Ten years ago today Shane and I met.
It's ridiculous that we ever met, but more than ridiculous, it's miraculous.
Here's the story.
I was recently divorced (like really really really recently divorced) and not interested in having a relationship. But I kept having a strong feeling to get on ldsplanet, a mormon dating website that I had heard some girl mention several years earlier. So random. I kept telling myself "No way! That's ridiculous!" But the feeling persisted. I finally told myself perhaps it would be good to get on just to meet people and reassure myself that all men weren't horrible. No need to actually date. I could just set up a profile, talk with some people at a safe distance, and call it good. I could say I had done my part. I even had some safe guards in place to make sure things would go just as I planned. I was living in Utah at the time but I put my profile as being in Arizona since that is where I was moving. This way, if someone contacted me and wanted to go out I could easily say, "Oh darn, I'm actually in Utah. Maybe once I move to AZ."
Brilliant, Dixie! Brilliant.
So on to the website I went, carefully setting up my profile to reflect exactly what I wanted. Everything was going just as planned. I was contacted by several people in Arizona and I quickly let them know I was in Utah, so sorry, can't meet you in person.
But then...THEN...this crazy guy named "vballplayer" from Utah contacted me. What?! How did he know I was in Utah? I was immediately suspicious and it freaked me out.
I approached the situation carefully, trying to figure out what he knew. As it turns out he had no idea I was in Utah. He was simply looking at going to ASU for a PhD and wanted to see what the singles scene down there was like. That's when he stumbled upon my "Arizona" profile.
Weird.
But then, things got more weird. There was a glitch in the website system and for some reason my profile picture wouldn't stay up. It was literally only up for about 2 hours on the website. Just enough time for "vballplayer" to find me and start a little back and forth conversation. He invited me to play raquetball and I quickly turned him down. "Sorry. Way too busy getting ready to move to AZ."
He persisted.
The next day he instant messaged me and asked me several times in that conversation if we could get together.
No, I quickly replied.
But as the conversation went on, and I found out his name was Shane and he found out my name was Dixie and I found out his last name was Dixon (wha?!) and we found out we really liked talking to each other, I finally agreed to meet him.
He was shocked.
So was I.
What was I thinking?!
I made sure he knew I was only meeting him to rule him out. I wanted to be able to move to Arizona with a clear conscience, knowing I hadn't left any possibilities behind. How's that for romantic?
I had 3 very small kids at the time...4, 3 and 1. Time was a precious commodity for me and I had one hour on a tuesday that I could sacrifice to meet him. He was teaching at an English school in Provo so we met there.
I met him in the parking lot as he was talking to a student and he tried to hug me (awkward, I'm not a hug-you-the-first-time-I-meet-you kind of person). He told me later he felt so stupid and immediately wanted to take it back, but you can't un-hug someone, so things started off awkward. Perfect! Just as I had hoped. After a quick tour of his school we went to Kneaders and he ate and talked while I smiled and nodded nervously.
Seriously, what was I thinking?
But the more he talked the more I liked him. Usually it works in the opposite direction for me. It was a fun little hour and I didn't quite know what to think other than I felt foiled because I didn't feel like I could rule him out. He called me later to ask how I felt it went. I can clearly remember having 3 kids trying to climb on me and play with me while trying to have this conversation with him. It was tricky. In the conversation he assured me he likes to take things slow and that he didn't believe in falling in love in a week and all that jazz that crazy Mormons do. After all, you can't be a 33 year old bachelor in Provo with crazy notions like that. I told him that sounded great and that I hadn't quite been able to rule him out so we set a date for Friday.
We went out on Friday and I came home that night and knew this was it.
He was it.
How could I know? This was crazy! I felt so calm and so sure and I just knew. I felt like I had known Shane forever. There was something so familiar about him. It all just made sense. How was that possible? But I wasn't about to tell him...he didn't believe in this "falling in love in a week bit".
We saw each other the next night, and the next, and probably the next. Exactly a week from the first day we met in person I woke up to find an email from Shane. One of the cutest things I have ever read. It turns out he can fall in love in a week. 💗I told him it took even less time for me.
I had planned to move to AZ on November 1st, but after a strong feeling came to me, multiple times, I had pushed it back to November 16th. It couldn't be because of this guy, could it?
Yes, most definitely yes.
I still can't believe we found each other and less than 6 months later we were married.
No it hasn't always been easy.
No it isn't always bliss.
But yes it is, and always has been, right.
