As I'm sure has already been said on the internet dating thread, once you move past the teenage and student phase of life and social life becomes less 'tribal', it gets harder to make new friends and widen your circle.

And I'm sure there are plenty of us who have put the work in joining clubs and societies, trying internet dating etc but still feel a bit discouraged sometimes about the chances of meeting new people at all, never mind finding somebody special!

So I thought we could do with a bit of inspiration from others about how your path first crossed with your signigicant other - whether long term or new, current or ex.

It might be an extraordinary tale of serendipity, or something more traditional/every day - either way a straw poll would be interesting.

Met at Santa Pod at the Retro Show ... and go in our cars every year for our anniversary!

I used to only date horn players, not intentionally, I just kept meeting them in band/orchestra/etc. Then I tried a clarinet player but I met him the same way - in chamber music group.

Current mr corenfa - met in my graduate programme at our first full-time job (for both of us).

I wasn't "looking" when I started stepping out with any of the above - they were all friends who became more than friends.

Don't discount serendipity... I know two married couples who met in odd ways. One's wife got her friend's ICQ number off by 1 digit (does anyone even *remember* ICQ here???), message went to him (she was in America and he in UK) and the rest as they say was history. Another was looking for a penpal to improve her English, he came to visit her in Asia, by the end of that summer they were engaged.

Wellll....

Many moons ago (5 years) I happened upon this forum (under a different name). I soon got chatting to Bobifier. Bobifier alerted his friend mwl1 to me, and so mwl1 (Matthew) and I began to talk to each online.

A few months later, Matthew and his dad ended up near where I lived (400 miles from their home!) on holiday. I met with Matthew for a few hours - we were both incredibly shy 16 year-olds though so it was fairly awkward. I thought we probably wouldn't see each other again. However, we continued to talk daily, on the phone and online, and by December 2007 I knew that Matthew was rather special. Matthew has since told me he had come to the same conclusion, and in February 2008 he came to Scotland again and we finally made it 'official'. For nearly 2 years we lived 400 miles apart, seeing each other every 2 months or so, taking it in turns to make the 8 hour journey.

In October 2009 I decided to leave home and move to Yorkshire to go to university - conveniently, close to Matthew's home. And I'm still here.

In short, I met my other half on this very forum.

Can't remember my number though

When I was at school, the town I was at school in had two record shops, and one other shop that sold records. My brother, 5 years my senior, told me that one was the only really good one and I should go there. I gradually became a regular customer, to the point where I'd just drop in for a chat for 10 minutes between after school and the bus to go home, and knew the staff by name and considered them friends. They'd order me stuff in without a deposit, or hold special things behind the counter for me, and so on.
When I was in my third year at secondary school, a new chap started working there. He became my friend as well. Towards the end of my lower sixth (we'd known each other two and half years by then), he invited me to meet with him on one of his days off. So I did.
Ten years later (to the day) we got married, and that was nine years ago on the Saturday just gone

I can but I haven't logged in for at least ten years!

Gatecrashed his party in 1985.
Corresponded with him through University 1985 - 8. He was at Cambridge, I was at Oxford, both doing maths.
Got engaged just after we graduated.
Got married in 1990.

On the internet, but not on a dating site. We lived in different countries even.

At parties I'm the one lurking in the corner clutching something to eat and drink, and generally attempting to merge with the wallpaper: meeting people is always difficult. Meeting significant others was therefore a matter of someone else helping, I'm afraid. Weirdest one was probably having been dragged along to a Burns supper by my landlord on the grounds that I wasn't Making Enough Friends at university, and being asked to dance by a chap who happened to be German and happened not to be a theologian - my landlord was an academic in the faculty of theology.

As far as my husband goes, he was tuning several early keyboard instruments for a concert and also had to turn pages for a formidable Professor, which was very stressful: my friend James, who'd known harpsidoc for a few months and had blagged some accompaniment off him for his baroque oboe, introduced us. We became peripheral acquaintances, our paths crossed at concerts, I uncharacteristically gatecrashed one of his significant birthdays with a couple of other friends, and over time got to know him a little. However, the step of getting to know him properly had to be taken by me, initially by my asking him to chum me to a movie and honing my interviewing skills by asking stuff about harpsichords.....turns out that was a useful strategy, as I now know exactly what to ask players who phone for tunings when taking messages .

At church. I was playing the organ. Apparently the back of my head held some fascination.

