I first saw Paul’s profile on eHarmony in October of 2006.  His profile was one of the first to come up the very week I signed up.  No kidding, I did not have to wait long at all.  He was boyishly adorable in his bicycle helmet that he wore in one of his photos.  That caught me. We had our first date in early November.  It was the day before my Birthday and has since become our token anniversary. We dated each other exclusively from the first date yet took things slowly. Eventually we moved in together in December 2007 and became engaged the following year.

I had a feeling about Paul instantly but I was skeptical since this kind of process was new to me and I had been a widow four years prior to signing up. In addition, I had recently lost my brother around this time so it seemed things weren’t quite in my favor. When you suffer significant loss, things that were already somewhat superficial tend to become completely intolerable. For me, it was chance dating and the bar scene. It wasn’t working for me. Initially, it was a difficult decision for me to join eHarmony but once I did I realized it was a perfect way for me to put myself out there and I could control the communication in the security of my home. I had no idea what was in store for me and after signing up, and my life, our lives, were never the same.

As fate would have it, my perfect match “Paul” only lived 10 blocks away from me.  Paul is the Eurocentric (Portuguese), fun loving, and naturally happy guy everyone loves to be around and he really loves to be around me. We didn’t just click, we locked. We found ourselves constantly laughing when we were together and our energy moving in the same rhythm. We quickly realized we both patronized the same stores in our neighborhood and even knew some of the same people yet we never knew of each other until we met on eHarmony.  This was amazing.  To this day we still compare past parties, concerts, places, and stories to see if we possibly could have ran into each other.

Combining our lives together has been a seamless and wonderful transition. Life is back in my favor and is cherished like never before. We are now looking forward to our September wedding in Paris, France. I think I can already hear the bells ringing.