Yahoo Lifestyle "When We Reached My Stop, He Asked If He Could Come With Me": Here Are 17 Heart-Melting Ways Women Met Their Partners
Let's be honest...we've all dreamed of having our own movie-worthy meet-cute! Maybe you've locked eyes with someone at a party or sat next to someone in a class and wondered, "What if?" Blame it on the prevalence of rom-coms while our brains were developing or the human desire to find "The One," but there's something about meet-cutes that we can't get enough of — especially when they happen IRL...
So, when Redditor Dense_Reflection_791 recently asked the r/AskWomen community, "How did you find your partner?" I knew I had to share some of the most heart-meltingly wholesome responses. From standing outside during a thunderstorm to playing Dungeons and Dragons, here are 17 of the most adorable ways women met their significant others:
1."It was weird. I was done with dating and trying to meet someone, so I began researching sperm banks to start my journey as a single mother by choice. And then Covid hit..."
"During the middle of the pandemic, he was working from home. One day, he clocked out early and decided to go for a walk and sit on a bench. My job was closed down, so I decided to go for a walk. I don’t like most people, but for some reason, I decided to sit down on the bench he was already sitting on.
I took out my phone to play a game, and somehow, we started talking. Before I realized it, we had been talking for over an hour. I eventually had to leave, but before I could go, he asked for my number. I had so much fun in our conversation that I gave it to him. He called me a few hours later to ask me out on a date for the next day. He said he didn’t want to give me a chance to change my mind about him. So I agreed.
We just celebrated another anniversary and have started trying for a family."
2."I was living in a student accommodation in my first year of college. It was 2 a.m., and there was a huge thunderstorm. While watching from my balcony, I noticed other people in the courtyard watching."
"I convinced myself to join them and socialize, so I went down in my pajamas and bed hair. Started talking to one of the guys in the group, and we didn’t stop talking until 10 a.m.
I think we were official within a week. We just reached our 10-year-anniversary a few days ago and live with two adorable cats. We’re discussing having kids and buying a house.
We’ve got a group of beautiful friends and a lot of good stories together. It’s been a great life so far. It sounds corny, but be brave and socialize with others, even if you’re anxious. It might change your life completely."
3."We met at a hostel. We were sleeping in the same bunk beds. He saw me for one or two days before he spoke to me because I was already asleep every time he came to the room!"
"The first night we talked, we spoke about the meaning of truth and asked each other '36 questions to fall in love.' We spent a week together, and then he continued his trip (traveling around Europe). I found a place to rent as I had just moved there and was looking for a place to stay.
I thought I was never going to see him again. When he returned to the country six months later, he texted me (it was his home country). We have been together for almost six years and married for a few months."
4."He was the Dungeon master for our old friend group in college. I wanted to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, so some of our peers connected us so he could teach me and a few others."
"I was dating someone else at the time (it was a toxic relationship), but I could not help but notice how handsome he was. He lived in my mind rent-free, and once I started mentally checking out of my toxic relationship, he lingered around a lot more. I already knew I was going to date him next.
About a month after I finally left the toxic relationship, I made my interest in my current boyfriend clear. One day, just the two of us played Terraria together, which led to the beginning of our beautiful romantic relationship.
And here we are over two years later...Even more in love than we were in the beginning. Aside from getting my degree (debt-free!), meeting my partner was the best thing that ever happened to me in college (and in general, to be honest)."
5."He was trying to be a wingman for his buddy at an Oktoberfest a couple hours away from where I lived and asked if I would dance with his friend."
"But...his friend got shy and didn't want to dance anymore, so he danced with me instead. We hit it off and talked the whole time. Later that night, he asked for my number.
We discovered that we only lived 15 minutes away from each other. The rest is history. We dated for four years and have been married for another four and a half."
6."We met at an art fair. He owned a small furniture and design shop and was one of the exhibitors. His booth was at the front door, so when I walked in, he was sitting in a chair facing me."
"We both stared at each other. Not in a flirty or sexy way, more like 'deer in headlights.' After walking around the whole fair, I returned to talk to him.
He showed me a really wild helmet he had made that looked like a melon. I tried it on, and he took a picture of me and then asked for my number to text the pic to me. He still thinks he was sooo smooth for that, haha."
7."I was the designated driver for my (ex) best friend's 21st birthday! My now-partner didn’t have a ride that night, so I, my ex-BFF, and one other person drove over and picked him up at his place."
