How I Met My Husband

Guest Post: My words and his

I graduated college in 2007. I didn’t know it then, but it was to be the last full year of the Celtic Tiger. I got a job in my final year. A proper job in a proper law firm and it wasn’t due to start until 2009 because this was the Celtic Tiger and obviously I was taking a year out to go travelling, funded by whichever bank would give me a loan (Ulster Bank, no questions asked). The financial crisis had other plans however and I didn’t end up starting that job until 2011.

2011 was a bleak time in Ireland, economically. When I started in 2011, at a job that I had applied for in 2006, and interviewed for in 2007, my uncle said I must have been one of the last people in Ireland to get a job - that I was like someone in the bowels of the Titanic who’d managed to roll under the closing door to safety, just in time.

I had a similar close shave with dating apps. I met my husband in 2011 and it feels like we were the last people on earth to have met in the wild, before Tinder came along in 2012. We rolled safely under the door as it was coming down, with everyone else left inside roaring “Nooooo!!! Not the apps!!! Let us out of this sinking ship!!!” and we shouted back “OMG the apps!!! How fun!!! Can I have a go? Are you sure you’re not just being too picky?”

I was listening recently to the opening chapter of ‘How to Giggle’, a book written by podcasters Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo. They have a close friendship going back six years and in the opening chapter, they each describe the moment they first met. It was fascinating to hear their different perspectives of the same moment, particularly how their memories of certain factual details (like what they wore or how the original meeting even came to pass) differed.

How different is my husband’s version of how we met (14 years ago, in the wild) from mine? Well, without further ado, let’s find out.

My first guest post. 700 words by David and 700 words by me. On our first meeting: