Meeting My Soulmate

POF is your average dating website. You get creeps, users, abusers, free food, mostly disappointing sex, and sometimes—just sometimes—a romantic story that results in actual marriage. Well, this is my story about the first time I met my fiancé.

I was dating this much older guy — I was 21, he was 33. We somehow just clicked. He told me he loved me. Of course I fell for it. When he couldn't commit, I decided to get away from him and my hometown. By that point I had sworn completely off men and romance.

I quit my previous job of cleaning hotel rooms, took the $200 from my last paycheque and drove the next day to my next adventure. I had found a caregiving job about ten hours away from my hometown. Seemed perfect to me and for me — that is, until I found out the guy I would be taking care of was an active meth addict with an angry roommate. Honestly, I thought I could manage that and get by until I had enough money to get a better job and my own place. But I felt for the man I was taking care of. He was almost 60, in a wheelchair, and when he was high, he was actually a very nice and generous man. Due to my self respect and ambitions in life, I still tried to make it work, besides everything else working against me.

I was there for about a month. All three of us (Me, Wheelchair, and Roommate) had a pretty good routine going for us. We basically all contributed; I'd take wheelchair to his doctors' appointments, out to get food, showers on Tuesdays and Thursday, house cleaning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Roommate would make dinner every night, or suggest a game night together. Things went decently good for a while.

The more I got comfortable in my situation, the more I started to venture out on my own. Trying to find friends in a new town, visit with strangers and Wheelchair's family. I decided to start up my POF account again just to find friends, as I wasn't interested in the romance side of things just yet.

I was probably on POF for not more than a week when I started talking to— let's just call him Ryan. At first, Ryan was your run-of-the-mill guy on POF just wanting to talk to a willing woman. At first I didn't find anything overly exciting about Ryan except for the fact he had a job, and a good one at that. It piqued my interest a little bit, so I continued to talk to him.

For the next week, I would run out to my truck to speak privately to him. Fuck, we would talk about EVERYTHING and ANYTHING. Just hearing his voice was enough to see that my job and situation was worth it. We hadn't even met and I was so curious and mystified about him.

My job and home life (I lived with the man I was taking care of) was getting more and more hostile. Wheelchair hit me and swore at me on more than several occasions and Roommate didn't trust me, so he'd yell at me too. It got a lot worse when they ran out of meth and were coming down. So I found any excuse to leave the house.

I remember telling Ryan everything that was happening. I was embarrassed that I didn't exactly have a career and I was trying to make this horrible job situation work. I needed it to work. The next week of me bitching and complaining and a couple breakdowns later, Ryan asked me on a date. I hadn't gotten paid yet, so he said he'd help me with gas. I asked if he drove and he said no he doesn't, and I straight up said, "I don't want no scrub."

Now, I know what you must be thinking... "What a shallow bitch!" I know, I know. I was, believe me. But where I come from, if you don't have a license and don't drive, it's either,

• a) you got a DUI
• b) you owe for child support. OR...
• c) you're epileptic.

I ignored my shallowness due to the fact that he had a good job, his own place, was a great listener, and was hot as fuck. Every chick that's ever experienced POF has their own personal check list. Mine was:

• Full-time job
• Older than 25
• Drives
• Own place
• Not religious
• No kids
• Doesn't sell or do hard drugs
• Tall and nice teeth

Obviously when it comes to love, none of these things matter. And it doesn't matter what checklist you have; once you find love, all bets are off.

Now, the day of the first date, I was sporting a cute, short, long-sleeved dress with flats. Makeup done to the nines, wearing this sexy perfume (Hypnotic Poison). He told me he liked Steam Whistler beer, so I got him a bottle as well as a bottle of crown for the both of us. I drove an hour and a half to pick him up for our date. As I arrived to the place I was supposed to pick him up, I saw HIM. I was excited and, frankly, a bit disappointed. He was shorter and skinnier than I thought he would be. But I went against my shallowness because his style was pretty on point. He hopped into my truck, and he smelled nice— fresh. Then he smiled at me—BOOM—the TEETH.... He's got some over crowding and a tooth sticking up over another one. Shit, shit shit, I'm thinking. He's not tall, he doesn't drive, and he doesn't have the nicest teeth. I'm fucked. What a waste of my time.

I proceeded to drive, gritting my teeth and asking him where I need to go and how to get there. I can tell both of us are nervous; you could cut the tension with a knife, I'm thinking. We endured a solid half hour of small talk like how the weather is, how my drive was. Stupid little shit like that. It drove me insane. I missed the guy I talked to over the phone for hours from the previous week. He knew it wasn't going that great, either. So I meekly asked him, "Where do I go from here?" I was still driving through the city. He said "Take this left." I ended up switching about two lanes, trying not to cut people off, swearing a little bit, and when I finally made the turn, he quietly says, "No...your OTHER left."

I was MORTIFIED! Then we both start laughing. He's making fun of me. And just like that, we got back into the swing of things. Joking and laughing and talking like we usually did over the phone. We had an AMAZING supper together—he paid, let me get what I wanted. He was a bit of a badass as well. We each took a couple shots of the Crown Royal before we went in to the pub and I gave him his beer and he loved it. My dress was so short that he walked behind me into the restaurant so I wouldn't be self conscious. And after a couple hours of flirting and getting to know each other, we paid the bill and left. I drove him back to his place. He leaned over, fingered me hard in front of his house, kissed me, and left.

After the first date, there was no staying away from each other. I ended up quitting my abusive job and situation and moved in with Ryan about a week into dating him, and now we are getting married this year (2018).

It's crazy where life can take you. And don't judge a book by his cover. If I had blown him off, I wouldn't be on top of the world right now, following my dreams with this amazing man!