Let's hear some stories from the thready-verse about how you guys met your significant other.
For me it was during the first year of COVID, my company asked who from Europe (I was living in Sweden) wanted to go for a three month business trip to coach a big Korean automotive supplier on how to do modern software development. Most of the other people had families and especially during COVID nobody wanted to travel. I said I could do it, even though I never coached before. But because nobody else volunteered they sent me and and another guy who also was single without a family, etc.
I was convinced that the other guy would have good game with the women here, and thought that there is no harm in installing some international dating app and to try my own luck. During COVID I just lost a ton of weight and found new confidence and it was far away from home and what happens in Korea stays in Korea and so on :D
Anyway, to my surprise during the first two weeks I got some matches and I hit it off with one of them. We met and started dating and very quickly fell for each other. Then when the 3 months were over, I asked the company if the customer would still have some use for my skills and they said yes and send me for 3 more months. I had to go back to Sweden to get a new Visa and spent another 2 weeks in quarantine (as the first time). But then the second tree months were over too and I asked again for more. By that time I was really sick of all the time in quarantine and asked if they could move me from the Swedish office to the Korean office and they agreed.
I went back to Sweden, threw away most of my stuff and put the most valuable things up on a friends attic and moved to Korea with one suitcase. I stayed at AirBnB's for two more months and then we found an apartment and moved in together.
She has a daughter from a previous marriage and we now have a 1.5 year old son together and we still live in Korea :D
I've been happily married for six years, and we met on a dating app. (OKCupid.)
It was my first time using such a thing, I was in my late 30s and mildly curious about those apps the Kids These Days seem to like. I installed one and was basically daring the silly thing to work. I figured if I was going to try that sort of thing, I was going to do it in a very practical way. I made sure everything about me I thought might be a red flag for someone out there was featured prominently in my profile:
In addition to filling the hell out of my profile with all this, I had a lot of fun with the app's survey questions and generally gave really involved answers.
My attitude on the app was one of blatant honesty. I'd heard so many horror stories about people meeting on dating apps and the person turning out to be nothing like their profile, look nothing like their photo, etc. to the point of false advertising, and I really failed to understand the logic behind that; why lie to someone from the start, as if they won't actually realize you lied to them when they meet you?
Another important factor for me was that when I got on the app I was just getting back into dating, having recently taken a long time to work on myself and recover from a toxic and abusive relationship. Among other crappy things, my former abuser had spent the duration of our time together disapproving of and trying to force me to change fundamental things about myself in ways that caused me a lot of long-term harm and I was not interested in going through that sort of thing again. I'd rather someone who doesn't like thing X about me would see that thing on my profile right up front and so choose not engage with me to begin with, rather than have them get interested but find out that deal-breaker thing about me later and be disappointed. I came at it from the angle of saying "hey, I'm here, this is what I'm like, and here's a bunch of stuff about me you might not like." I wasn't necessarily trying to warn people off, but I wanted to see if anyone out there would see all those things about me and still potentially like me.
Long story long, it worked. I got messaged by someone who saw my profile and liked it, I liked hers, and we really clicked from the start. (Our first date was meant to be a quick cup of tea at a cafe, and ended up being many hours of walking and talking around town.) We totally fell for one another, dated, moved in together, got married, and six years later are still ridiculously happy. She is literally my favorite person in the entire world. Her weird and my weird mesh together so perfectly, and our relationship has always been based on complete honesty and open communication and sharing. We've seen and supported each other through the highest highs, lowest lows, and everything in between. It's the healthiest, happiest, and closest romance, friendship, and personal relationship of any kind I've ever had, and every day we spend together is better than the last. Among a lot of people who know us we're that obnoxiously-cute couple. We even have podcasts and other creative projects together nowadays, it's so goddamn gross. ๐ฅฐ
Met my wife on OkCupid we have been together over 10 years now. I messaged her because she loved Dragons and claimed to be a Supernatural fan. Of course years later she thought it was an okay show while I was a super fan. But we hit off both loving to write and reat is history.
These stupid apps don't work for people like me.