In a queue to hire catarmarans on the Swan River in Perth Western Australia after i moved there for a job. He is actually a national dinghy sailing champion which he didnt mention when we decided to share one and he let me helm......and i couldnt tack as the thing didnt have a jib and i didnt know they are easier to jibe when you only have one sail. We had to paddle it round at one point til he took over the captain role. Then we played tennis and then we played golf. I won both those and he was impressed it would appear.

Proms queue

In a choir loft.

When we got engaged I was instructed to conduct the choir with my left hand (with the engagement ring on!) so they might get the message. (Have to say left hand conducting is very hard for a right-handed person. I think I made a mess of it)

I moved house and joined the local church choir around October. At Christmas, a young student returned from college and sat in the congregation one week, then sat next to me in the choir the following week, singing alto. We got to know each other by letter and the occassional phone call and by my rare weekend visits to her college 350 miles away. (My car broke down on the M6 on my first visit - I was two hours late!) We got married as soon as she finished college and still, 29 years later, sing together in the church choir (not the same one, though!)

This is so sweet

Morris-dancing.....! And afterwards, our eyes met across a crowded bar. 18 months ago we celebrated our Silver Wedding anniversary.

I was dating her flatmate...

Why I am getting flashbacks to 'Men behaving badly' ?

On a computer course in London. I'd made the decision to leave teaching and do something completely different, and he'd recently returned from Greece where he'd been teaching - another change of direction. I sat at the back of the class and he sat a few rows in front of me. He caught my attention because he was so scruffy and one day I noticed he got a bottle of wine out of his backpack opened it and drank out of the bottle, in the classroom. His dark beige jumper had so many holes in it and was so filthy, he appealed to my maternal nature (never knew I had one till then!) and I wanted to look after him. When I eventually got my hands on that jumper I discovered it was cream in colour - washed it about 9 times and the dirt was still coming out of it. There were only about 10 of us on the course, so we tended to go around together at lunch and break times which made it quite easy to get to know him. After the course we both started work at the same company, and 6 months after we first met, we got married. 32 years later we are still married, and he still prefers to wear dirty scruffy clothes although he doesn't drink wine out of the bottle any more.

Birkbeck college, London University - in the bar, of course! (38 years ago.)

City Lit, Italian evening classes. It was a particularly friendly group and we all used to go to the pub afterwards.

There was a thread recently where it emerged that several forum members (well, maybe three) had met their partners at the City Lit. So evening classes come highly recommended.

Scottish country-dancing society when we were both at Oxford uni doing post-grad courses. I was taller than most of the other women present at the first session of the term, so was the most comfortable choice of partner for the Gay Gordons (OH is 6'5" ). Met him there again a few weeks later, and the rest is history! 15th wedding anniversary coming up next month.

We knew a number of other couples who also met through the country-dancing society.

We worked together - not in the same department, but on the same project. This lasted about 6 years, and we established that we were a good team and cooperated well together.

Then we got together, and continued to collaborate professionally for the next 10 years, establishing that we could still work well together and have a personal relationship.

Then we got married (well, one doesn't like to rush these things! ). After 4 years he retired and almost simultaneously I got the offer of a job in Italy.

We've been here now for 6 years, and he has taken on the role of home-maker, much to the fascination and jealousy of all the local Italian ladies. They think I'm a very lucky girl. I agree

I wasn't looking for love, I'd just split up from an unhealthy 4 year relationship which never really worked, but I kept with it for so long because I didn't want to be alone. Some success with my job finally gave me the confidence to leave him and not settle for someone I didn't really love, which wasn't fair on him either.
I was visiting my brother at his university a month before his graduation and wedding, socialising with my sister-in-law-to-be, when into the room walked this beautiful man who was a friend of hers. My eyes popped out on stalks and my tongue hit the floor (or at least felt like it!).
When I got home I phoned my sisterinlawtobe and asked to be sat next to him at the wedding, as I knew I'd never see him again after that and I was having all sorts of lustful thoughts about him. She laughed and said he'd requested to be sat next to me too! As discreet as a fog horn, my sisterinlawtobe also told him what I'd said to her. So at the wedding we were both very embarrassed, knowing we fancied each other without even yet having had a conversation!
Several drinks later we were a couple. That was 1994. He's still really fit......

Husband no 1, I met backstage in a casino in Istanbul. I was in the show, and he was doing photo's for a story in a US newspaper. (He's American, not Turkish) We were married for 6 years
No 2 I've always known. His Mum was my Mum's bridesmaid, and his Uncle was my Dad's Best Man. I always knew he fancied me, but he's just not my type!. Despite that, we're coming up to our 21st anniversary, but I still call him "the man who's everything I never wanted!!!"
I have to say that as I got older my choice of men became more boring. I almost married a lion tamer (don't ask), then became a GI bride, and am now married to an accountant!

