Dating While Fat: How I Met My Husband.

                                     [picture source]
I never expected to marry. In fact by age 25, my family had written me off as a perpetual spinster. Being an Aspie, shy and fat, I barely had dated. I placed a singles ad, detailing myself as an eccentric artist demanding finally a girlfriend and drug FREE boyfriend. In the ad I admitted I was near 300lbs. [my weight gain had begun around this time]

Using this ad, I dated a Momma's boy architect, a slow security guard, a bi-sexual man who wanted the "experience of being with a large woman", and a laughing gas addict into techno music who at the age of 35 still lived in his parent's basements. There were never any second dates.

Due to all this disappointment, I almost didn't show up on my future husband and I's first date. Expecting disappointment, I talked myself into being polite and showing up at a the Olive Garden where I then lived. It's a good thing I went and didn't let the voice in my head steer me wrong telling me to blow off the date.

He showed up wearing black jeans and leather boots. I was instantly attracted. I had worn a black top with many buttons, a semi-gothic outfit of mine with a black skirt. Oddly we matched. He was large and tall with long blonde hair. Here was no wimp. The physical attraction was strong but so was the other things that lead people to each other. He also was extremely intelligent and I could talk about anything with him. We were talking about poetry, art, music and history. I was smittened.

I was very attracted. I would go home and even write some love poetry. He had kissed me on the cheek. I would go home hoping he'd call. By the second date, we were kissing on the grounds of my old college--I still lived in the town it was in. By the third date, we were joking about getting married. We would go to spend hours and hours in the resort town where he worked as a newspaper reporter. Sometimes I would wait for him and we would go sit on the beach at midnight and into the early morning hours. That was a very romantic place for courtship with it's breaking surf, sunsets over the water, and light houses. I'd recommend the place highly to anyone for falling in love.

Our relationship would go on to be forged in fire over the next years. Both of us probably failed to know what was coming as I have detailed on this blog, with the money and health problems but this April 29, will be the 20th anniversary of that first date.