How I met Miss Julie (A Valentine’s Day tale)

“You know,” I said to Miss Julie, on the night before I met her for the very first time, “tomorrow could actually bring the end of a beautiful friendship.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning of the story.

Miss Julie and I had decided to try eHarmony back in the summer of 2003. Both of us had been divorced for a while and neither of us was happy with who we were meeting locally. A friend of hers suggested she try this new Internet dating service. I had heard a radio ad with Dr. Warren in it. I liked that it was more than a classified ad. You started with a complex personal profile and then they did the actual work of finding matches for you.

So I spent some time answering the questions in the profile, and before long I was getting emails telling me they had found matches. I responded and began corresponding with several people.

Early on, eHarmony matched me with Miss Julie. So I sent her the same handful of multiple choice questions that I sent to everyone, just to see if she’d make the first cut.

“Tell me about your sense of humor.” There are several graduated responses to choose from, and Miss Julie chose the best one:

“I crack myself up,” she said. I loved that!

So I sent her the next batch of questions which were fill-in-the-blank. In the meantime, she was sending me her questions as well. This went on for a few days. I was intrigued and involved.

Then one morning, I sat down and opened my email box. Julie had sent me her newest set of essay questions. I read the first one:

“Describe your spirituality.”

Wow. How can I do that? It’s so complicated. I was born and raised in one religion, but quite a while ago I had adopted another one. What if she thinks that’s a turn-off? How much room do I have to answer? Best to be honest. But what to say? I wrote a response and then deleted it. I wrote another one and fussed over it. I struggled to describe the big picture. Is there a God? If so, why do bad things happen to good people? Do you have to be born again while you’re alive? Or will you be born again after you die? Is there a heaven? Do you have to sing all the time? Are you allowed to change the tune once in a while? Is God so all-powerful that he can make a rock big enough that He, Himself, can’t move it? When the Egyptians chased the Israelites across the Red Sea, did God really have to kill their horses, too? Wasn’t that, you know, a bit much?

I wrote and re-wrote my response. I polished it. Then I threw it away and started over. I agonized over every word. I want her to like me, but on the other hand I wanted to be completely honest. Finally I was done. I had a cup of coffee. Then I thought about it some more. I deleted the file and started over again, tweaking it along the way. I slept on it.

The next morning, I read it again. It was good to go. I copied and pasted it into the eHarmony form and, as my heart turned over in my chest, I clicked the submit button.

Less than an hour later, she’d sent her response. I relived the moment of my birth (and everything that followed it) in the split second before I clicked open the message.

“I loved your essay,” she said.

Yea!

“But you know,” she continued, “most people would have just said, ‘Episcopalian’ and left it at that.”

Hee. I knew then I loved her and that I wanted to live the rest of my life with her.

But first I had to actually meet her.

Not long after that, we arranged to talk on the phone. The first night, July 1, 2003, we started a conversation that, as it turned out, has lasted for nearly two years and hasn’t stopped yet.

But here’s the thing: at that point, we hadn’t actually met. Furthermore, the logistics of our first meeting were going to be complicated. For starters, eight states and 1300 miles separated us, so it wasn’t like I was going to pick her up and go have a drink. Nor was it feasible to meet somewhere in the middle because that would have a state where, you know, neither one of us had actually been before. Julie volunteered to come to meet me which was relief on so many levels. But now came the really difficult question: After having spent over 100 hours on the telephone over the course of a month, what if we met and weren’t attracted to each other?

“You know,” I said to Miss Julie, on the night before I met her for the very first time, “tomorrow could actually bring the end of a beautiful friendship.”

Of course, in the end, it worked out fine. We continued our previous night’s phone conversation, this time in person and it was like we had known each other for at least 100 years. We got married less than a year later.

And when people ask how we met, I say we met at the airport and we both laugh. It’s less complicated. But the truth is, we owe it to eHarmony.

P.S. Miss Julie adds this: “I picked my first husband. eHarmony picked my second one. eHarmony did a better job.”