Meet Cute: A Man and Woman Walk into a Bar....

When I ask couples how they met, most have stories about meeting through a friend or high school/university.  There is one story, one of chance and fate, that stuck out to me when I heard it a few years ago.  My friend Beth agreed to let me share it with you, so please enjoy the simple beauty of chance.

I have been writing and writing drafts of their wonderful meet cute, and you know what? I'm no good at writing this story because Beth wrote it better. : ) So here are her words about how she met her boyfriend:

I used to complain to my mom that I wanted a boyfriend in college and she would say, "you're not ready yet" and I would get mad and say, "Yes I am!"  Then after being out of school for a few years, I was visiting my parent's house and I said to her, "Mom.  I am really ready now.  I am lonely and I wish I had a boyfriend to share my life with."  The next night I met Joe.  Does that make him less of a soul mate?  I don't think so.  I think God gives us what we can handle and he heard my request and let me 'see' Joe for the first time.  I say it like that because once I got to know Joe, we had a lot of things and people in common and I can see how we may have met in the past and maybe in the future if I didn't run into him at a bar one night.  His best friend, Mark, is the son of friends of my parents and I knew who Mark was from family parties throughout the years.  Another good friend of Joe's went to the school my mom taught at and was mentored by my mother and had heard of me through my mom.  His friend Mark was in a battle of the bands during high school at my mom's school (Brebeuf) and Joe attended that battle of the bands and so did I.  I dated an acquaintance of Joe's.  Most of his friends knew or had my mother as a teacher in school.  His brother was friends with a lot of guys who went to my high school and it was highly likely Joe and I would have ended up at the same party one day. Aside from all of these connections, Joe and I met completely by chance.  I was at a bar in Broadripple with some friends when I spun around quickly and literally ran into him.  I, of course, jokingly blamed him and since 'he' spilled my drink 'made' him buy me a new one.  We talked a long time in that same spot at the dive-y bar Connors while I was a little tipsy, to say the least, and he was not.  I didn't want to tell him I was an architect because in past experience, that seemed to make guys in bars run away from me...intimidating, I guess?  But finally, he coaxed it out of me and he said, "Really? That is the coolest job!  I wanted to be an architect!"  Eventually he had to leave so we made sure to exchange numbers and he promised he would call me the next day...to which I said, "Yeah right."  As I was falling asleep that night in my alcohol induced haze, I prayed to God that Joe would call me the next day. 4:00pm the next day, my phone rang.  We made plans for dinner later that week.  Up until the first date, I admit I was a little distant and I honestly thought, "Well, every date is a good experience."  It was after the first date that I fell head over heels.  Every thing we talked about during that dinner made me think, "Wow...really? We are so compatible!"  When he was asking me about my career in architecture, I said, "Well, I think my grandfathers both helped influence my decision to be an architect.  One was a structural engineer and the other was the President of John Hancock Life Insurance in Boston and I just fell in love with the Hancock Tower and visiting him at his office in the summers.  I used to think he owned that skyscraper."  And Joe said, "That's a great building.  Because of that building, they invented the mass damper system."  My jaw dropped to the floor.  I had done many reports on that tower and not many people knew that fact about the skyscraper and here was this cute guy sitting across from me, not bull shitting me and actually knowing things about my passions!  The whole dinner was like that.  One of us would talk about something and the other would say, "Oh yeah.  And ..."  When he dropped me off at my apartment after dinner, he gave me a small kiss on my lips and I closed the door, sat down, and just said, "Wow."  I swear I could feel that kiss the next day. My parents came to pick me up early the next morning as we were all heading to the airport for a family reunion in Florida.  In the car ride on the way to the airport my mom asked me how my date went and I told her.  She asked me what I liked about Joe and I had a long list and then she asked me what I didn't like (cause I always had an answer for that in the past) and I couldn't think of anything!  When I didn't answer, my mom turned around, looked at me, and then looked to my dad who was driving and said, "Uh-oh, we're in trouble!"  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Where is the Rule Book?

Something that has crossed my mind lately is that there are no rules in relationships.  Sure, there are dating rules, such as guys feeling pressured to pay for dinner, or when you propose, you are supposed to bend down on one knee.
But I am really focusing on the ways that we talk and communicate with each other.  There really are no rules; no set guidelines telling you, don't say that or yes that is a great thought to express.  Where is the red line drawn that states that if you say this, you will be throwing too hard of a punch or pressing on a vulnerable button?
There is no referee whistling for a time out or handing out penalties.  There is heart break and comfort zones crossed to the point of no return.

Therein lies the fear.  What if you overstep an invisible boundary line?  What do you do with the damage that you cause?  I have no clue.

But then there is the virtue of crossing boundaries in a loving way that reveals raw communication.
The raw communication being two humans, stripping down to the doubt and emotion that we hide from the everyday world.  Romantic love, friendships, family, or mentors; I don't care what relationship it is; the root of the point of these relationships is to see that we are all together burdened by our fear, shame, insecurity.  When we share these vulnerable thoughts and look at each other with clear eyes, we love.

