Everyday Love- My Own Story

Paul was an Irish technology blogger living in Denmark, and had it not been for the most random reading by one of his friends, our paths likely never would have crossed. We clashed over the topic of an online contest, and then we coolly went our separate ways, or so I thought. He came back to my blog a few weeks later, and I returned the visit a couple weeks after that. In the age of Google Reader it seems odd to bookmark a blog and only visit every few weeks, but that’s what we did from June till November of 2007.

Somewhere around the very beginning of December, Paul started livecasting video on Ustream. He sent the link out over Twitter, and with nothing else going on that afternoon, I logged in to check it out. I had seen him on his vidcasts on his own site, but getting to see him live and chat with him was a different experience. This most casual of online acquaintances became very real. Real enough that we began to chat online.  Real enough that we started opening up and sharing things about our lives and our troubled relationships. Real enough that feelings began to develop, on both sides.

At this point I didn’t talk to anyone about what was happening. How could I? What could be said? Hey, I know I’m married, and he’s married, but I have these feelings about this guy who lives ohhh, 4000 miles away, but you totally understand, right??

The whole thing seemed impossibly insane until he arranged an opportunity for us to meet in Chicago for a blogging conference. We would go to host a party and provide blogging coverage of the conference with a company he’d been working with, and in the process, meet and see if what seemed so real online would hold up in the light of day.

On May 1st, 2008 I boarded the plane for Chicago.

When the plane touched down, I kept flashing between excitement and nausea. Months of talking over text, voice, and video chat had left few stones unturned as far as getting to know each other, but I was still horribly nervous, because for the first time we would be seeing each other in person. We both said we were going in without expectations, but that did little to help my nerves. This wasn’t some random hookup; neither of us would have been willing to do something like that. We went to Chicago to meet and find out if our love for each other was real, and worth acting on.

I wish I could even begin to recapture that weekend in words. When we got back to the hotel, before anything happened between us, we stood for a moment and held each other. He has told me many times since then that that was the exact moment he knew that what we had was not something he could ever walk away from, and that he’d go to the ends of the earth to be with me. The rest of the weekend was a blur of conference activities, the high of being together, and those pangs of nervousness I would get calling home. The last night in Chicago we talked a lot about the future, and how we knew it would be awhile before we would be together, but we would make it work.

One year later we are doing just that. It’s been a very rocky road, both with our divorces and the problems of maintaining a long-distance relationship, but we are doing it. We believe in each other, and what we have together, and that is what gets us through.

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Sara is a blogger, a mother, and social media slut with a passion for high heels and imported chocolate. She can be found writing on her personal site, Suburban Oblivion, wasting time on Twitter, or propping her stilettos up on the desk as an editor of the up-and-coming humor site, Daily Shite.