"My ex-BFF told me that my now-partner liked to 'smoke' before parties, so I was also under the impression he was blasted when we picked him up (he was totally sober, though.) I put on a few songs on the way to the party. Before he got out of the car, I played 'Downfall of Us All' by A Day to Remember. He exclaimed that he loved that song!
While walking into the house, we immediately launched into a deep conversation about our favorite bands. That is when we both found out that we LOVED the band Beartooth and talked about how amazing it is to find another person in the wild who knew and loved them. While everyone else at the party got wasted, we talked and bounced balloons back and forth through the night.
So the next week, his best friend had a birthday party at a mutual friend's place, and he, his best friend, and my ex-BFF all came back to our place after partying it up! At the end of the night, he and I were lying on top of each other on the couch while I probed him with some important questions (feminism, what he thought about kids, etc.) while very drunk.
The next day, I asked him out to a Beartooth concert. He jokes now that he 'passed the test,' and we’ve been together since!"
8."We met in the middle of nowhere. I flew across the country for a seasonal job in a remote location. He was also there from a country on the other side of the world. We didn't start hanging out until the last few weeks of the season, but we hooked up the last night we were there."
"The season was over, so it was time to leave. We were on a bus together, holding hands and feeling sad. He was going to the airport, and I was going somewhere else; we both had jobs lined up. When we reached my stop, he asked if he could come with me, and I said yes.
We canceled our plans and stayed at a hostel for about three weeks while we found jobs and a place to live. Six months later, his visa ended, so I followed him to his home country.
We've been together for 11 years."
9."This was in the pre-app, pre-smartphone era and my best friend met a guy at work and brought him over to a punk show we were throwing at our friend's warehouse."
"My best friend confessed that he thought this guy was the right man for me, which was odd because he never liked any of my partners in our 10 years of friendship before he introduced me to my husband.
I didn’t know he was bringing this new dude over, intending to be a 'matchmaker,' so it was a super chill, no-pressure group hang. I was actually hooking up with three other dudes during that time (ah, youth!), but my now-husband was persistent and won me over. I stopped seeing all other hopefuls within a week of meeting him.
We’ve been blissfully in love for almost 20 years, and we still go to punk shows regularly! So, my best friend hand-picked him for me, and it worked amazingly. I got lucky!"
10."It was my third day at a new gym, and I saw this guy who was so hot, tatted up, and stylish. I thought to myself, 'Damn, that's the type of man I should go for when I glow up...I'll ask him out in a few months.'"
"Five minutes later, he walks over to me while he's in the middle of his workout, compliments me, and asks me for my IG handle.
The rest is history."
11."Six months after graduation, I moved to Germany with my then-boyfriend for a job. That first day, I had lunch in the company kitchen, and one of the trainers introduced me to his friend. The friend was a quiet, eccentric man I didn't really think anything of."
"A couple of weeks later, I was invited to a party late one evening, and I really, really didn't want to go — I'd had all my wisdom teeth removed the previous day and felt like crap. I forced myself to go for at least an hour because I knew the host had made a big effort and only a few people would attend. When I got there, I saw the 'eccentric friend from the kitchen.' We started talking, hit it off immediately, went for a walk, and suddenly, it was daylight. We both felt a connection like nothing before (or since).
"I went home, mulled over it for a few days, then broke up with my boyfriend. I felt terrible about that, even though the relationship wasn't going well already, and my boyfriend was not good for me (our friends actually celebrated the break-up). I felt I was abandoning him on a romantic comedy-like whim, but I knew I had to do it."
"It's been 12.5 years since I met my current partner, and 'the night of the party' is part of our lore. Funnily enough, in a very 'sliding doors' way, my then-boyfriend had also been invited to the party, but he never wanted to do anything together and couldn't be bothered with going. He stayed home and changed our lives."
12."We grew up in a relatively big city, but somehow, our families always lived in the same neighborhood."
"When we were 12, we would hang out at the local park. Then, we ran into each other a lot at high school and college parties.
For example, his house burnt down when we were in ninth grade, but my family had moved about 25 minutes away that year. I saw him at a party, and it turned out his family was renting a house in our new neighborhood while they rebuilt their burnt house, so he drove me home from that party after years of not seeing each other.
