How I Met My Wife

Never in a million years, no no. Never in a Billion years could I have ever imagined that I would be married to an older Canadian woman with 2 teenage kids, let alone living in Vancouver and being vegetarian.

Sometime early in 2004 I discovered that there were online dating sites on the internet. I was totally unfamiliar with the whole concept and for amusement clicked on a site catering towards Asians. Out of curiosity I browsed the site and there was a token white girl in all the profiles. So I dropped her an email. She got back to me with a really nice reply, but she lived in Vancouver, Canada and had 2 kids.

Now I didn’t know anything about Canada other than hockey and Southpark. I didn’t even know where Vancouver was! And, she had 2 kids, (11 and 13 years old). Enough said! So after reading the email my mind did a quick and easy calculation: another country + Two teenage kids = No Brainer! Umm yeah, nice to meet you though.

Now I’ve only heard horror stories of online dating so I didn’t put any energy into it and viewed it only as some entertainment. I soon forgot about the entire incident.

2 or 3 months later, while  I was cleaning up and deleting old emails, I found the email she sent me. For some reason I decided to send a reply, something on the lines of, “Don’t know if you remember me but just wanted to say Hi.”

She actually emailed me back a few minutes later saying that she was online. She asked me if I had yahoo messenger or something, which I didn’t. She said it only took a minute to download, so I did. Moments later we were chatting. We chatted for 5 hours!

So that night my mind was spinning. She gave me her number but I was a bit hesitant to call her. Despite the great chat we had, I couldn’t help my mind from all it’s skepticism. All kinds of questions and scenarios played out in my head; “Who is this woman?, How come she’s dating online? What am I thinking!?”

The next day I called her to put a voice to the name. There was no longer any skepticism in my mind in regards to her personality and character. She was the most genuine person I’ve ever connected with at such a deep level. That day we spoke on the phone for 8 hours!

We spoke every single day. My phone bills for just those first 2 or 3 weeks was over $2500! Stupid me. (I thankfully negotiated myself out of the entire bill!) I didn’t realize that my nationwide calling plan was umm nationwide only. Oh yeah… Canada really is a whole other country!

The next week I flew out to see her. I had to find out if this was for real and didn’t want to waste time chasing a fantasy. Even though it was our first time physically meeting it was the most natural encounter, as if we’ve known each other for years. Both of us just “knew” it was right.

Fast forward to present day. We’ve been happily together for 6 years and have overcome great obstacles as well as gone through incredible life adventures. We’ve actually themed our relationship “Always an Adventure!”