer’s market with the SPCA…. and after she fell asleep on our laps, we knew we had to take her home. The next day, we went and adopted her.

    Our first day with her, we caught a bus into Sayulita. I had been planning to propose to my boyfriend, and so we became engaged on the secluded tropical beach I had imagined….with a puppy digging up sand right beside us.

    Love!

    (She’s home in Vancouver now, very happy, and my dog of honour)

  74. I needed this thread this evening. I can’t decide which story to post about, so if it gets long, I do apologize.

    An animal love story, first:

    My family met our dog, Rudy, on a farm when he was a puppy. I was 13 at the time. My parents were looking for a dog, and he seemed to be a calm, collected little mutt. He turned out to be a dog full of energy, who only loved chasing tennis balls more than he loved running around and making us chase him. He was a protective dog, always happiest when his family was in one room so he didn’t have to constantly patrol to make sure everyone was okay. He hated it when anyone was upset, and he would snuggle and lick worriedly if I was crying. I had a hard time in middle school, and sometimes it felt like Rudy was my only friend. He was talkative, and when we sat around the dinner table (on those rare occasions with three teens when there was a family dinner) he would bark and try to join in the conversation. My parents had to put him to sleep 18 months ago, and I still miss him when I visit home. He was a good dog, and I really hope that for the 15 years he was with us, we gave him as much as he gave us.

    A friend love story:

    I’ve been trying to write this one for a bit now, and I find that I can’t quite adequately describe the way that my two best friends became indispensable parts of my life. Sure, the facts are easy–we lived in the same dorm our freshman year; I was in love with H.’s boyfriend; somehow we all ended up roommates and friends anyway. But the actual process by which I gained two friends as dear to me as sisters? I don’t know how to explain it. We just lived our lives, talked, shared, got our first apartment together, became part of the fabric of each others’ lives. To quote a song from Wicked, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?/But, because I knew you/I have been changed for good.” I know my life is different, and hopefully better, because of my two best friends.

  75. Met my partner when I was 15. We dated for 8 years, and just got married in October. When the officiant asked, I said “Absolutely, I do.”

    I always will.

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