After that, we lost touch again for a few years, then saw each other at a party during our first year of college. Nothing romantic happened then, as we were in long-term relationships with other people.
Then, five years ago, our friend group was at a cabin for a weekend and he and I reconnected only as friends. Friends turned to lovers, and here we are with a house, a cat, and an insanely deep connection. He’s still my very best friend."
13."We met in history class. Our teacher sat us next to each other. We were polar opposites. I was very shy and didn’t talk much, and he was outgoing and loved to talk to people."
"He randomly started talking to me one day; he told me his cousin slapped a wax strip on his leg and pulled the hair off...then asked if I wanted to feel it, lol. After that, I would share my homework with him; since it was a retake class for me, and he was a year younger, I knew most of the stuff anyway and would do my homework in class.
He missed school often; his uncle would take him to work on houses and businesses or work at the farm. I realized I liked him when I’d look to see if he was coming through the door for class. When he wouldn’t come in, I’d miss him. So, one day, I messaged him on Facebook and asked if he wanted to hang out. We went on a date, and we’ve been together ever since.
It'll be 14 years in May. We’ve been married for seven of those years and have three kids. He’s the love of my life and the smartest, kindest, and most loving man I’ve ever met."—u/imthrownaway93
14."We met at a swing dancing class. He had been going to that studio for several months, and I had just started."
"What's nuts is that the studio was picked out by a guy friend of mine with whom I had agreed to take lessons. We lived far from each other, and the studio was between us, so I would not have met my husband if my buddy hadn't chosen that location.
Unfortunately, the friend was interested in being more than that, despite me telling him I wasn't. We are no longer friends, but my husband and I owe our 23 years together to him."
15."In college, I worked as a student secretary for a coffee shop. My eventual boyfriend (now husband) worked as an intern manager, but neither of us reported to each other."
"The 'office' we shared with the other coffee shop managers was actually a tiny converted janitor's closet. The more time I spent at work alongside him in this little closet, the more I realized how much I liked him. He was (and still is) incredibly kind to me and was the sweetest person I had met there.
I took a chance on Valentine's Day and asked him on a date. We went out the next day and have been inseparable since. I have zero regrets and feel so fortunate to have met the love of my life within only six months of being at school."
16."His dad was a pastor, and he was hosting an activity for the church’s kids. My middle school best friend went to that church and convinced me to go with her. One of the activities was hide-and-seek. I hid behind bushes in their backyard, and he found me."
"Over the next 10 years, we were frenemies, sometimes friends — I would go visit him at the library he volunteered at, we would play tag, and he’d get in trouble with the older women who worked there. Sometimes, he’d come over to my house, and we’d play in my mom's garden and accidentally trample her flowers. She says she knew we were meant to be the first time he came over to ask if I could come out and play.
Then we would fight over something silly and not talk for months. We had a big argument when we were 19 and lost contact. Then, after college, he joined the military."
"One day, when we were 22, he reached out, and it was just as it had always been; we could talk about anything and everything. I was still living in our hometown, and he would drive the seven hours it took to visit his family and me; I would convince him to try new foods, and he would show me new music. We would sit in his car and just talk for hours."
"Months later, he was set to deploy overseas for the first time, and one night, he called me and told me he had to tell me something. I couldn’t hear him because he was in a room full of people and had awful cellphone service, so I kept saying, 'What? What?' And finally, the third time, I heard it: 'I am trying to tell you that I think I’m in love with you!'
We kept in contact while he was deployed. I would send him care packages, and he’d set an alarm for the middle of the night once every few days so the WIFI bandwidth wasn’t throttled and he could FaceTime me. Then he came home and he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. Fast forward to now, and we are in our fifth year of marriage."
17."We met in high school. When we started dating, I was 15, and he was 17."
"Now I’m 50, and we’ve been around the world and back again. We've had high and low ups and downs that were comparable to mountains and undersea trenches. We’ve been dirt poor and lived high on the hog.
I would go back and do it all over again in a heartbeat, and the only thing I’d change is that I would worry less because I know it all works out. I’ve sometimes wished my life was an actual novel so I could have peeked at the later chapters to reassure myself that the couple was still together and happy at that point.
Hopefully, we’ve still got decades of adventures ahead. I want to die holding his hand."
Which one of these "meet-cutes" was your favorite? How did you meet your partner? Let us know in the comments! (Or if you would prefer to remain anonymous, you can answer using this Google Form).
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
