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How other people met their partners (Dating)

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Apr 04, 2018
7 min read

Background

  • Again, I was never taught how to do this so I have to learn everything from the internet (sad)

Summary of locations

  • Bar
  • Drugstore
  • School
    • Class
    • Just walking around, then via Facebook (Example)
  • Gym / personal trainer

Summary of methods

  • Ask the person to help you with something, talk for a bit, then ask for their number.
  • Try to wiggle your way into working on a project with the other person.
  • Walk up and introduce yourself
    • Jeff Goldblum / Emilie Livingston (Source)
  • Mutual acquaintance
    • A personal trainer
      • Bruce Willis / Emma Hemming (Source)

Mutual acquaintance / Friend of a friend

List of references to how people met each other

  • My dad met my mom when she was a teller at the bank he went to.
  • IIRC, Sara met Mark when they were both at a bar and he pointed out she still had the sticker on her jeans (or something like that).
  • 2015.01.26 - VICE - I Slept with My High School Teacher, and It Sucked

    • At the end of the school year, our teacher—whom I'll just refer to as Mrs. X from here on—gave us handwritten cards. Each, I assume, contained a heartfelt message of appreciation and well-wishing, as mine did. Mine also contained her personal contact information.

      "If you ever want to grab a coffee over the summer and discuss what you've been reading, email me."

      This could've been an innocuous gesture [NW: Lesson: Reaching out in an ambiguous / deniable way is a good way to start], sure, but I couldn't afford to risk missing out on the off chance that it wasn't. And since you're reading this, you already know that my instincts were right.

      Eventually, I mustered the courage to send her an email in late June. It was filled with the usual pleasantries: How's your summer going? Any trips planned? Whatcha been reading? With that out of the way, I suggested we grab a coffee at a local bookstore, strategically located in a neighboring town outside our school district. Even if this was to pan out as a completely platonic rendezvous, we both knew it'd look suspect to be seen fraternizing outside of the halls of education. She emailed me back immediately: "I'd love to. Why don't we meet up next week?"
      (...)

      I nervously approached the bookstore that next week, trying my best to appear the sophisticated adult I was not. Fortunately, she'd apparently forgotten about or abandoned this facade as well and once we'd purchased our coffees and said our hellos, we started roaming the bookstore commenting on titles, recommending things to each other. It certainly wasn't flirty, but it was a warmer, more relaxed version of the Mrs. X I'd known from class.

      We roamed the store for about an hour, chatting about whatever was on the shelf in front of us. Eventually we had to go, but not before she made a suggestion.

      "Hey, why don't we swap numbers so we can continue this conversation?"

      And that's when I knew for sure where this was headed.

      I spent the next week playing the usual flirty games one does when getting a new crush's number. I wasn't sure that the tactics I'd used on my teenage conquests would work on Mrs. X, but eventually, she started asking about my love life. How old was the oldest woman I'd been with? Not that old, I told her, but I was certainly curious in exploring older.

      "Oh? So you're looking for a Mrs. Robinson?"

      It was now or never. "Are we gonna fucking do this?" I texted.

      "Do you want to?"

      I told her that my family was on vacation the next week and I'd have the house to myself. She agreed to come over.

    • This article is obviously not the greatest thing to be copying, but it's actually one of the most-detailed accounts I've seen of how two people met.
  • 2015.01.28 - VICE - I Slept with My School Teacher, and It Was Great—but the Aftermath Was Terrible

    • He was unlike anyone I'd ever met before. He wore Armani suits and quoted poetry. I was totally and utterly smitten from the very beginning. I changed subjects after a term of A-levels just so I could be in his class.

      While I was still at school, our relationship got into weird territory. It started out with him lending me modern American novels and foreign movies. (...) After this fairly innocuous start came the mixtapes, with handwritten cassette covers. This was my introduction to the Jesus and Mary Chain, Jane's Addiction, and Bowie. It wasn't just me he made them for. There was a select group of us, his little fans. We felt very special. I wonder now why other teachers weren't more concerned. He was in his mid 20s and had a long-term girlfriend, so maybe they thought they had no reason to be worried.

