How We Met

Like many love stories these days, it all started online. But unlike most love stories, this one was half a lifetime in the making. It took over fifteen years and an over 2,500 mile journey.

We first met on an online role-playing game, Guild Wars. Through friends of friends in our guild alliance, we connected over our shared love of the game, and other nerdy pop culture things, namely Harry Potter and anime. Through our shared interests, we became fast friends, and spent many, countless days in-game, adventuring across Tyria together. Days turned months, months into years, and before we knew it, we'd become young adults, leaving our teenage years behind us.

And, naturally, upon entering into adulthood, we faced many more adult, real-world responsibilities and far less time for games. Worse, yet, far less time to talk and hang out with each other. As what often happens at this point in life, we gradually fell out of touch and went on our separate ways.

But not for long.

After a year and a half without talking, and the onset of a global pandemic leaving us stuck at home far more than we were used to, we certainly had a lot more free time on our hands. And on a whim, we reconnected. Only...things were quite a bit different than they were before. The friendship we had forged all those years ago had grown and changed, just as we had, and, in a twist neither one of us had expected, it had become something more. Something we were both terrified and excited to explore and see where it could go, if only we had the courage to move forward and seize the opportunity that laid before us.

After over fifteen years of friendship and a 2,500+ mile flight later, we finally met in person. It was the true start of the next stage of our relationship--the only aspect which had yet to be explored. And somehow, it all seemed so natural. There was no shyness or awkwardness, or the ever-typical "getting to know you" part. We were the same people we had known all along, just older, wiser, and more mature. It wasn't hard at all to envision our future together. Everything just seemed to fall into place, and the path ahead of us was laid out so clearly. There was no sense in pretending we didn't see where things were going.

As we start on this next chapter of our lives together, we're both grateful that we have one another at our side.