Blind Date

His cousin was my friend's friend and for six months she kept saying "I know someone who you will really get on with". I fobbed her off and eventually she came over to my place and put him on the phone. We were both embarrased on the phone but we agreed to meet to get her off our backs. We met for coffee and got on quite well, but he was short (well same height as me) and scruffy - not my Ideal Man at all! I had rehearsed the "let be friends" line, but before I could say it he said, "Now let me tell you I've loads of friends and dont want another one", embarrased I thought he had read my mind! I agreed to meet him again and we were married exactly two years later.

At university, through the Methodist society there. We are still in touch with three other couples who met in the same way at the same time and married around the time we did. We've just passed our 36th anniversary.

The best way to meet your other half is through a mutual interest, whether that's work, classical music, church or any of the many societies and clubs you can join. People say it's more difficult today than in the past, but I wonder whether it's just that today's young people are more choosy?

Work. Boring I know... but he was my senior and it was a structural engineering office so we spent quite a bit of time wearing waders and wandering about in rivers under bridges tapping them with little hammers to find out if the reinforcing in the concrete was intact. It was complicated but we fell for each other that summer.

(That was only part of the job )

Then he went to work elsewhere and I did other stuff but we kept in touch and spent more and more time together.....

That was more than 20 years ago and I love him more every day

I loved ICQ! I still remember my account number and password!

I used to speak to really interesting people all over the world on ICQ discovered with random chat, I wonder if any of them are still on line. Maybe I will log in later!

I was single for aaaages before meeting my husband and had just about given up on Italian men! I met him at a fancy dress party organized through work. I almost didn't go but decided at the last minute that it would be fun! He invited me out on a date the following week and I discovered he looked completely different to how I remembered - probably something to do with not being in fancy dress. We have been married eight years.

I graduated from Nottm Uni 1968, but my first job was at Spondon , only about 12 miles away, so I continued to enjoy Uni life at the same time as working, and even still played badminton and bridge for the Uni teams. In July 1969 I was invited to 21st party in Lincoln Hall, room B24 (Hall of Res where I spent all three years of my Uni life) by a friend John I had met there previously. The young lady I met was from the same town and school as he was. We were engaged summer 1970 and married summer 1971 after she had completed her physics degree and her Cert Ed. 41 years later two childern and a grandchild.

All the nicest ladies have a Physics degree!

On the Thursday - we met on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend. Found we were soulmates.

Took him to meet my parents on the Friday.

Went to meet his parents on the Saturday (in a different city. He told his mother he was going to marry me ((she told me years later))).

Got a flat together on the Sunday.

Had one night apart in the last 24years (due to birth of first child) since the day we met.

.....and you make a lovely couple !



.... but what could he see via the mirror ?

We were at school together in the 1960s and "going out" together - insofar as such a thing was possible at that place, which was not really. But my dad was the music teacher and I remember many happy hours spent following music from a single score for A level, just the two of us, while my dad went out to "put up a notice" and didn't come back for a long long time. It only dawned on me much later that maybe, rather than giveing us a chance to be alone together, he may have had some nefarious ends of his own!

The OH left school a couple of years before me, with no proimises to continue the relationshiup, such as it was, and no break-up either, so I suppose that meant it was "unfinished business". We saw one another a couple of times over the next few years, and occasionally wrote, but he'd gone to Cambridge, and even though I spent the summer holiday after he left frantically practising the piano and resolving that I would also go there, in the end I went to Oxford instead.

Both of us married other people, bnoth of us had two children (and both of us had a daughter with the same first name, Chloe, which was extremely rare in the 1970s) and both of us were separated when in 1999, for no apparent reason at all, I dreamed I saw him at a party, wondered what he was doing in my dream, googled his name (fortunately there is ony one person with his name!) and emailed him. Been married 10 years this October.

When I was at school, like a lot of 15-year-old girls, I used to write my name and his in my rough note book, and join my first name with his surname. Yet when we married, I kept my surname. I love his surname , but it has 10 letters and a lot of different possibilities. Mine has three! I'm a teacher. Children can spell it. When I came back to school after the half-term when we'd got married, one child had written on the board "welcome back Mrs **********!" - and predictably, it was spelt wrong, which confirmed that my decision had been right.