When you were courting, was there one moment that stands out in your mind where you learned the most about your future spouse?

Eye contact was a killer for me. wife and i noticed each other at the same time. wife was a model of Bobbie Brooks Clothes and i was in advertising. going to lunch one day, i noticed her as i was riding down an elevator in her store. it was like a bolt of lightning that connected us together. i immediately did a reversal and ran up the up elevator. it was like she was just waiting for me to return. later, she finally admitted this. one look is all it took and we both were hooked….........on each other. been that way for 44 years now and magic is still there.

One moment? Well, we had been dating for four weeks when his birthday came along. I bought him a gift. Not many days later he presented me with a birthday gift, because he felt bad that my birthday had been just before we started dating; he did not feel like it was fair.

I have two others, but if I had to pick one, that is the one I pick.

We had been going out a few months. One night he called late and I was feeling down. He borrowed a friend’s motorcycle and rode 75 miles in the pouring rain to come and see me. Needless to say, he got strokes for that!

Ahh now that would be revealing a little too much for me.Suffice to say it was an hitherto unprecedented epoch making moment,no turning back, which was nice.

I was a child. I was 14, and you know that guy in movies, that moves the girl to the core of her existence? Well, that was him. I never dreamed someone like him would love me. Deep in my core, I didn’t believe it.

I was made fun of and ridiculed constantly by my peers, for what I looked like. I was teased mercilessly, and made to believe that I was hideous.

At that tender age, I thought he liked me, because of the illusion of my clothes, or how did my hair, or my make up. I was afraid for him to see me when my hair was curly, without eyeliner on and in “frumpy” clothing.

I thought he would laugh at me and walk away.

He didn’t.

He showed up at my doorstep when I was in my pajamas, hair curly, not a stitch of makeup on my young face. I was petrified. I told him that I didn’t want him to see me. He said he didn’t care what I looked like. I didn’t believe him at all. There was a door between us, and the porch light was off.

He told me that he missed me and that he just wanted to hold me in his arms. I wanted to feel his arms around me, but I didn’t want him to see me. I had to figure out which one I wanted more.

I stepped out onto the porch with the light still off. Standing a distance away, I could see the outline of his beautiful face and what happened next was like a force of nature. Like gravity itself.

I turned on the light.

There I was in my blue robe and slippers, frizzy hair, natural as the day I was born. I anticipated with every fiber of my being the look of disappointment on his face.

But what I saw changed who I was forever.

He had the expression of a prisoner of a hundred years, that had just been set free, that had never seen the sunlight, and I was the sun that was shining on his face.

He looked at me. He saw me. And he loved me. He held me in his arms, and kissed my face over and over.

I knew in that moment, that what we felt was higher, wider and more vast than earth itself. Than the entire universe really. That was 22 years ago.

(@john65pennington That is so wonderful!)

MrsDuf, you almost made me cry. if only kids today could feel that magic, right?

@john65pennington Yep. Love like that is as rare. ;)

Yes, and if I payed attention. I would have saved 15 years of my life.

When her parents came home early & caught us almost in the act but me naked running across the landing!! She jumped in front of her Dad to stop him from beating the crap out of me & held him back while I made good my escape!!
That’s when I knew she was the girl for me ;-)
still it was good while it lasted!! :-/

We discovered that we were both Edgar Rice Burroughs fans. Meg started calling me “my chieftain”. She was “my princess”. A pair of sci-fi geeks we were. Our first Christmas, she bought me one of those monstrous two-handed “Conan the Barbarian” swords and I bought her an engraved inlaid Walther PPKS (the .380 was the hottest round she could fire without flinching).

Most of my family criticized her, out of pure snobbery. My mother talked to her for ten minutes, then told me “she’s the one for you”.

We had been engaged for a month and a half, and he was up north for a drill weekend. I had to chaperone prom, and was wearing the most uncomfortable pair of sandals I’d ever owned. I ran to the store to buy a pair of nylons, and I took off the ring to put them on in the bathroom of the store. I put on my hose, went out to my car, got half-way out of the parking lot, and I realized my ring was gone. I pulled into a space and ran back in, but by the time I got there, someone had swiped the ring. I called my fiance in tears, convinced that he would be furious. He was staying with my parents that weekend, and was in the room with them when I called. He listened to me bawl, and all he said was, “It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.” He never complained, even while paying off the stolen ring for another six months. That’s the moment when I knew that I was making the right choice.

Incidentally, my mom also cites that moment as the one she knew he was the right guy for me.

For me, it had to do with how he was with my daughter. I was a single parent and really wanted to know that someone could be a positive role model for her – not just try to buy her love. She had already gone through several of those with her dad, he dated a lot of women and introduced all of them to her. I was more careful.

After they met, (my husband and daughter) they hit it off and things were good. I knew that he could be the one when she did something that he really didn’t approve of, and he let her know. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scold. He explained why it wasn’t okay and let her know that he was disappointed in the choice she had made; however, he told her that it was a mistake, and we all make mistakes. He then reassured her that his feelings for her hadn’t changed and they went on about their business. Not once did he stop and send her to me, he didn’t make a huge issue out of it and he handled it. He later approached me, kind of nervous thinking he should have asked me first. I told him he did a great job.

I knew he loved her enough not to get away with things just to play nice with her. He understood that it’s not just about being friends.

We’d been dating for a couple months, when I had an agoraphobic episode. I began having such severe panic attacks that I’d get dizzy just by leaving our bedroom. Mental illness seemed quite foreign to him, but he worked with my parents to get me the help I needed. He would take off of work when I’d get extremely anxious. He let me (and still does) set the pace for when we go out..sometimes it can take hours to get to the mall just because I still have panic issues occasionally. He showed me that even with my crazy “quirks” as we call them, that he would stand by me. It made me realize that someone could love me with flaws and all, and it made me love him more.

It’s been very gradual, but the moment that stands out the most is when she said “I’m nuts about you.”

I am strongly smell oriented, so that generally does it for me. Someone’s smell is very reflective about how much I like someone. I have no idea why, but it seems to be something unique to me from my observations

We had been dating for two months, and were getting serious. Then an ex-boyfriend called me, one who I had been in love with, and asked me out. I talked to my hubby, gave him the rundown and told him that I needed to see this guy. My hubby looked at his feet and told me to go.

The whole time I was out with the ex, I couldn’t stop thinking about my hubby and how he wanted me to just be happy (that’s what he had told me). I knew then that my feelings for the ex were over and I never looked back.

When my husband was my boyfriend, he once rode his bike half way across the city of Prague to give me flowers at work during lunch break. He literally had time to burst into the office, gently put the flowers in my hands, deliver a quick kiss and turn around and ride off back to work again. My colleagues all oohed and aahed, but I just stood there like a loon, looking bewildered and embarrassed. It was only after he had gone and things in the staffroom had settled down, that it hit me with a gasp: he loves me and I love him. Amazing.