This fascinating couple’s blog can be found here.

Taken by David Delisio

This was the question a reader recently asked me in the comments section of my guest post at Urban Monk. Do I believe in “true love”? The short answer is, “Yes!”

But wait, there’s more…

I left a brief reply to her comment, then thought I should elaborate here… that way I can bore YOU to tears with my sappy love story about how I met my husband.

I grew up reading romance novels, among other things. Many of my girlish notions of what love would be like were shaped by those books, primarily Jane Austen’s descriptions. Let me tell you, if I had a day to spend with Jane Austen, I’d give her a piece of my mind. Because of her, I wasted so many of my youthful years on “diamonds in the rough” that were really nothing but useless lumps of coal all along.

Everyone recognized that, except for me, because I was busy believing that they were just misunderstood, in this world but not of this world, too intellectual or passionate to be appreciated by the simple masses. Jane Austen made me think that, if I could be interesting enough, or love with sufficient ardor, these rogue gentlemen would come around, sweep me off my feet, and live happily ever after with me.

THAT Love… the Romantic, fantasy-based, idealized, fairy tale kind of love that used to be my one and only goal in life… THAT one, I don’t believe in. Not anymore. I know now it was never real. Jane Austen invented those men to be her companions in her otherwise eternal solitude. That myth is perpetuated to this day to encourage sales of flowers, chocolates, jewelry, wedding dresses… you name it. It’s a dangerous myth.

But there is another Love… the more elusive and rare, True Love.

The Sappy Love Story

Jeff and I met under somewhat unusual circumstances. He was recently divorced, and had a two year old daughter. I had just lost my mother, and my dad was still in the hospital recovering from the plane crash. So, between hospital visits, diaper changes, Barney, and a river of tears, we were both open, honest, and vulnerable. Neither of us had the energy or desire to play the usual dating games.

You know those games… where you both try to be perfect so as to not blow the deal. Every date is like a job interview, you plan for, stress out during, and analyze after. Assuming you survive the first three dates, this song and dance goes on for months, maybe years; then there’s a wedding. Suddenly reality kicks in and all the rough edges start to show.

You can’t pretend to be perfect forever, so at some point you both start being real… and you have to get to know each other all over again. Sometimes, you still like each other. Other times you end up with buyer’s remorse, and you want out.

We skipped all that. From day one we were as real as real gets, and trying to be strong for his daughter, and my dad. We leaned on each other. Six weeks after our first date (a blind date) we got engaged. I didn’t want an engagement ring. I didn’t see the point of spending thousands of dollars on a thing that has nothing at all to do with our feelings for each other. We got simple wedding bands for the ceremony; I think mine was $70.

We didn’t want a fantasy wedding either. Ten thousand dollars (maybe more) for a one-day party? Not a chance. Our friends organized an engagement party for us in their backyard… it was lovely. My brother paid for our honeymoon in Jamaica. As it turned out, we could get married at the resort for $700, including cake, champagne, and pictures. So we did. The only guests at our wedding were a couple we met at the pool that day. We got married four months after we met, against everyone’s advice… that was ten years ago.

Here’s the thing about True Love: it’s not always all pretty and frilly and packaged in the perfect words. It isn’t scripted, rehearsed and delivered with emotive perfection. It is not dependent on ANY of the things money can buy, or anyone else’s opinion. True Love is very real, and very attainable. But it is only possible between two REAL people. No games, no pretending, no faking, no hiding. When YOU are ready to show up and be yourself, you will find another who is also ready… because True Love, well… you know:

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

(1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Lisis Blackston is the author of the site Quest For Balance.

Whether we find happiness through grand adventures, or seek it in every-day places, we all want less pain and more joy. Quest for Balance is a place where people can be reminded that finding lasting happiness and inner peace is not only achievable, but surprisingly simple… for all of us!

It was a Saturday night, 23 April 1983, Luther and I stationed aboard the USS Forrestal and both made the trek from Mayport, FL to the Philadelphia shipyard for the FIDs service life extension program (SLEP) decided to head out and explore the South Jersey. Our ship had not been in the area but a few weeks and we were all still getting our bearings.

As we navigated one of the local road ways it became quite apparent that I was not going to be able to continue without a pit stop. My bladder felt as if it was going to burst. Luckily relief came into view.

The Silver Saddle Saloon, which we found out, was a bar – upstairs was all country and the basement was all rock and roll. It was the only obvious immediate stop along the roadway.

