A happy ending
In January 1998 I was a final year student at Cardiff University. One Sunday evening I was with a friend in a computer room, listening to the charts on Radio 1, when Catatonia's Mulder & Scully was announced as the number three record.

With not much else to do (work wasn't an option) I logged on to the NME chat room, which was abuzz with people discussing how an second division indie band from Wales managed to stage a chart coup. One of the other chat room users mentioned that she was also at Cardiff Uni, and we discovered that we lived in the same street.

This was way before the dawn of online dating, you understand, and it was more of a chat about music than anything flirtatious. At the end of the evening I gave her my email address but thought little more of it.

The next day there was a message from her in my inbox. We exchanged emails for a few days, established a mutual love for the same bands, and eventually decided to meet for a drink at the student bar.

We got on, really well, so arranged to meet again. Within a couple of weeks we were a couple, fell in love and spent much of the next year inseparable. It was intense and passionate and unlike anything I'd experienced before.

We split up later that year after I graduated - it was the wrong time in life for us to be settling down. She broke my heart but I never forgot her. Every subsequent relationship was OK, but secretly I was comparing it to the girl from 1998. It felt like unfinished business, and I never knew whether it was a whirlwind romance or something that was cut off before its time.

In 2004, six years after we first met, I finally gave in and re-established contact. We went for a drink, found that same intangible chemistry that had been lying dormant all those years, and you can guess the rest. We married in 2006 and our little boy was born in May this year. I honestly couldn't be happier.

Looking back, it could all have been so different: if we hadn't been on the same website in that particular hour (I'd never used the chatroom before or since, and it's long gone now); if we hadn't lived near to one another; if she hadn't emailed; if we hadn't liked each other IRL; if I hadn't reestablished contact years later; and if we'd gone in hugely different directions in the intervening years.

Yay for meeting random people on the internet!

I can't stand Catatonia, mind.
(xyandz, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 17:01, 6 replies)

fucking amazing
what a wonderfully unique story.

Remember, it's not an ending until at least one of you are dead.
( RocketSurgeon is pretending he's still young, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 17:05, closed)

BUT..........
DOES SHE HAVE A REALLY SMELLY PUSSY?
(mparryuk52, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 18:26, closed)

That is awesome
Winner
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 19:28, closed)

I've only clicked on this
because I think Catatonia are shit.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 19:36, closed)

Hooray for true internet lurve!
Oh, and for not thinking much of Catatonia or their Mulder & Scerrrrrrrr-leeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 22:01, closed)

Am I the only one...
... who read the whole of this post in my own voice-in-my-head, except that last line which for some reason happened in a Welsh accent?

Clickety.
(SonofRojBlake, Tue 25 Oct 2011, 8:58, closed)

That's an interesting response
considering my wife and I are both English. Thanks for clicking - and to all the others for nice words above. No thanks to mparryuk52, idiot.
(xyandz, Tue 25 Oct 2011, 10:09, closed)