      Back then I used to write poetry. I'd even won some competitions and everything. Somehow, I came to read him one and he told me that "to write poetry as a teenager that is not teenage poetry, is a gift" and my heart melted inside of me, infusing through me like syrup through a sponge pudding. Now I cringe—how desperate I was to be loved, how easily he manipulated me.

      He became my editor. We would sit in a small room at the school and go through my poems. (...)

      I never confessed to him how much I loved him. I never even really flirted with him in an explicit way. I did, and still do, see showing someone that you like them as a sign of great weakness. But I remember us bickering like a couple, sometimes having full-blown fights where one of us would storm out. That's not a normal teacher-pupil relationship. Despite my stiff upper lip, he knew I was head over heels for him. Of course he did.

      When I left school we kept in touch. That wasn't that odd at my school. A few of my friends stayed in touch with various teachers. Then, of course, I so desperately wanted it to be out of the ordinary, but it wasn't. I met up with him a few times for some dinner or a coffee, but he didn't cross the line.

      During the Christmas holidays after my first term at university, he called me and asked me to come and meet him in the pub that evening. I hurriedly showered and shaved my legs. For someone so lacking in sexual experience, I was very optimistic. I set off to meet him. I was excited. I was nervous. I had an unsettling sense of foreboding. He had recently split up with his girlfriend and was already in the pub— a Wetherspoons—when he called. Somewhere in my naive, fantasy-riddled teenage brain I sort of knew that this wasn't going to end well. Nobody makes their best decisions in a Wetherspoons.

      When I arrived, he was drunk. He said that he had something to tell me, but he couldn't until I was as drunk as he was. He went to the bar and came back with four double tequilas. I sipped the tequila tentatively, and promised him I wouldn't tell anyone what he told me. As he edged toward me, I edged away, unwilling to discard either my coat or my sobriety. Eventually, he gave me snapshots of what had happened. After his recent break-up, something had occurred with another ex-student. (...)

      Then he kissed me. By this point I was drunk, and even though I'd yearned for this very thing for such a long time, I was still aware enough to be embarrassed that I was kissing my teacher in a brightly lit Wetherspoons.

      We got a taxi back to his. (...) We got into bed, and it was the first time in my life that I ever really enjoyed a sexual experience. I suddenly understood what the fuss was about. Teenage boys were never really my thing.

    • This article is obviously not the greatest thing to be copying, but it's actually one of the most-detailed accounts I've seen of how two people met.
  • 2015.11.29 - NYT - Ex-Wife Says Robert Dear, Suspect in Colorado Rampage, Showed Few Signs of Obsession
    • She recalled a big man, well-groomed, gentle and pleasant, but not much for chitchat. They met around 1984, in a Charleston drugstore. He approached her and asked her to help him pick out a shade of makeup for his sister. Then he asked for her number and it went from there.
  • 2016.10.31 - WashPo - He’s not my boyfriend. He’s not my partner. What do I call my guy?

    • In 2012, I passed Cory in the narrow hallway of our tiny graduate school building. He later told me: “I remember thinking, ‘Who is that girl?’ ”
      He’d have to wait three years to find out. By then, we had both graduated. I was adrift after moving to Seattle from New York. I had no full-time job and was living with my father. About eight months into my stay, Cory reached out to me over Facebook messenger; I had posted a video he found intriguing. For the next month, we Skyped, G-chatted and messaged our way into a romance.
      After I sent him a tipsy marriage proposal via text, we decided to meet in person. I flew to New Jersey, where he’s from, and stayed with him for a week. He called it the longest first date in history. A short time later, I moved in with him permanently.

Misc ideas

  • I should use the samples of sentences that explain how people met each other and use it to train a program that will search through blog posts / newspaper stories / etc. for similar sentences. Google these days is just not effective for doing this kind of thing.

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