How I got here.

Since we’re talking about weddings already and this is the place where I say pretty much anything that comes to mind I thought I’d tell you how I met my wife.

Between the ages of puberty and 2003 I was not what you would call a successful dater. Sure, I’d have dates here and there. My longest dry spell was only 5 or 6 years. And there was the time when I instituted what has come to be known as “The Policy”, which basically said No More Dating. Ever.

In 1998 I went to work for a small company that gave me a 13 state territory and a basically unlimited travel budget. It was fun, but I didn’t have time to meet many girls. Then in the spring of 2003 I got laid off. It was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I lost a bunch of weight, started exercising daily, hung out with friends and spent a lot of time at the SCUBA shop where I taught classes. I even dated a girl who was entirely too young for me. I had a decent severance package and after 2 months I pretty much knew I was going to get a job shortly, so the pressure was off. I called that summer “The Summer of Jorge”.

Two days after the big blackout of 2003 I went back to work. I now had a ton of money coming in and got a personal trainer and joined a gym. I lost more weight and was almost buff by January. But as was my custom, I had no date for New Years. I spent it at home, surfing the internet and opened a window to listen to the gunfire at midnight.

I decided that I wanted a serious girlfriend this year. I read a news story some time around then that a new online service called eHarmony was really popular with women and they outnumbered men something like 2 or 3 to one on the site, where as match.com numbers were much more heavily weighted to men. EHarmony looked like good odds to me.

So I went on the site and filled out the personality profile. I read the sales pitch info, and since I’m highly suggestible, signed up for the whole package. A one year subscription with the “free” books on marriage and dating from Dr. Warren.

Then I sat back and waited for matches. If you haven’t been on eHarmony, they do the matching for you. You don’t just “shop” at random.

I had a few matches and went through some few of the steps of communication with them. None of it went anywhere. Until the end of January. That’s when I was matched with Mona. On the surface we looked like opposites. She was in the Peace Corps. I would have been more likely to join the military. I was a SCUBA instructor; she didn’t much care for the water. Based on those things I doubt (and Mona agrees) that if we had been introduced by mutual friends or met at a party that neither of us would have been interested in the other. But we seemed to be pretty compatible despite the obvious differences. We went through the communication stages pretty quickly. Within a week we were sending one another emails through the site. After about 2 weeks we spoke on the phone and agreed to meet for lunch.

We had lunch in Novi on February 11th, 2004. I did most of the talking. I decided that I would ask her out again right there, even though the sparks weren’t flying. She agreed. And then when she got home she emailed me to apologize for being so quiet at lunch. She was very nervous and didn’t know what to say.

Since the upcoming weekend was Valentines we agreed to have a date on the 14th but to simply ignore the “holiday” as it would be too much pressure for a first and a half date. I was almost successful at ignoring it too. But I felt like I would be short changing any girl if I were to simply pretend that it wasn’t Valentines Day. So I made a decision. I would get her flowers (just a regular mixed bouquet, no roses) and some kind of little gift. I knew the gift had to be personal without being intimate. Chocolates were cliché, and jewelry would have been creepy at best. And then it hit me.

During one of our talks she told me that she had gotten a cordless drill for Christmas. She was astonished to find out that drills did not come with bits. As much as she wanted to make holes in things, she only had half of the tools she needed. So I went to Home Depot and bought her a pack of drill bits. That’s right, I bought her flowers and drill bits for Valentines Day.

We went to a comedy club and dinner that night. She was still quite and nervous, but better than at lunch. After that, one thing led to another. We were engaged by September and married the following March. That summer our stories were featured in a major newspaper and picked up on the AP wire in a number of smaller markets. A year later The Peanut arrived. So much for my one year subscription.

The moral of the story? I don’t know that there is one. But I will tell you this. I recommend the hell out of eHarmony to all my single friends. To date my wife and I know 6 or seven couples besides ourselves who met and are engaged as a result of eHarmony, including my brother, who is marrying a surgeon later this summer. I think that half of the weddings we are planning on attending this year are of people who met through Dr. Warren. If you know anyone who isn’t meeting Mr. or Ms. Right at the bars or grocery store, I highly recommend you encourage them to give it a try.

What about you? If you're married or affianced, please share your story. If you’re single and looking what are you planning to try in the new year? If you’re single and not looking, I fully understand. I’ve been there too.

The preceding story was entirely true. The author has no vested interest in eHarmony or any of its affiliates and has received no compensation for sharing his story with anyone else. Ever.