Searching for Inspiration

There are only four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made of? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
Don Juan DeMarco (1995 film)

I've taken a bit of hiatus to my search to finding the answers to how we love and how we encounter our understandings of eros.  For that, I apologize.  There are plenty of thoughts running through my head, but they seem to be unrelated to love, at least directly.  Which is why this quote is fitting to redirect myself to How Do You Know?  When I think about religion or spirituality, where is the end of the discussion?  Love.  I have been pondering many areas of my soul, and it's time to focus back to the foundation and continue my thoughts on love.


I am continually grateful for family and friends who point me in new directions of love and encourage me to understand a new perspective or find a new article for me to read.  Thank you for all of your support, readers! : )


As always, please send any questions, topics, experiences that you would like for me to focus on at my new email address, k.wintereulberg@gmail.com!

How to Tell If Someone Loves You

 I stumbled upon this short writing piece, and it gives such a beautiful sense of what love really is.

How To Tell If Someone Loves You

Open Up Your Chest: Let Someone Mess You Up.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
—Neil Gaiman (author of The Kindly Ones)

 Does it mean to be vulnerable?  A breaking down of walls of security, a stripping of the masks that we wear to seem normal.  That seems kind of nice, doesn't it?  Being genuine and real with the person you love?

That idea is terrifying.  What if you strip yourself down to the beauty of your imperfect soul, to find that the person you love actually your flaws endearing, but unbearable?  The possibility of rejection seems to be a common agent in hindering love; fear is like a disease, infiltrating through our outward pleasantries into the deep place where we all like to hide.

I have been thinking about this feeling of fear, and the need to be accepted by the people that we value.  We pretend that we are above hurt feelings and push away feelings of pain to stay afloat in the Western society that scorns sadness.  Whenever I feel hurt, I seek solitude to brood in the safe confine of my own judgment.  Why would we want someone to see us at our worst?

But that is IT. IT being the meaning of love.  What would love be if it was just the surface?

Love breaks barriers and crashes through the superficial.  Whether this means a yelling match about forgetting an anniversary, or tears of fear that you are not worthy; the sharing of the scars and bruises between yourselves is IT.

Does this vulnerability confine itself within eros love?  I hope not.  Open yourself up, risk the rejection; the love that surrounds genuine actions blows away the fear.  You can love your friends and family in a different way than ignoring the sadness or pain by sharing your fears with others.  You just might find a deeper connection to humanity in your sharing of real feelings.

Upset with a friend? Hurt by a co-worker?  Why do we have to pretend that we are impervious?  Forget about brushing your feelings off your shoulder or hiding them within yourself.  Open up your chest, give into the love; give someone the chance to mess you up.

The Heart of Life is in the Questioning

Try googling long-distance relationships.  You will get so much information, it will make you either wish you had another 10 hours to pour over or desire to throw your computer and all of its answers into the garbage.  I happen to belong to the former, so I found a few sites that seemed promising.  Particularly one site  called 1000 Questions for Couples reigned above the rest.

1000 Questions for Couples attempts to attack the issue of running out of things to talk about when on the phone with your significant other while long distance.  But really, this information is useful for any couple, because it allows for communication to occur about subjects or issues that may not come up otherwise.

The creater, Michael Webb, has a few cheesy points, like the fact that he is very proud to have been married for 21 years and claims to never have had a fight with his wife.  That sounds extremely odd to me, but nonetheless, his idea is genius.

1000 Questions. That's a 1000 ways to understand your significant other, or really any friend or family member, in a different way!  The questions are varied across a broad spectrum of topics and very specific.  I really like that the questions require some thought, which takes out the awkwardness of one word answers.


These 1000 Questions come in an ebook that Michael Webb sells at his website for $27, which is something that I really did not see being able to budget. But, if you try to navigate away from the website, a pop up directs you to a free trial of 33 questions, which are emailed to you in increments of 3-4 each day.  I opted to do this, and really enjoyed talking about the questions every day.  I would definitely reccommend the 33 questions trial, and as a bonus, after the free trial, Michael sends one question a week in order to keep you interested.  This means more questions to ask!

Try it out and let me know what you think about the 33 Questions!

Where Imagination Becomes an Obstacle

I eagerly check PostSecret every Saturday evening/Sunday morning to read secrets that Frank Warren selected for the week.  If you have not discovered the beauty of PostSecret, please check it out right this instant.

On particular Sunday that was at least a year ago, I read this secret and I needed to catch a breath because it stopped me in my tracks and tugged on something deep inside.

What is it about this secret that hits right at my core?  What do you think about this secret?

It is really hard to give up the imaginations that I have built up from when I was running around in a princess dress at age 4 to now, when I still wear dresses but they are less pink and sparkly.  I have daydreamed and wondered about the person that I would spend the rest of my life with.  I know that I am not alone in this.  Even though we do not like admitting it, but we all have fantasies about finding the person that you can share a life with, whoever you imagine or whatever traits you want them to have.

When did this imagination and fantasy become something that keeps us from being able to let our imaginations go in order to love and accept a real person?

This imaginary perfect person is not something tangible or even something that can be found, yet we find ourselves feeling the lingering of that imaginary person.  Why does this imaginary person cast a shadow?

This brings my thoughts once again back to the idea of commitment and a decision to love the real person, right in front of us. With that idea, I have another picture:

Want to share your story of love or about the imaginary person in your head? Comment on here or email me at loudharmony58@gmail.com.