Our love story started about 21 years ago, when Rob and I were both teenagers. I guess you could say we were ahead of our time because we met online before online dating was a thing. We started chatting on one of the early chat forums and haven't stopped taking since then! After several months of almost daily chatting online, on the phone, and through email, we finally met in person. We both felt a connection but we were young and lived 4 hours away from each other, so we couldn't see each other regularly. We talked regularly through the ups and downs of our teens and our early twenties, but the time never seemed quite right for us to date. One of us would be single, but then the other was dating someone, or vise versa. We became best friends, and were there for each other through it all. I think we were both always a little jealous when the other one was with someone, but our lives kept taking us in different directions.
During college, I did an internship in Northern CA, and fell in love with it. (I was living in NY) I decided that I wanted to move there when I was finished with school. When I told Rob about my plans, he was surprised and upset. Although he didn't express it at the time... He had figured that eventually our timing would be right and we would get together, but with me moving across the county.. how would that ever happen? While I knew I had feelings for him, I also didn't know if it would ever be the right time for us, so I felt I had to follow my dreams.
After an epic cross county road trip with my sister, I started to set up a new life for myself in northern CA. I found a job in my field, found a place to live, and started to make new friends. I met someone, and even got engaged - but realized he wasn't the right person for me and we called it off.
About 6 months after my engagement was called off, Rob called me one night and said we needed to see if "we" were meant to be. He was living in MA at the time, and I was living in CA, so I didn't really see how that was going to be possible, but he was determined. I was working at a non-profit and not making much money, so travel wasn't really an option for me, but he was determined that we needed to give it a shot. He started flying out to see me on weekends when he could and that lasted for about a year, by then we knew we really had something special, and being apart was getting harder and harder. At that point, he had his own business, and could work from pretty much anywhere... so we decided to move in together! I had been talking about how much I really wanted a dog, and in August of 2006, Rob and Oscar both moved into my one bedroom apartment and we became a family!