We pulled into the gravel parking lot and found a spot to park near the back of the property, still in view of the entrance. I quickly got out of the car and made a move to relieve myself at the edge of wooded area of the parking lot until I heard a yell, “HEY!” I turned and saw the bouncer for the club standing at the door and signaling for me to come over. Luther was still in the car, we did not plan on staying.

I approached the club’s bouncer and he asked what I was doing in his parking lot. As I danced in front of him I explained I had to use a bathroom in a bad way. He said they had one inside I could use and using his parking lot was not acceptable. I started to enter the building when he put his hand up to stop me – “What?!, I have got to go!”, I pleaded. He responded, “$5 cover charge.” GAHHHH!

The head was located at the opposite end of the building, just past the dance floor. As I made my way to it I saw a very beautiful woman standing at the bar. I couldn’t stop – I had to go.

Relief.

I started to make my way back to the door, Luther was still waiting in the car, I turned to the bar to see if she was still there. she was. We made eye contact. I stopped, turned and quickly approached her.

Bonnie was wearing a cowboy hat, jeans and one of those leather vests with the thin leather tassels – she was dressed very westernly…

I walked up to her, introduced myself and asked if she knew how to dance to the country music they had playing (I had never seen anyone two step before – heck, this was the first time I had ever been in a C&W bar). She said she did.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the dance floor saying, “Good, you’re going to teach me”.

I don’t know how much time passed before I asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?” she said, “I’m going out with you”. I got her phone number and left.

Luther and I later that night stopped at Denny’s for a late night meal. I told him about Bonnie and told him right then, “I am going to marry that girl”, he thought I was  nuts.

On May 28, 1983 – 26 years ago today and 5 weeks to the day after I had met her, we were married. Believe in love at first sight? I do. 

Tom Goering is a retired Navy officer currently living in Bartlett, TN where he spends his time working on his Navy CyberSpace blog and spending as much time with his beautiful wife as she can tolerate.

Everything really has changed in a unique and wonderfully-surprising way. I’m not quite sure where to begin, but I know that every great story must be told, so here is my attempt at ours.

I met Ashley Anne Cooney three summers ago. The whole thing was rather serendipitous and unexpected. We, who had attended the same college for years, were brought together weeks before both of us would graduate. She needed help planning an outdoor party, and evidently, I had achieved some kind of superstar barbecuer status. Or, she just picked the guy with the brightest-orange hair. Either way, I was honored.

That summer, we both stayed in town after graduation while all of our friends took off. A small college town is a pitiful sight when all the students have gone home. There were four or five of us who hung out on a regular basis, and Ashley was part of that group.

What’s particularly strange about that whole summer is that I had no intention of sticking around. I was young and adventurous, and young adventurers don’t stay put in one place too long. I wanted to go to Texas for my third summer at camp, but I heard the Lord tell me to stay. I can’t say that I didn’t fight it most of the summer, but even when I got an offer in July to come down and help (they were desperate), I had to turn it down. I knew God was up to something.

Ashley and I became friends pretty quickly and before long, we were each other’s main confidante. It was such a strange and beautiful summer, full of wonderful memories. One night, we stayed up all night on my front porch telling stories just because we could. Another night, I took her for a walk to go star-gazing in the football field, where I dropped the infamous “So, here’s the deal…” line, told her how I felt about her, and later held her hand. There were even times when we cried together. But the summer ended, and I left for another adventure, not promising anything, except that I would pray for her.

And I did–every day for a year. We wrote letters and talked on the phone occasionally. We went out of our way to see each other, even if it meant driving hours to share a few precious minutes together. The next summer, we confessed that we loved each other. We both moved to Nashville in the fall, got jobs and separate apartments, and tried to see if we could deal with seeing each other on a regular basis. We had some trials, but persevered and decided that we didn’t really want to do life without each other. That following spring, I proposed to her, and on January 12, 2008, I got to marry my best friend.

There are a hundred details I left out, but that’s the gist of how I met my wife. She is the most interesting, fun, and beautiful person I have ever known. She makes my life interesting and surprises me often. I have learned more about God, love, and commitment from her than I have from any other person. I am lucky to have ever met her and consider it an honor to be called her husband.

Jeff Goins is originally from Illinois, but he currently lives in Nashville, TN with his wife. He works for Adventures In Missions, a Christian nonprofit. He loves music, good books, and traveling. You can email him at jeff.goins@gmail.com and visit his blog http://jeffgoins.myadventures.org.

