How did you know you’d met ‘the one’?

[JaneTheo]

Earlier today some friends and I were discussing the moment you realised that you were in love with someone and that they were the person you wanted to be with forever/marry. Some said it was more of a slow process of falling in love and realising it gradually. In my experience, it hit me like a train - after about 6 months we were on holiday in Rome, stood on the Spanish Steps at sunset and I just looked at him and realised - my exact thought was ‘oh crap I love you!’

I always find it really interesting when people say they knew they were going to marry someone as soon as they met - is that the case for anyone?

I am marrying my DP in October after years with someone who was not really right for me. I had resigned myself to never being properly in love and not understanding what people meant when they sang or wrote about it. Then I met someone who loves me for me, who looks at me as though I am amazing and who tells me that he can’t believe his luck in finding me. He is my best friend, holding him makes me feel as though I am beyond blessed, his children and mine are wonderful together and I come home every day feeling like I can’t wait to see him. I knew the first time I saw him that I should be with him, it just made sense somehow.

I don’t believe there’s only one ‘the one’ or that the person who you feel that instant attraction to is necessarily the person you need even if they’re what you want. I think when it works out that way, I think that’s lucky and it reinforces that the initial feelings were right, but probably just as often those feelings aren’t validated and it turns out the relationship wasn’t right.

When I first met DP 7 years ago it felt like I’d known him forever. I’m quite shy and had lost a lot of confidence when I was with XH, but I found talking to DP easy and natural. I found him physically irresistible and he felt the same.

We both fell pretty hard pretty fast, but it turned out he could be a bit of a cock sometimes!! It felt so right but actually he wasn’t good for me and I wasn’t what he really wanted either.

Over the years he’s grown up and changed a lot and our dynamic has shifted so that he has become the man I needed, but if he hadn’t chosen to work on these things, he wouldn’t be my soulmate, just a guy I once had very strong feelings for.

So while we can now say that we want to be together forever and that we are both what the other wants and needs, that wasn’t always the case. I feel like the people we are now are meant to be together but the people we were when we met, not so much!!

catergory12 thanks for posting the Tim Minchin video, its fab, and quite accurate!

I knew he was "the one" when after 2 months of dating, I suddenly and unexpectedly had to put my beloved dog down. I told him that morning, not wanting to ruin his evening (we don't live together yet), and he promptly took the day off work and came over. We sat on the floor of the vet's office, all 3 of us, with my dog laying on both of our laps, and he cried with me as we both said our goodbyes.

He then refused to take me home, and instead we went for a hike while I replayed every memory I had of my dog while he held my hand.

8 months later, and we're ring shopping.

I have just read this thread from top to bottom - made me go give my dh a hug! I had gone abroad for a gap year when I was 21 and was very lonely and struggling to find a social network. I went to a bar one night and at 2am heard an accent from home. I turned and saw the most gorgeous man I had ever seen. (Totally out of character for me) I went to stay at his place a few hours later and to my eternal shame (and now a family joke) told him I loved him that night. It turned out were so different. We were from two sides of a very divided country, he left school at 16 without qualifications while I stayed in education until I was 24. He is an introvert and I am outgoing. But he is the kindest and most decent human being I know. We are now 23 years down the line with 3 dc. We have been through illness, death and on the brink of bankruptcy but his kindness and level headedness have seen us through. I don't believe in the one, I think it is all about timing. We would never have met on home ground, but if we had I think our differences would have been too stark from the off - I would have been influenced by culture, religion, friends and family not to pursue the relationship. It is ironic that by meeting abroad we were weirdly united by our sameness. By the time we flew home a year later nobody could have come between us. I love his bones. It was definitely a lustful beginning but that attraction has amazingly lasted. Family and friends hold us up as being a "perfect couple", which I hate as we are far from perfect. I think our personalities complement each other - that is all. My only advice to our children when they are choosing a partner is to prioritise kindness. If you are good to your partner that sees you through thick and thin. And we have had a sh#tload of both!