"I met my husband in the most romantic way possible," I always say. Then I pause for effect before delivering the punchline: "On the internet, twenty six years ago."
Back then, not everyone was online, but I was, curating a community for my job, and, apparently, for my future. He was just an avatar in a group I moderated, where the golden rule was: No caps lock, we don’t yell here. I must have typed that a hundred times a day. You know the Internet Etiquette, so please act on it.
And then he appeared.
“Hey, does anyone here know how to take care of a fish?”
I stared at the message. It was so off-topic that I actually smiled.
I sent him a private message. What kind of fish?
That was our first conversation. And from there, we became best friends faster than a bad Tinder date ends.
We talked about everything, our marriages, the evolution of IT, our shared love for photography. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he joked one day, attaching a picture of himself holding a wooden pole in a cement hole.
image prompted by my own promt on midJourney
I laughed. Is this you ‘building’ a house?
“Supervising. Very important job.”
Looks like you paid people to build it while you played construction model.
“Hey! That’s hard work!”
But I knew how much that house meant to him. He had worked around the clock for it, and even if I teased him, I was proud.
When he found out he was going to be a dad, I was one of the first to know. And when I found out I was expecting twins, I called him.
He picked up immediately. “No way.”
“Way.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yep.”
He had a son on Christmas Eve. I remember how happy he sounded. But later, when he told me he had gone to eat alone after leaving the hospital, I could hear something else in his voice—sadness he never fully explained.
And then, life did what it does.
One of my babies passed away at five months. My pregnancy turned into a nightmare. When I went into labor, it lasted three days.
“They said he’s gone,” I whispered into the phone.
He didn’t say anything right away, just breathed. “I’m so sorry,” he finally said.
I don’t remember much after that—just that I needed an emergency C-section to survive. I was reanimated twice. When I woke up, the room was empty. My husband was gone.
Then my aunt came in, tears in her eyes. “He’s alive,” she whispered. “Your son is alive.”
And can you guess who I called in tears? Of course I called him.
When our babies wouldn’t sleep, we called.
When my marriage crumbled, we called.
When my ex, in a moment I will never forgive, hit our baby, I called.
That call led me to a shelter. It took a year to rebuild. I got a job teaching Dutch to refugees, people who had fled warzones, trying to start over. I loved it.
One day, my boss said, “We need an IT guy.”
I smiled. I know one.
Turns out, his wife needed the money. After some time I knew why he always had a sense of sadness around him. His marriage wasn't so ideal like he told everybody. So I called him.
And for the first time in years, we met.
“Wow,” he said when he saw me.
I smirked. “Disappointed?”
“Terrified,” he said. “You’re even sweeter in real life.”
Dangerous realization.
Months passed. One night, he called me.
“She told me to leave,” he said, voice hollow. “Said it’s not working.”
“Come over,” I said.
He did. We talked for hours. He stayed with his mom. But the lines between friendship and something else started to blur.
Then came that night.
The one where he stayed.
If people ask how I met my husband, I tell them the truth.
“Oh, he was a one-night stand that never left.”
And thank God for that. Because I was terrified of losing my best friend.
Instead, I married him.
Best call I ever made.