I’m one of those people who, while I’m not 100% sure exactly what I believe, I know that I believe in something. I believe that people enter our lives for a reason, though we don’t always get to know exactly what that reason is. I’ve had too many “coincidences” happen for me to believe otherwise. Sometimes things happen in life, wheels are often set in motion and we have no idea where we’re going to be taken…until we get some distance and perspective, and it all makes sense. Life is mysterious like that. A person that you meet in passing this week could end up having a huge impact on your life….or you on theirs.

You might even end up falling in love.

My story with CBG started about a year or so ago.

in November of 2006.

in 1992. I was 18 and off at University, full of enthusiasm for life and a go-get ‘em attitude.

My first year of University I lived in Rez. For the most part I kinda hated it. I made a few friends, and met a lot of “weird people”, too. One of these people was this one strange chick who I was never really friends with, but we knew a lot of the same people, and partied in the same vicinity. It was a small University, everybody knew everybody – especially in residence. The next year she was in my creative writing class, and gained a reputation for being a bit of a suck up and all around weird person.   I don’t really remember her after that. I lived off campus after first year and just went on with my life. She was just one of those semi-memorable characters whose name went down in my University history: “Hey, remember that weird chick who –?”

Life went on. I dated, broke up. Met my future husband, moved cities, married, had kids.

Fast forward to November, 2006.

I was married, my daughters were 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. One night while online, I stumbled across  this same strange chick on a local email discussion group (she lives in the same province as me). She’s got a name that isn’t easily forgotten. I found her blog link and started reading. She had a pretty inspirational story to tell about her life since leaving university, and I quickly saw that she and I shared some of the same philosophies about life and child rearing. For reasons I didn’t really understand or even stop to analyze, I fired her off an email.

Turns out, she remembered me too.

Inspired by her blog, I made the decision to start one of my own. We linked to each other, and began reading each other’s blogs daily. My first “blog buddy”! Sure, she was a little…ahem… ‘eccentric’, but we had a lot in common, including training for and running our first marathon at the same time.

(CBG’s gonna show up on the scene soon, I promise. heh.)

Fast forward again, to one year ago.

I was struggling with depression. I had just started taking meds for it the month before when I’d reached a pretty scary point. I’d shown some improvement, but was slowly coming to the conclusion that my deep unhappiness with my marriage was the cause of it.  I continued to blog – it was one of the things that kept me from completely drowning in grief and sorrow and all the other negativity that I was experiencing.

I happened to notice on my University friend’s blog a link to another blog, a “real life” friend of hers (turns out they went to high school together).  To further add to the irony, apparently it was this same chick who encouraged him to start blogging in the first place, too. I followed the link and started reading. He was a single dad, a nice guy, with great musical taste and a sense of humour that I could definitely relate to.  Oh – and cute, too.  Actually, exactly “my type”. You know, for a married chick and all.

I kept reading – daily.

No, no, it wasn’t like THAT. I was still with my husband. But y’all know what it’s like when you start reading someone’s blog. You get all caught up in the itty-bitty details of their lives. I liked reading about his daughter visiting and his weekends with his son. I liked reading his “stuck in an afternoon meeting” blog entries. I recoiled in disgust when he ate his first “alligator pizza”. I read with genuine concern when he wrote about the death of a family member. I felt a silent soar of excitement when he got to surprise his daughter for a one day visit. I was there, reading, when he was going through a particularly rough time emotionally, but not really writing much about it. I remember thinking that I wanted to reach out in some way when that happened, but had no clue as to how to do it. So I remained a silent, concerned stranger out there in the blogosphere. I was an anonymous stalker reader, only venturing out to comment once or twice in those initial 5 or 6 months or so.

As I read along, I often found myself wondering why such a great guy was still single. I would read about him feeling lonely, wondering when (if?) he was going to find someone. I distinctly remember wishing that he’d find a woman who deserved such a great man. I wanted this guy to find love…because clearly he deserved it. I knew that when he did, I would celebrate right along with him.

Of course, I was going through issues of my own. It was in August when I finally succumbed to my own personal issues and made the heartbreakingly painful decision to end my marriage. The depression was still looming, and I was sinking even deeper, despite the meds.

Still I kept on reading his blog, as I slogged through my own issues, succumbed to depression, reaching the point of near nervous breakdown. In many ways, my life was falling apart around me. Having the escape of reading about other people’s lives via their blogs, was a useful escape for me.

