My Online Quest For Love Made Me Realize I’m The Man I’ve Waited My Entire Life For

I was twenty-five years old and I had had just about enough of the tumultuous, confusedly disorderly, cumbersome, and inefficiently complicated online dating scene.

After the end of my second long term relationship, I soon found myself submerged in the murky depths of a smorgasbord of conclusively fruitless dates with women that I subconsciously wanted to be Stephanie (my second love) or, at the very least, Jacqui (my first). I filled out profile after profile, trying to nail down my intelligent, creative, outside-the-box persona by rigidly answering every orderly set of predetermined questions that all the dating sites could throw at me.

After seven and a half months of separation from Stephanie and seven months and fourteen days of laborious dating, I had given up hope that my one true love would come. With all of my options exhausted and my life near its natural end, I succumbed to the notion that I would be destined to live out my few remaining days with an inescapable, indescribable loneliness and a stallion-esque freedom to do as I pleased, which I now know is the burden of lonely, and I pity them all.

Once I reached this nadir, I promised myself that I would only sign in one more time to my dating webpages, and, after that, I would admit that I was kaput, out of order, broken. Yet, it was on my twelfth “cheat” sign-in when I saw something that, at the time, seemed utterly impossible. I was matched up with myself.

It didn’t make any sense and yet so much sense was made. Here I was, a standard, run-of-the-mill heterosexual male, with only the most mild Tostitos salsa past of same-sex experimentation, and a sexual fluidity that boils down to, “I find other men attractive but I only want to have physical relationships with women."

Despite this, I felt a rush of anticipation at the site of the man, me, which swelled to new heights as I viewed the size twenty-two Calibri Light words on the screen, 100% MATCH. I would later find out that I, in the throes of desperation, had accidentally made two identical profiles on the same website. However, I can honestly admit it was the best mistake I've ever made in my lengthy, experience-laden life.

You see, they say that when you meet the person you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with, you just know. The feelings produced by my former lovers simply could not compare to the euphoria and the ecstasy pulsating through every inch of my corpus. It was truly an overwhelming feeling of great happiness and intense excitement, like an electric storm of passion that shocked me, in a good way.

I immediately messaged myself, despite knowing full well what would happen; mainly being that the note would just be doubled on the screen. Irregardless of this, the risk of lunacy proved well worth the reward, as I ushered in an absolutely fantastical correspondence that continues to this day.

Through our love letters, I have learned that we like all the same music, we enjoy the same television shows and movies, we have all the same hobbies, and we know exactly what the other is thinking and feeling all of the time, even during the times where we find ourselves unable to adequately describe how we feel because words are tough sometimes – that’s the same, too.

Plus, our sex life is nuts, macadamias, Brazil.

When it all boils down, it really does just make so much sense that I'm perfect for myself. I was waiting there for me all along and all I had to do was look and take a chance. By doing so, I began what has been and continues to be a beautiful, magical whirlwind of a relationship, and one that has brought me an unbridled happiness that I do not think will ever be constrained or controlled.

Every day is a joy and so is every day after it. I am so intensely proud of us, of what we’ve done so far, of what we’ve gone through, and of what we’ll do next. We both are so incredibly excited to grow old together, learn together, try together, fail together, and ultimately, succeed together. And we shall do all of this not as two separate units, but as one.

I simply couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else…and I don’t think I could either.