Then one night in November, completely out of the blue, I had a dream about him.

No……not like that, you filthy people. Eeeesh.

The only thing I remembered about this dream afterward was snuggling up close to him, and looking up into his face, smiling…and him smiling back at me. Afterward, I remembered feeling warm and loved and accepted. And most of all …. safe. That was something I hadn’t felt in a while at that point.

It was one of those dreams that when I woke up afterwards, I felt like I’d actually spent time with him. It was weird. I felt compelled to do what any stalker normal lonely person would do – I looked him up on Facebook. I fired off a friend request.  And whaddaya know? He accepted it.

After I saw that he had, I sent him this message:

“Glad to see that my friend request wasn’t *too* creepy……………………………………………………………..much.”

And, well… it all just snowballed from there. Who knew that this adorable, funny, 80s-tunes-loving geek would be such a fantastic flirt? That first night I believe we talked and flirted for about 7 hours straight. We experienced an instant click on a level that I have never experienced with another person before.

I found myself filled with that warm sense of safety that I’d been longing for. Talking to him thrilled and exhilarated and terrified me all at the same time.

Since that night last November it’s been a crazy ride for the two of us. Hell, I had NO IDEA, 4 months ago, when things ended between us that we would EVER end up back here again….more in love than ever. I had even LESS idea, a year ago, that this man whose blog I started reading would end up being someone who has, no matter what else, changed my life for the better. I certainly had no clue at all that the crazy chick from my rez all those years ago would end up being the connecting link to someone I now couldn’t imagine life without.

All I can do at this point is remain intensely grateful that life has taken me where it has.

I guess the moral of this sixteen-years-in-the-making story is to simply remain open to the people who enter your life, and to the experiences you have. You never know which direction life is going to take you. There are likely forces at work that you can’t even imagine.

Pretty exciting, isn’t it?

Momma Sunshine is a 30-something single mom of two beautiful little girls, on a journey of self-exploration, looking to find joy and truly live in the moment. You can follow her story at http://mommasunshine.wordpress.com .

Somewhere around the very beginning of December, Paul started livecasting video on Ustream. He sent the link out over Twitter, and with nothing else going on that afternoon, I logged in to check it out. I had seen him on his vidcasts on his own site, but getting to see him live and chat with him was a different experience. This most casual of online acquaintances became very real. Real enough that we began to chat online.  Real enough that we started opening up and sharing things about our lives and our troubled relationships. Real enough that feelings began to develop, on both sides.

At this point I didn’t talk to anyone about what was happening. How could I? What could be said? Hey, I know I’m married, and he’s married, but I have these feelings about this guy who lives ohhh, 4000 miles away, but you totally understand, right??

The whole thing seemed impossibly insane until he arranged an opportunity for us to meet in Chicago for a blogging conference. We would go to host a party and provide blogging coverage of the conference with a company he’d been working with, and in the process, meet and see if what seemed so real online would hold up in the light of day.

On May 1st, 2008 I boarded the plane for Chicago.

When the plane touched down, I kept flashing between excitement and nausea. Months of talking over text, voice, and video chat had left few stones unturned as far as getting to know each other, but I was still horribly nervous, because for the first time we would be seeing each other in person. We both said we were going in without expectations, but that did little to help my nerves. This wasn’t some random hookup; neither of us would have been willing to do something like that. We went to Chicago to meet and find out if our love for each other was real, and worth acting on.

I wish I could even begin to recapture that weekend in words. When we got back to the hotel, before anything happened between us, we stood for a moment and held each other. He has told me many times since then that that was the exact moment he knew that what we had was not something he could ever walk away from, and that he’d go to the ends of the earth to be with me. The rest of the weekend was a blur of conference activities, the high of being together, and those pangs of nervousness I would get calling home. The last night in Chicago we talked a lot about the future, and how we knew it would be awhile before we would be together, but we would make it work.

One year later we are doing just that. It’s been a very rocky road, both with our divorces and the problems of maintaining a long-distance relationship, but we are doing it. We believe in each other, and what we have together, and that is what gets us through.

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Sara is a blogger, a mother, and social media slut with a passion for high heels and imported chocolate. She can be found writing on her personal site, Suburban Oblivion, wasting time on Twitter, or propping her stilettos up on the desk as an editor of the up-and-coming humor site, Daily Shite.